Regina Kunkle calls it "getting the Heisman." But it's no award. The sales VP for NetApp is talking about the chilly on-campus reception she and other vendors sometimes get that reminds her of the stiff-arm pose of football's Heisman Trophy. While Kunkle believes in building long-term relationships to make universities more competitive, she says some CIOs simply aren't interested. "They say, 'That's not my area,' or, 'You can't do anything for me,'" she explains.
On the flip side of the coin, many administrators feel such coolness is warranted. Indeed, anyone who has attended a higher education IT conference can detect a palpable hostility among some college officials toward vendors. At the 2011 Educause conference in Philadelphia, for example, there was a lot of negative talk about vendors engaging in "open-washing." Derived from the term "greenwashing," which is applied to spurious claims for sustainability, open-washing refers to dubious vendor claims about openness.
So what has brought vendors and schools to this icy pass? For one thing, IT leaders have decried for years confusing or inflexible licensing arrangements and nondisclosure agreements regarding pricing. Joshua Kim, director of learning and technology in the Master of Health Care Delivery Science program at Dartmouth College (NH), explains that vendors often offer a private pricing sheet and special deals...
