Do 71% of the top universities really use Drupal?

This statistic was first used on Drupal.org more than eight years ago... and never changed. This session will review a chain of events that started after HighEdWeb 2023 and led to The Drop Times publishing their findings about Drupal usage after several months of research. Part of this project defined a repeatable methodology that could be used to gather data about CMS usage. We also redefined "use" to have more meaningful contexts.

We can now confidently say...

• 80% of the top 100 universities use Drupal (on at least one of their websites)
• 40% of the top 100 universities use Drupal on more than 10 sites
• 67% of the world's top 300 universities use Drupal in some capacity
• 36% of the top U.S. universities use Drupal on their primary domain

The exciting news is that the project didn't stop there... and isn't limited to Drupal statics. The methodology used also shows the amount of WordPress used on the .edu domains as well. SPOILER: It's a lot!

We also learned that nothing motivates higher education like a "top" list that doesn't include their institution. Several members of the Drupal higher ed community volunteered their time to repeat the methodology used on the original 300 domains on additional .edu domains from different "top" lists.

It also became clear that focusing on the "top" was excluding a large number of Drupal sites in community colleges that served very large and diverse student populations. Another community member volunteered to gather usage information from community college domains.

In addition to higher ed, research using a variation on the original methodology has been done to evaluate city government websites. That research was less focused on Drupal and identified many commercial CMS solutions with use far exceeding the top CMS options that dominate the higher ed domains.

The additional data gathered using an always improving methodology is now/will be available on a new edudu.org site that separates the CMS usage found on a domain from the "top" lists a domain is related. This allows users to generate many different CMS usage claims. The hope is that the community can keep the data current and accurate so that no one receives an email after HighEdWeb 2034 stating that 80% of the top 100 universities use Drupal.