Schools are catching on to Big Tech’s playbook

Schools are increasingly recognizing that AI and coding tools promoted by vendors can shape not just learning outcomes, but long-term platform dependency, workforce pipelines, and purchasing behavior—much like enterprise software lock-in. For CIOs and technology leaders, the strategic lesson is to treat vendor-supplied curriculum and “free” enablement as a governance issue: evaluate educational value, data/privacy implications, interoperability, and the risk of allowing product strategy to drive institutional priorities rather than business or mission outcomes.