Education

.edu Is Not a WordPress Story

82,977 .edu sites scanned: WordPress 43%, Drupal 34%, Rails 13%. At scale, WordPress leads — but education is still the only sector where Drupal and Rails hold serious ground.

Key data points

.edu framework distribution (82,977 detected)

35,983 WordPress, 28,327 Drupal, 10,726 Rails, 1,660 Nuxt.js (2%), 1,908 Angular (2.3%). Drupal and Rails far stronger than any other sector. Source: WebPulse 10M scan.

WordPress 43%, Drupal 34%, Rails 13%

Education sector breach average cost

Rising 12% year-over-year. Targeting student records and research data.

$3.7M

Student data records exposed (2025)

Across K-12 and higher education. Legacy CMS as primary vector.

~28M

Average university IT legacy ratio

Budget consumed by maintenance of existing systems vs innovation.

65-75%

LMS platforms on legacy infrastructure

Learning management systems built on PHP/MySQL stacks from 2010-era.

~40%

Risk factors

What keeps Education CISOs awake

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Student information systems (SIS) on legacy databases with limited API access

●

Research data repositories on unpatched infrastructure

●

WordPress multisite deployments managing hundreds of department sites with inconsistent patching

●

LMS integrations via legacy plugins creating data exfiltration pathways

●

FERPA-protected records on infrastructure that wouldn't pass a modern security audit

Stack comparison

Typical vs Recommended

Typical Education stack

WordPress 35

PHP 7.x 33

MySQL 5.x 31

.NET Framework (4.x) 39

Apache HTTP Server 52

Recommended modern stack

Astro 80

Python 3 85

PostgreSQL 81

Docker 77

Nginx 69

Score your own stack →

Regulatory landscape

Compliance Exposure

FERPA

Student education records. Unauthorized disclosure penalties and loss of federal funding eligibility.

COPPA

Children under 13. K-12 sites collecting data through legacy forms with plugin dependencies.

GDPR (international students)

EU student data requires GDPR compliance regardless of institution location.

Research Data Requirements

NIH, NSF grant compliance. Research data on unsecured infrastructure risks funding.

Latest Education insights

Innovation & Growth

.edu Is Not a WordPress Story

What keeps Education CISOs awake

Typical vs Recommended

Compliance Exposure

We Scanned 342 Major Websites. Next.js Has Overtaken WordPress.

The True Cost of Running WordPress: $4,200 to $38,000 Per Year Per Site

WordPress Powers 43% of the Web (W3Techs). It Scores 45 Out of 100.

Migration ROI by Industry: Healthcare Saves Most, Education Waits Longest.

Education Is the Slowest Sector to Modernize. It Has the Most to Lose.

.edu at 58,182 Detections: Drupal 35.7%, Rails 16.4%. Academia Fully Mapped.