Higher Ed users, Do you manage school provided laptops? Why, Why not?

[kevin5495]

To make sure all of our students have appropriate resources for their majors, we're considering providing laptops (about 2,000 Apple or Dell) to each student for the Fall. Students would have the option to purchase upon graduation. We've been asked to pull this off within a few weeks. Any suggestions, best practices? This would be all MBPros and Airs. We're using Jamfcloud and a cloud DP without LDAP access. TIA.

[davidhiggs]

Could you clarify the part where you mention 'without LDAP access'?

I did something similar recently on this post and have been really happy with the result, it didn't take long to setup. It was a slight variation of our managed service for staff and nearly no work to maintain it. The most work you will do is verifying how software licences can be used and if appropriate for personal computers.

We did this to support users WFH and switching to personal machines. We wanted to ensure they had a basic level of support and access to core services and software.

Given that the students might not purchase after graduating, you could think about enrolling in Automated Device Enrollment and ensure you have a good off-boarding process when it's time to release the device for good. If you think that could get difficult to manage then you might want to think twice about it and if ADE is offering any benefits. Security might be a driver there.