A recent proposal for the education AV and IT sector might have scary implications for the rest of the industry. Sean Carroll explores what happened and what it might mean for the rest of the AV world.

The AV industry is always fighting to prove that it exists. The two biggest industry associations, CEDIA and AVIXA, spend a lot of their time creating certifications, campaigning for the broader industry and, more recently, creating pathways into the workforce.

It’s been a long process, but it looks as though progress is finally being made by the commercial and residential associations.

The education space is a bit luckier as the role of the AV integrator/IT professional is more heavily defined. The role’s convergence with IT is on full display, and the two teams work in tandem to provide all the technology solutions required to educate students across the country.

While not perfect, there’s a clearer, more defined pathway into this side of the industry.

Despite this, in late 2023, University of Sydney (USyd) staff were told about a proposed plan to change how technology teams operate, removing many of the traditional AV/IT roles and creating a “universal technician” role.

The news shocked two AV/IT professionals who were working at USyd at the time, Sofie Loizou and Jerome Mouron. When the proposal landed at the university, both saw the writing on the wall. Not because the idea was completely foreign, but because of what it implied.

“We had never heard of this role before. During the consultation, we were given limited transparency and told to just ‘google it’. So we decided to investigate it ourselves,” Sofie says.

Jerome puts it more bluntly, as the proposal talked about potentially reducing the team of 450 employees by nearly 20%: “When you’re talking about potentially removing 84 roles… it obviously raises serious concerns.”

So, what even is a universal technician? Does it work? Is it appropriate that one of Australia’s largest universities proposed that it could replace traditional AV/IT roles? Was it an ambitious new blend of roles, or was it an oversimplified cost-cutting exercise?

What is a universal technician?

Strip away the politics for a second, and the universal technician idea is fairly straightforward. Instead of having clearly separated AV specialists and IT support staff, the universal technician is a blended role. It’s a person (a “technician”) who can handle both the simple and challenging IT issues, as well as AV troubleshooting.

On paper, it’s quite efficient. It means there’s a better use of resources (read: staff time) and faster responses with more skilled technicians in the field. But context is crucial.

“We found that universal technician roles had mixed success across institutions. Some smaller colleges and remote sites, like in Dubbo or Orange, reported success with hybrid roles, but only with strong training and cultural management. Large universities, however, did not report similar success,” Sofie explains.

That’s the key distinction that, it seems, the powers that be at USyd missed. In smaller or regional environments, hiring generalists is often the only viable option since smaller budgets mean less funding for a large AV/IT team.

Smaller educational institutions generally also have simpler AV and IT systems. The demand is narrower, so it’s often expected that one person wears multiple hats.

The proposed reduction in headcount for USyd, which didn’t account for potential drops in performance, looked like it would lead to longer delays, poor experiences for teachers and students and, in turn, a bad image for the university.

The case for the universal technician

Scott Doyle is the current president of the Association for AV & Education Technology Management (AETM) and AV manager at Swinburne University of Technology. He says that he has seen the success of the hybrid role at his own institution.

“It’s an interesting one. USyd is obviously a much larger university, so I can understand why the team pushed back against the shift that was proposed,” he says.

“But the idea of a universal technician is actually something we already do at Swinburne.”

Most AV and IT teams tier their support like so:

• Level 0 is self-help issues that require little technical skill
• Level 1 is service desk issues
• Level 2 is on-site support
• Level 3 is specialist escalation

“In larger universities, AV support staff traditionally sit in that Level 2 space. But a lot of organisations now have a broader support team handling things like VoIP phones, software, laptops and classrooms. Then Level 3 becomes escalation, where more specialised AV technical staff step in,” Scott explains.

In that framework the universal technician isn’t replacing specialists, it’s just redistributing capability: “It’s really about upskilling IT teams who’ve traditionally handled IT-only issues and giving them AV exposure.”

An optimistic look at the USyd proposal suggests that the universal technician isn’t just cutting down on headcount, it’s reshaping the workforce and breaking down walls between disciplines.

As with other parts of the industry, everything’s getting busier and busier. Scott talks about the concept of “shift left”, which is pushing simpler issues down the support chain so they can be resolved faster, freeing up time for the higher-level jobs.

“AV is traditionally a Level 3 support group, but we try to shift simpler AV issues to Level 2. We also build knowledge base articles and remote management tools to push some support down to Level 1,” he says.

“Ideally, the service desk can triage and resolve issues remotely before a technician is even dispatched.”

That’s a big deal for any AV context, but especially for universities where the worst thing that can happen is an educator standing at the front of a lecture theatre with nothing to teach. In larger environments, that could be a lecturer in front of hundreds of students, all just twiddling their thumbs until the problem is fixed.

So, what’s the problem?

The universal technician role, or implementation of the role, doesn’t necessarily have to reduce headcount. In fact, Scott says that in practice, it doesn’t reduce numbers for him: it’s more about redistributing and upskilling.

“Service desk staff might take four to six calls an hour. If one of those is a classroom issue, it just becomes part of their workload. Over time, that could even mean needing more service desk staff,” he says.

This frees up AV specialists for higher-value work like standardisation, design and project delivery, which is possible when they aren’t constantly being pulled away by classroom issues.

Additionally, there’s a chance that the universal technician shift creates pathways up the management totem pole. You might find an IT support person who really enjoys AV and starts to move in that direction. From there, it can become a career pathway (a hot topic in the industry at the moment).

Management at USyd had proposed the introduction of these universal technicians with the note that headcount would be cut. As one of the biggest universities in the country, the success of smaller institutions, which was quoted by management, doesn’t really hold up at USyd.

“The complexity of these larger environments means you can’t dilute specialist expertise. In education, the ‘show must go on’. There’s immediacy, so if something fails in a classroom, it must be fixed quickly,” Sofie explains.

Jerome adds: “When you look at a large infrastructure like a major university, with complex, interconnected systems and multiple layers of technology… the universal technician model falls apart.”

“You can’t standardise something at scale without first having proper standards and simplified systems in place. In a complex, non-standardised, multi-layered environment… It’s not realistic to expect one generalist role to cover everything effectively.”

Additionally, there’s a human factor with several staff members who have built careers on becoming subject matter experts. There’s a chance that they don’t want to be moved into a generalist role.

So, what did they do?

Phoning a friend

While there was a consultation phase before the universal technician proposal at USyd, it seemed high-level and excluded many relevant teams.

Faced with vague definitions and limited evidence, Sofie, Jerome and the team at USyd reached out to AETM for help. As the leading association for this part of the industry, the AETM was able to help gather a huge amount of data for Jerome and Sofie about this proposed transition and what it might mean for the university’s AV/IT operations.

In March 2025, they posted a short survey to AETM members to better understand the change.

“We received a really strong response. The survey had mostly yes or no questions, but also a space for open feedback,” Sofie says.

“The key themes we heard back were that smaller colleges and remote sites reported success with these hybrid roles, but only with strong training and cultural management. Larger universities did not report the same success.”

Jerome says that the survey helped expose a gap in the proposal: “We found very limited documentation or data supporting this model in large universities. That raised questions about how the consultants generated their data.”

Armed with that evidence, the conversation changed.

“When Sophie and Jerome raised the universal technician question, they got plenty of detailed responses within a few days,” Scott says.

“That kind of engagement is where the AETM community really shines. You can quickly gather real-world insights, both positive and negative, and use that information to inform discussions with your IT leadership team.”

Pushback, pressure and a reversal

“After the AETM survey, there was strong pushback from the USyd cohort. Around 180 out of roughly 500 staff submitted concerns or negative comments,” Jerome explains.

“That was 180 entries raising negative concerns about the implementation, as well as the lack of proper consultation and the lack of detail or transparency about what evidence the decision was based on.”

After this, there was a period of almost 18 months where the team didn’t know what was going to happen. During this time, a new chief information officer was also appointed, causing a lot of angst for all involved.

“From there, we received a revised version of the proposal, but it didn’t include any of the elements that the AV/IT team had raised. At the end of that revised stage, they backtracked and announced that due to the volume of negative feedback, the proposal would not proceed in that form,” Jerome tells.

The universal technician, at least in that iteration, was shelved for USyd.

“The fact that we were able to reverse the model demonstrates the power of collective feedback,” Sofie says.

“Staff working together and providing structured feedback can influence outcomes.”

So, where does that leave us?

Short answer: somewhere in the middle. The universal technician model can work; Scott’s experience (and plenty of others in the AETM) proves that. It can improve efficiency, create career pathways and better AV with IT ecosystems, but it’s not plug-and-play.

It works in smaller environments with controlled conditions, proper training and cultural buy-in. It’s also not a tool for reducing headcount, and it can’t just be slotted into a team without plenty of preparation.

“Hybrid roles require genuine investment, whether that be in training, culture and career pathways. You can’t just give someone a new title and expect it to work,” Sofie says.

Mouron echoes that sentiment: “With the development of technology and increasing automation, there will always be pressure to reduce headcount and broaden roles. That doesn’t automatically mean change is bad. But it needs to be done with proper consultation.”

With technology converging, models like the universal technician aren’t going away. In fact, they’ll probably become more common.

When done right, the universal technician can be an evolution, but when done wrong, it’s just a reshuffle with a sweet name.