Higher education procurement teams are being repositioned from cost‑cutting units to strategic enablers of institutional agility, industry analysts say. Faced with enrollment shifts, tightening budgets and rapid tech change, procurement leaders recommend unified purchasing systems, real‑time spend analytics and decentralized approval frameworks to speed critical buys while maintaining compliance. Institutions that adopt those five pillars of procurement agility report faster responses to emergent needs and better alignment of spending with strategic priorities, an operational shift likely to influence campus capital projects, hybrid learning investments and vendor partnerships.