They should track the software each faculty and staff member is assigned and use this when auditing the contents of their hard disks. Obviously, this requires a serious commitment and education by the university. Universities should make a serious attempt to negotiate site licenses with major software firms, although this is a major source of complaint by the Fortune 500 Corporations. Corporations have reported that they do not believe software companies are willing enough to use creative licensing and contracts to enable large organizations to easily obtain all of the legal copies they need. Universities can also try to negotiate reduced software package costs for demonstrated educational uses.
Colleges can take preventative measures by installing networks and running networked software.
This prevents faculty and students from having access to the physical copy of the software and hence will keep at least the less sophisticated users from copying. It is obvious that the software copying problem is not an easy one to solve and is not going to disappear any time soon. It is also obvious that the corporate world is far more advanced the academic world in their recognition, identification and attack of the problem. The attitudes of the faculty, students, and general public need to change. They need to recognize software as a tangible product with value while administrators must recognize that software is fundamental equipment to a computer class just as chemistry beakers are to a chemistry class.