CMS and universities

Dear,

As a final year student I am currently working on my thesis: "The development of a CMS for university websites". I conducted a small research amongst the Flemish universities about the use of CMSes. It seems that small universities are afraid of the high costs involved and do not have sufficient manpower to develop a CMS on their own. Larger universities on the other hand are spending a lot of resources on ERP-solutions and add a "publication layer" to this system. 
Many universities post on this list, so I was wondering what your experiences are.

- What are the expected advantages of a CMS in an university context (in the domains: education, research and administration)?
- Have you evaluated some CMS-products? Why did you choose to implement them or not?
- What are the lessons learned? Do the expected advantages outweigh the disadvantages/difficulties?
- What about the integration of a CMS with other systems such as ELOs (Electronic Learning Environments, for example BlackBoard) or ERP-systems?

Of course other readers are also free to share their opinion!

Kind regards,

Jonas Demey
student applied economics - major informatics
University of Antwerp, Belgium