Foreword by Sandra Ruppert
Part I: A Vision of a Global Learning Infrastructure by Carol A. Twigg and Robert C. Heterick, Jr.
Part II: An Information Technology Agenda for State Policymakers by James R. Mingle
Developments in information technology and distance learning are revolutionizing the way postsecondary education is organized and delivered not only in the United States but also globally. Not coincidentally, these developments are occurring at precisely the same time that higher education in the U.S. is adapting to a more market-oriented, competitive, and consumer-focused environment. The combined effects of the new technology and a changing economy directly challenge many of the assumptions and foundations upon which states and systems of higher education have built their regulatory, organizational, and financial policies governing higher education.
On November 13 and 14, 1997, Educom's National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLII) and the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) cosponsored an invitational symposium in Denver, Colorado, on the Public Policy Implications of the Information Technology Revolution. The symposium's purpose was to discuss the impact of information technology on the ways in which we regulate, organize, and finance higher education in the United States and how states should respond. Twenty-five representatives from state and multicampus coordinating and governing boards, information technology-related fields, and higher education regional associations attended the one and one-half day symposium.
To set the context for the NLII-SHEEO symposium, Carol A. Twigg and Robert C. Heterick, Jr., Educom's vice president and president respectively, coauthored a background paper that was distributed to symposium participants in advance. A precis of the Twigg/Heterick paper, "A Vision of a Global Learning Infrastructure," appears as Part I of this report. In their paper, the authors describe the impact of information technology on society and on the environment in which higher education operates. They present a provocative, yet compelling, vision of a "global learning infrastructure" -- a student-centric, virtual, global web of educational services -- as the foundation for achieving society's learning goals.
Part II of this report, An Information Technology Agenda for State Policymakers, contains a discussion of the public policy implications of the global learning infrastructure described by Twigg and Heterick. Written by James R. Mingle, SHEEO's executive director, the paper lays out some of the challenges currently faced by state boards and others with state-level interests in higher education and offers insights into their resolution. The paper is based in large measure on the contributions made by participants during the meeting. It also draws from two articles prepared by symposium participants in response to Twigg's and Heterick's paper. Those articles, one by Dewayne Matthews, senior program director with the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education (WICHE) and the other by Michael Goldstein, partner in the law firm of Dow, Lohnes and Albertson, are available from the SHEEO office.
Taken together, the two papers contained in this report are designed to contribute to the ongoing and fertile debate about how states and their systems of higher education should manage the transition to this new learning environment. Both call for bold leadership and public policies that find new ways to harness market forces and come to terms with emerging social, technological, and financial issues. And they offer considerable insights into the policies and approaches that will be most productive in developing cost-effective delivery of higher education to future generations of students.
Sandra S. Ruppert
Editor
Educational Systems Research
Littleton,
Colorado
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Since its inception, the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLII) has advanced its mission by bringing together leaders in education, the technology industries, and government to engage in discussions that set a course for future action. Out of those discussions and dialogues, a rich repository of articles, white papers, and publications have emerged that provide a new conceptual framework for thinking about the way higher education is delivered and evaluated. Public and institutional policy issues are deeply influenced by that framework. As such, many of the ideas presented in Part I of this paper are drawn from previously published sources.
We would like to acknowledge the ideas presented in two white papers published by Educom: The Virtual University, by Carol A. Twigg and Diana G. Oblinger (1997) and Academic Productivity: The Case for Instructional Software, by Carol A. Twigg (1996). We also would like to credit the contribution made by Robert W. Tucker and John Sperling in their article, "Time for Nationally Authorized Universities," which appeared in the Fall/Winter 1997 issue of The NLII Viewpoint.
Other sources for this paper include "The Global Learning Infrastructure," by Carol A. Twigg and Michael Miloff, which will appear as a chapter in Don Tapscott's upcoming Blueprint for a Digital Economy: Wealth Creation in an E-Business Era (McGraw-Hill, 1998); Notes for the June 4-5, 1997 NLII-ITP Symposium on Creating and Delivering Collegiate Learning Materials in a Distributed (Networked) Learning Environment: A Business Model for University-Corporate Collaboration, by Carol A. Twigg; "The Network as Strategic Asset: The Path to Learning Productivity," by Lowell H. Roberts, which appeared in the Spring 1996 issue of The NLII Viewpoint; and "Interpolating the Future," by Robert C. Heterick, Jr. and Carol A. Twigg, which appeared in the January/February 1997 Educom Review.
THE DIGITAL FUTURE
Society's higher education requirements are undergoing a fundamental transformation. A rapidly growing student population is becoming older and increasingly diverse. In addition, the new economy requires a workforce capable of handling an exploding knowledge base. Industries are looking to higher education institutions to provide the necessary education and training. There is financial pressure too: colleges and universities must control and even reduce costs, as well as manage new competitive dynamics, while responding to growing demands. On their own, each of these factors is significant; collectively they challenge fundamental higher education strategies and practices as we approach the 21st century.
Emerging digital technology, especially the Internet, is ideally suited to meet the new learning needs. What follows is a set of assumptions about the digital future:
The communications, computing, and information industries are converging in the digital environment. This environment will include a convergence of sound, video, and data with synchronous and asynchronous communication. Digital technology will continue its rapid ascent as analog technologies continue to decline. The Internet is predicted to grow: conservative estimates put the number of today's Internet users at around 50 million; predictions are for over 1 billion users before the end of the decade. An expansion in bandwidth, expected to see the most revolutionary change in the next decade, will allow such things as the delivery of multimedia directly to the home.
The rate at which new technologies are penetrating business and the home can be expected to increase. Increasingly, we are experiencing the permeation of new technologies and network use throughout society. Proficiency in using technology is now for all practical purposes a required competency in the workforce; it is becoming another basic skill. Currently, 65 percent of all workers use some type of information technology in their jobs. This will increase to 95 percent by the year 2000. Entering students arrive on campus "network savvy" and graduates move into a world increasingly reliant on networked communications.
Networks and networked information will lead to disintermediation, disaggregation, diffusion, and differentiation. Computer networks offer the possibility of disintermediation -- that is, when the consumer can access services and information directly rather than going through an intermediary. All of our modern technologies with rapid diffusion rates -- high consumer acceptance -- have been personal and disintermediated. Technology drives us toward disaggregation, information products and services being broken apart and repackaged to cater to consumer's desires, which in turn enables mass customization. It also enables differentiation; products and services can be combined and used in different ways for more than one purpose to meet different needs.
The Impact on Higher Education
A learning infrastructure based on digital technology offers more than just education as usual on the Internet. It offers a set of extraordinary new tools: self-paced, multimedia modules that deliver leading pedagogy; in-depth outcome assessments; and online interaction with fellow students and teachers that facilitates continuous feedback and improvement. The following describes some of what the digital future holds in store for higher education:
Disaggregation unbundles the instructional process. Technology enables us to disaggregate the place, the content, the delivery, and judgments about the quality of education. By separating instruction from assessment, teaching from degree granting, content development from content delivery, and even service from compliance on the part of the government, traditional roles are redefined and new ones emerge.
The Internet expands learning opportunities. Distance learning technologies, such as the Internet, and to a lesser extent, cable and satellite-based systems, enables learners to access education whenever and wherever they want. Online experiences offer educational opportunities to millions of learners previously constrained by time, location, and other factors.
The Internet enhances choice and challenges regulation. The Internet lowers the threshold of entry to the higher education marketplace for new commercial and nonprofit educational providers by eliminating many barriers. The development of ever more effective electronic modes of delivering education at a distance and the explosive growth of networks will continue to erode the geographic hegemony of higher education and continue to challenge current state regulatory mechanisms. Students will be more likely to select educational institutions based on offerings, convenience, and price than on geography.
Interactive multimedia and other technologies will change how we think about providers and whom we regard as providers. Learning resources that were once only available through education institutions will appear in retail stores in the form of multimedia software and other computer-based courseware. Consumers will be able to purchase learning products independently and learn at their convenience, collectively spending millions of dollars on education each year. This purchasing power will have a tremendous impact on who controls learning.
Education will no longer take place within the silos of individual institutions (or even their virtual equivalents). Instead education will occur within a dynamic global marketplace of customers and suppliers. With its emphasis on creativity and competition, this marketplace will enable a wide range of players -- universities, media, publishers, content specialists, technology companies -- to market, sell, and deliver educational services online.
A New Vision: A Global Learning Infrastructure
We envisage a global learning infrastructure -- a student-centric, virtual, global web of educational services -- as the foundation for achieving society's learning goals. This contrasts with the bricks-and-mortar, campus-centric university of today; it even goes beyond the paradigm of the virtual university, which remains modeled on individual institutions. The global learning infrastructure will encompass a flourishing marketplace of educational services where millions of students interact with a vast array of individual and institutional suppliers. It will be delivered through multiple technologies including the Internet, broadband cable, and satellite. It is being developed in phases, but will ultimately cross all institutional, state, and national borders.
The global learning infrastructure draws its capabilities from digital technology and the Internet. It could not have existed five years ago -- but it will be pervasive five years from now. At the technology core of the global learning infrastructure are fully interoperable modules and an enabling infrastructure which will:
Undoubtedly, individual institutions will exploit these technologies to advance their programs. But without conscious, concerted effort, the results will be a continuation of today's inadequate, piecemeal solutions. The challenge -- and extraordinary opportunity -- is to develop an integrated global learning infrastructure to meet the educational needs of the 21st century.
PUBLIC POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF A GLOBAL LEARNING INFRASTRUCTURE
Challenges for the Future
In today's environment, higher education is a highly regulated industry. For example, institutions operate under the rules of more than 65 accrediting associations; various federal agencies including the Departments of Education, Veterans Administration, and Defense; state regulatory and licensing agencies; and, particularly in the public sector, multicampus governing boards. These arrangements tend to perpetuate the status quo. Additionally, the excess of regulation in higher education makes it difficult, often impossible, for institutions to innovate. Thus, many institutions remain unresponsive to the rapidly changing needs of society and the economy.
Technology creates a window of opportunity for regulatory reform. The competitive environment brought about through global digital networks will transform both educational methods and institutional roles. This environment will also affect how public policy makers approach such issues as institutional role and mission policies; program approval and review processes; service area boundaries; regulation of out-of-state providers; and admissions, residency, and transfer of credit policies. But how should national and state public policy makers respond to and facilitate needed changes in regulatory policies and procedures? New challenges for the public policy makers might include the following roles:
Creating a climate for change. Government must help educational institutions, the private sector, and the public to understand the need for a new learning vision and the critical role that a digital learning infrastructure will play.
Facilitating the creation of new market forces. Deregulating higher education will allow a wide range of providers to develop and deliver content and to set standards. At the same time, accountability to the public and to student consumers needs to be established. Local and state regulation should be replaced by national and global frameworks in much the same way as we have deregulated the railroads, airlines, securities exchange, and banking industries. In each of these instances, technology-driven changes in the social order created a national market that made state regulation anti-competitive, ineffective, and often irrational.
Authorizing the marketplace. Education is too important to exist without controls, without licensing, or without credentials. Government's role as authorizer should be to hold providers accountable for educational results. Means are superfluous: it is results that count. However, defining how to measure and reward the effectiveness of education or to penalize its ineffectiveness will require debate. Another role for government that may develop would consist of providing information on how well the educational marketplace is functioning-information that is easily understood by prospective students. More than just collecting information, an authorizer's job would be to stimulate this marketplace to work effectively irrespective of who is the provider.
Facilitating the establishment of technical standards. Critical to the success of a digital infrastructure -- and to truly unleashing market capabilities-is establishing agreed -- to standards for telecommunications, file formats, security, and communication that enable high interoperability among instructional materials. Government can facilitate the dialogue among colleges, educational publishers, and software and telecommunications companies.
Assisting students in making good choices. New providers are entering the market and existing colleges and universities are working to make themselves more attractive to nontraditional students. The result is that shopping for classes, training, certification, or even degrees is becoming a more complex and confusing task. As higher education moves toward disaggregation, there will be an emerging role for intermediaries who can help both students and providers create order out of potential educational chaos. Without such intermediaries, trying to choose a suitable educational program from the thousands of options available will be nearly impossible.
Decoupling revenue from program cost. Institutions that function as intermediaries will need to assess the quality of programs as Maine, for example, did with the University of South Carolina's degree in library and information sciences. Those same intermediary institutions may also broker those programs without incurring the costs of developing or owning them. Many regard this as an opportunity to expand the depth, breadth, and quality of programs without the concomitant resource commitment. At a time when many institutions -- especially smaller, regional colleges -- are facing severe budget shortages, this may be the opportunity to decouple revenue from program cost.
Developing appropriate social and economic policies. The digital education revolution is likely to have significant social and economic impacts, many of them difficult to predict. Government needs to explore such impacts, facilitate public debate, and develop appropriate policy. Examples of the kind of issues that might need to be addressed include the closing of a local institution unable to compete; cross-border jurisdictional matters; or copyright, royalty, and financing arrangements for contributors of services or products.
CHANGE STRATEGIES: THE ROLE OF INCENTIVES
The National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLII)
For us at Educom, a fundamental question is: How can we enlist information technology (IT) in addressing the three major problems facing higher education as we enter the 21st century-access, quality, and costs? We believe that information technology has the potential to make significant contributions to all three areas:
Educom's National Learning Infrastructure Initiative seeks to create new collegiate learning environments that harness the power of information technology to improve the quality of teaching and learning, contain or reduce rising costs, and provide greater access to American higher education. This leads to a number of other key questions for Educom; chief among them is, "how might state policy promote rather than impede the adoption of new technologies?" Many of the problems faced by policy makers currently cut to the core of a higher education system that until recently has catered to local and regional constituencies. State leaders, accustomed to geographic delineations, are concerned about what impact changing student demographics and the proliferation of distance-learning technologies will have on higher education institutions. We believe that shortsighted efforts to protect an outdated system based primarily on geography may make it impossible for our institutions to compete in a networked marketplace.
Far-sighted state policy makers want traditional institutions to be able to adapt to and compete successfully in the new environment. There is, however, a gap between where institutions are today and where they need to be. Furthermore, it is not entirely clear that current institutions will be able to transform themselves. Public policy makers, therefore, should be wary of putting their entire emphasis on trying to change traditional institutions versus other strategies that can stimulate a broader postsecondary educational marketplace.
How do we navigate that transition? How do we develop strategies for transitioning higher education institutions to the information age? What kinds of policy incentives will support these change strategies?
Barriers to Navigating the Transition
Outside the realms of administration and research, most applications of technology in higher education in the U.S. have been of the "bolt-on" variety -- that is, something is bolted on to assist the teacher in the classroom. In using television to extend the conventional classroom to students at a distance, most distance learning applications have been of the bolt-on variety. The fundamental weakness with the bolt-on approach is that it adds costs rather than reducing them. Adding capital in the form of technology without reducing labor costs (labor costs in the form of salaries represent something on the order of 80 percent of operating budgets of most conventional colleges and universities) or increasing productivity in the form of learning outcomes cannot be expected to do anything but raise costs.
Another significant barrier to change is state higher education funding mechanisms. States have funded public higher education institutions through a system of formulas, incremental budgets, and shared costs, a system which has remained relatively stable for several decades. Funding formulas that distribute dollars to institutions and students can provide powerful incentives to influence student, faculty, and institutional commitment to change. But current enrollment-based full-time equivalent (FTE) funding formulas are based on a time-on-task concept rather than a learning achievement or outcome model. FTE funding provides little or no incentive to improve academic quality.
What are needed are incentives that emphasize and reward outcomes regardless of how they are achieved. But what would a new array of incentives that rewarded successful completion and cost-effectiveness look like? What are their characteristics? How would we make the transition from FTE funding formulas to a new method of public finance for higher education that achieves the outcomes we want?
INVESTMENT STRATEGIES
Planning for the Digital Future
State governments are taking various approaches to building statewide information infrastructures. Ranging from highly centralized to totally disaggregated, each approach has a unique set of coordination, governance, program development, and financing structures that collectively might be called the state investment strategy.
In devising an effective investment strategy, quick response time is a critical feature that needs to be factored into the planning process. In the digital economy, product development cycles are seldom longer than 18 months and oftentimes they are frequently less. This presents a real dilemma for planning processes that require wide vetting, do not involve technologists who are at the leading edge of their field, and must wait for funding until after the processes are completed and debated. The conventional planning processes of governments simply don't work in the information age. State planning authorities have to ask themselves how they can construct planning processes that are consistent with today's technology cycles and where in the cycle they can add value.
There are several macro trends that should help direct statewide investment strategies:
Video Networks versus Computer Networks
We believe that a long-term investment in computer networks for instructional programming has significant advantages over investments in the two predominant teaching and learning environments: the traditional classroom and the real-time televised class. While real-time televised distance learning is a viable and appropriate short-term solution to meeting instructional demand in an environment of significantly reduced resources, there are many reasons why investments in computer networks provide a forward-looking, cost-effective strategy for the long term. Among them:
While an investment in campus infrastructure is important to the development of computer networks, it is both an easier and more obvious problem than community infrastructure. Without deployment of high-bandwidth services in communities across the state, most of the potential of asynchronous learning will be missed. Investment strategies need to have some focus on the general upgrading of network access through the entire state in addition to individual campuses.
The "last mile" is the critical issue facing most of higher education today. The last mile is generally taken to refer to providing high bandwidth to the home. It is not yet clear what technology will emerge to resolve the high-speed access problem in the last mile. Much of the smart money today is placed on the unregulated sectors of the economy as the place from which last mile solutions are most likely to arise. A part of any statewide investment strategy should include research and development partnerships with commercial providers who are likely to develop and deploy technology solutions to the last mile problem. Such partnerships are probably best directed from campuses with significant research interests in telecommunications and a history of providing community-based services.
Tailoring Investments to State Needs
Not all states will find the same investment strategy to be appropriate. For instance, less populous states will likely have a much greater interest in wireless services than do major metropolitan areas. By the same token, states with a poorly educated populace will have a greater focus on commercial training opportunities; and states with minimal competition in their telecommunications marketplace will be more interested in build rather than buy solutions. The situation might be likened to investing retirement funds and the choices between stocks, bonds, and annuities. The same strategy isn't appropriate for all individuals.
Two central questions for state policy makers regarding investments in digital infrastructures are these:
Programmatic Investments
Statewide investments in the nontechnology aspects of a learning infrastructure present a set of difficult decisions, the first of which is placing a bet on where solutions are most likely to arise -- in the private or the public sector. Given the general reluctance of the public sector to invest in infrastructure research and development (particularly in the non-hardware aspects), it is probably appropriate to hedge this bet by investing in both: placing some investment in university programs that address statewide needs and offer the potential to scale-up beyond the local classroom and placing some in the growing commercial marketplace of private software developers and publishers who are beginning to introduce products for high enrollment courses. Several state systems have made a start at the latter by creating partnerships with private courseware providers.
Some public policy makers are encouraging universities to move into technology-based content development: creating, marketing, and distributing courses and/or instructional software products. We believe that higher education institutions are unlikely to be successful in these ventures for a number of reasons. For one, higher education lacks for the most part the appropriate business expertise. The business of colleges and universities is educating students and conducting research; it is not the development, production, distribution, and marketing of products. Additionally, there is a large disparity between "corporate speed" and "college speed." At college speed, the timing is generally set by the institution; not by the customer as in the corporate world. Educational institutions would need to learn to move much more quickly in order to be competitive. Higher education needs the direct engagement of those whose business is the development, production, distribution, and marketing of educational products, specifically, the publishing and digital industries.
One approach is to partner with the private sector. This is based on the assumption that both the publishing and higher education communities bring something of value to partnerships and that both stand to gain from it. The advantage of a collaborative model is that each party need not develop competencies brought by the other partner. In order to be successful, however, each party must be clear about what competencies it brings to the effort and agree on how they will work together collaboratively. In the current approach, the workflow between higher education institutions and publishers is fairly discrete. The publisher works with authors and a product development team, as well as with production and distribution partners, to provide instructional material. Higher education institutions work with instructors and other parts of the institution to attract learners and provide instruction. The question then becomes, what would this workflow look like in a collaborative model?
CONCLUSION: INTERPOLATION THE FUTURE
Most states lack a clear mission and set of goals for the development of a learning infrastructure. There seems to be a notable absence of statements, for example, that indicate an intention to halve tuition and fee costs, increase access by 50 percent, or effect a general improvement in learning quality as witnessed by improved course completion rates, reduced average time to degree, or higher first year retention. Absent a defining mission and specific goals, most efforts seem to be mired in incrementalism and ad hockery. State planning efforts need to avoid simple extrapolations of the status quo and set some aggressive and quantifiable goals for the development of a learning infrastructure.
Our thesis is simple. In times of major upheaval, we must learn to interpolate rather than extrapolate. Extrapolation looks at the past and assumes that the future will be like the past. In most situations this is a reasonable approach. But when a revolution is brewing, such a focus on the past can be very misleading.
A better approach is to create a scenario of what you believe the operating climate for your organization is likely to be in the future (say 10 years out) and attempt to set a course based upon interpolating between where you are now and that future scenario. Such an interpolation will suggest courses of action that look very different than those derived from extrapolation. Consider this example of the distinction:
Ten years from now, there will be more than 25 million people registered for postsecondary learning experiences in the United States alone. The vast majority of them will not be pursuing a degree program; instead, they will be seeking to update their skills and knowledge base primarily in response to changes in the economy. The percentage of the population seeking the undergraduate experience will have decreased over the preceding decade, and the number of degree-granting, residential colleges will have stabilized at a number and size relatively consistent with the number of 18 to 22 year-olds. The nontraditional student will have become the norm and will represent the "dog" rather than the "tail."
Extrapolation would suggest extending our campuses in time (like creating weekend colleges or lifelong relationships with our alumni) and space (like building virtual catalogs out of existing degree programs and technology-mediated courses or establishing satellite student service centers). Extrapolation might suggest creating the virtual university by building on the successes of faculty-delivered, analog TV-based, distance education supplemented by computer-based conferencing and e-mail.
Interpolation will convince us that network-delivered, computer-mediated, learning experiences will dominate postsecondary learning in the decades ahead. Much of this change will be attributable to the nearly complete transition from an infrastructure based on analog technology to one rooted in silicon, based on the microprocessor, fiber optics, and end-to-end digital networks. The ubiquity of networked information appliances coupled with broadband communications channels reaching nearly every home and business in the country will have made interaction with rich multimedia commonplace and ordinary.
Interpolation would suggest that new services (like online examinations to assess various kinds of student learning and credit banks that serve as transcript centers for the accumulated-and-disaggregated learning experiences of nontraditional students) will emerge to serve the dominant student population. And it will have us focused on those areas where we have competitive advantage, breaking down arbitrary geographical and political boundaries, retailing and/or wholesaling Internet-based learning modules in partnership with private industry.
While interpolation runs some risk of overestimating the rate at which the future will arrive, it is a strategy that will bridge the chasm. Extrapolation will be a failed strategy. In the words of an old Chinese proverb: it is impossible to cross a chasm with a thousand small steps. Tinkering at the margins is a strategy focusing on the past that is guaranteed to miss the sea change that is about to wash over higher education.
RELEVANCE OF IT TO STATE GOALS
State policymakers' level of enthusiasm for the application of information technology (IT) to higher education systems is at an all-time high. In state after state, legislatures are increasing their support for higher education technology initiatives that include allocations for statewide telecommunications networks, campus infrastructure, and exciting new multistate virtual university operations such as the Western Governors University. In a 1996 Hezel Associates survey sponsored by the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO), the 43 states responding to the survey reported a total of over $1 billion in state appropriations for higher education technology initiatives during the last two years. (Hezel Associates 1996) In most cases, these are dollars over and above the state support provided campuses in their base budget allocations.
The promise of technology to resolve a number of long-vexing issues confronting higher education is pushing state legislatures to step up the pace of their technology investments. Recent surveys of legislative leaders reveal that state legislatures frequently view technology as the primary solution for addressing the combined effects of limited state resources and current or anticipated increases in demand for postsecondary education and training. Legislatures are further pressed by the recognition that the acquisition of workplace technology skills is considered an essential postsecondary outcome in today's high-tech, knowledge-based economy. (Ruppert 1997)
But beyond those general purposes, few states have translated their statewide goals for the use of IT in higher education into a long-term strategic plan and sound investment strategy. Many of the two dozen participants who attended the NLII-SHEEO symposium on Public Policy Implications of the Information Technology Revolution held November 13 and 14, 1997, in Denver, noted that without such goals, technology acquisition can become an end in itself rather than a means for improving higher education. The key to sustaining current political and legislative support for IT at the state level, they concluded, lies with demonstrating the relevance of IT initiatives to important statewide goals. As Warren Fox of the California Post-secondary Education Commission put it: "We need to design the goals and then seek the appropriate technology rather than letting technology drive need."
Among the basic questions state policymakers will want to ask about the role of IT in meeting statewide goals for higher education are these:
Will states want to support the explosion of adult learning programs which will occur as a result of the global learning infrastructure described by Twigg and Heterick or will those programs need to be self-supporting? State policymakers can expect an explosion of demand among adult populations as a result of the added convenience and flexibility of asynchronous learning modes. But with the states' emphasis on traditional-age student bodies and degree-credit enrollment, it remains to be seen whether significant state financial support will be used to subsidize the operational costs of these programs.
Will states with growing minority populations see IT as relevant to the access and learning goals that will increase minority success in higher education? The education of minority populations traditionally underrepresented in higher education is another area where the applicability of IT is being questioned. If states such as California and Texas continue to think of technology primarily as a tool for distance learning rather than as an application for improving the effectiveness of teaching and learning, then they may not see the relevance of technology to minority success in higher education. Cost-effective technology solutions to the remedial problem facing not only minority populations, but many majority populations as well, are especially needed. For Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board commissioner Don Brown, the issue comes down to two questions: In light of the Hopwood decision in Texas, how can we get all people to participate and succeed in higher education? And if we succeed with the first goal, how do we accommodate those students?
Will "a node on the Internet" satisfy the demands for local economic development and access to facilities that drives much of public higher education policy? Many advocates of IT, most notably among state governors and legislators, expect networks to be one-to-one substitutes for campus construction and program expansion. But the continuing pressure of community leaders and their legislative allies, especially in rural areas, for higher education to play a role in local economic development will temper this enthusiasm. As a source of clean industry and well-paying jobs, a new higher education campus (or the expansion of an existing one) remains a high priority of local chambers of commerce and political representatives. As David Powers of the Nebraska Coordinating Commission on Postsecondary Education remarked, "a node on the Internet just doesn't satisfy these groups in the same way that buildings and well-paid faculty and staff do."
THE REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT
Higher education in the United States operates, at least nominally, within the regulatory framework of state governments. The U.S. Constitution reserves to the states this power and they have exercised it with a certain reluctance and restraint, especially when it comes to both private and sectarian-sponsored colleges and universities, and more recently with the organization of for-profit institutions. When it comes to publicly chartered degree-granting institutions, state governments have exercised a more direct form of regulation related to their roles as owner/operators. In most states, either elected or appointed lay boards act as intermediaries on behalf of the executive and legislative branches to directly govern publicly sponsored institutions. But even with these intermediaries, a considerable amount of conflict is engendered between these boards and campuses.
Broadly defined, the job of state coordinating and governing boards has been to keep the peace among a state's various higher education entities and thus maximize public support for the enterprise as a whole. State boards have carried out this role largely by establishing divisions of labor among the warring parties -- through role and mission constraints and designated or implied geographic service areas. These franchises have been organized both in the name of efficiency and political stability. In this way, duplication of effort can be kept to a minimum and equitable distribution of state support can be accomplished on the basis of rational planning parameters such as enrollment and expected faculty workload.
In recent years, this role and mission approach to planning and resource allocation has been challenged and, in some cases, undergone significant transformation. State coordinating and governing structures have been under considerable pressure, for instance, to support more decentralized, deregulated forms of operation. At the same time, public institutions have been under similar pressure to demonstrate results and to report on agreed-upon accountability measures to the public. In short, state policymakers have granted greater institutional autonomy and flexibility in return for greater accountability.
A number of factors have contributed to this environment, not the least of which has been the enthusiasm to apply successful business practices to state agencies and functions. Another important factor has been the declining share of state dollars that make up higher education budgets in public institutions. As public institutions have diversified their revenue base (primarily through increased student charges), they have naturally sought more freedom from state government oversight.
Thus the challenges of information technology and a global learning infrastructure so aptly described by Twigg and Heterick come at a time when some states are already predisposed to loosen the reigns of regulation. The increasing power of the consumer, in addition to technology's ability to transcend space, time, and political boundaries, is already causing a shift in the decision-making process away from public policy and toward market-driven mechanisms. Geographic and political boundaries, once the foundation of American higher education, are increasingly less relevant.
Although symposium participants were quick to agree that current state regulatory structures need to undergo significant transition, most were careful to add that this does not mean the states' role in the regulation of higher education ends. One reason is that "quality is too important to be left to caveat emptor," pointed out Michael Goldstein of Dow, Lohnes & Albertson. Additionally, several participants warned against shifting state regulatory power to the federal government as an alternative option, in large part because the states, not the federal government, will remain the largest source of funding for higher education for the foreseeable future.
Much of participants' discussion about state regulatory matters centered on what the state's role should be in the not-so-distant digital learning environment described by Twigg and Heterick. In this environment, state boards might, for example, seek to leverage partnerships, coordinate program development, and invest strategically in programs that meet important statewide goals. It also might mean continuing boards' traditional role of laying out role and mission parameters for expensive campus-based program development. And perhaps most important to the state's role as owners and operators of public institutions, state boards will need to find ways to make their own institutions competitive and for the residents of the state to benefit from the expertise of faculty regardless of location.
From the participants' discussion comes the following suggested action agenda on regulatory reform:
The first task of state boards is to deregulate intrastate electronic delivery. While a number of national institutions are emerging in response to the growth of the Internet and other forms of electronic delivery, the overwhelming majority of institutions in the public sector operate within the context of state boundaries. In fact, the primary growth for asynchronous learning may be not among distant students but among local ones who seek the convenience this mode of delivery affords in addition to the support and facilities provided by a traditional campus. But electronic delivery challenges the traditional geographic franchises that have divided the territory of public colleges. By deregulating intrastate delivery of electronic curricula, states will put their own campuses in a better competitive position vis-a-vis out-of-state providers who currently operate, for the most part, in a more open nonregulated environment.
States should continue, along with accrediting bodies, to lower the barriers for institutions operating on national and international scales. A recent survey conducted by the Southern Regional Education Board found that all 15 member states in the region regulate the educational services offered by out-of-state institutions, but often at a relatively modest level. The approaches states used varied widely across the region, according to Mark Musick of the Southern Regional Education Board. The survey also identified the following barriers to and concerns about interstate delivery: an unevenness among the states in their approaches to approval/licensure of out-of-state institutions; no common approach to course approval; and varying approaches to dealing with private institutions. Most problematic from the provider's viewpoint is the array of different formats and data required for gaining state approval.
Those findings related to regional approaches in the South are consistent with those identified in the West in a similar study by the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education (WICHE), according to Sally Johnstone, with WICHE's Western Cooperative for Educational Communication. But in neither case did the findings indicate that the significant regulatory barriers identified would serve to halt the development of such a regional approach. Michael Goldstein also noted that institutions like the National Technological University, which operates in most states, may have been occasionally frustrated by the "crazy-quilt of regulations" but "nowhere have its operations been impeded by regulation."
Most participants concluded that the continued growth and influence of national providers like the National Technological University, as well as initiatives such as the Electronic Campus planned by SREB and the Western Governors University, will be powerful forces for standardizing state regulation and the development of national accreditation solutions. As Dennis Jones of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems pointed out, much progress has been made on the accreditation front as a result of the Western Governors initiative. A joint committee with representation from multiple regional accrediting bodies is currently reviewing the plans for WGU. Such a body (or new entity) could easily extend its work to other institutions.
State boards should increase their consumer information functions and use this data to inform choice and improve programs. The effectiveness of a more client-centered, market-driven higher education system depends heavily on the quality of choices made by consumers. Consumer protection has long been a fundamental responsibility central to coordinating boards, but this suggests a new role for state boards aimed at informing students of the choices they have from a global network of providers. "We have been providing data but not information," noted Margaret Miller of the American Association for Higher Education. In Virginia, one role of the coordinating board included an educative purpose in "helping consumers to ask better questions." The board conducted focus groups with students, business leaders, and other community representatives to identify what information these groups would find useful.
A question posed by Michael Goldstein and reflected on by many other participants was "how do we use the state's inherent regulatory authority as a positive force to ensure quality?" The answers included the use of benchmarking and best practice studies as well as using consumer information and feedback to improve services. A first step in informing consumers about quality electronic delivery should be the adoption of standards of good practice (many states are starting with those developed by WICHE). Educational providers, both public and private, should be required to describe to prospective students how they are responding to these standards (for example, how they are providing library support and document delivery). Current practices should not be codified in a way, however, that discourages innovation. The idea of best practice is a constantly moving target that will evolve with the technology and our knowledge of effective pedagogy.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
Symposium participants found the Twigg/Heterick vision of IT's potential to inspire fundamental changes in the higher education enterprise compelling and persuasive. Rather than debating the nature of IT's power to transform the academy, discussants spent the bulk of their time debating the ways in which states and systems could accelerate the pace of change and guide its direction for the benefit of the state as a whole. The power of state boards to create a climate of change is significant and symposium participants suggested a variety of financial, regulatory, and partnership approaches to stimulating change:
States and systems should use the power of competition and choice to inspire organizational change among public institutions. "There is nothing like a little competition to shake up the complacent," remarked one participant. Several of the discussants reported this is already evident in the response of some traditional public institutions in their states to competitors such as the University of Phoenix and the imminent operations of Western Governors University. And most participants agreed that the results engendered by a climate of competition are not all bad. State boards can and should take off their owner/operator hats long enough to recognize that expanded choice will benefit not only the residents of the state, but may in the process transform their own institutions as well.
Some symposium participants, however, worried about the public sector being put in a position of competitive disadvantage as a result of state government's enthusiasm for privatization. Shirley Clark of the Oregon State System of Higher Education reported that in Oregon, for example, public institutions are likely to face stiff political resistance to expanding electronic program delivery if it is perceived such programs are competing with private providers. Dwayne Nuzum of the Colorado Commission on Higher Education noted similar pressures in Colorado to hold down the public subsidy in part because "every time a student takes a course from a private institution, it is public dollars saved."
States may not be in a position to manipulate the market to the extent they do now in the event that consumers rather than providers come to control more of the resources for higher education. Student-carried vouchers that are portable across state lines may be the ultimate choice vehicle. Some symposium participants welcomed this possibility while others worried that vouchers would likely reduce the overall level of public support provided higher education. Like it or not, expanded voucher programs (namely, student-carried aid or tax credits) may well be used as a device for organizational change in the years ahead, participants concluded.
State and system boards should use their program approval authority to expand the availability of electronic offerings and to encourage inter-institutional cooperation. While the number of courses being offered electronically has expanded, the number of degree programs available in electronic modes remains small. "The question of duplication has raised the stakes on program approval and review," said Stephen Jordan of the Kansas Board of Regents. In Kansas, new program approval for on-campus programs will now be evaluated in part by the willingness and ability of institutions to extend those programs off campus by electronic means. By the same token, program review for existing programs is "not just about the program on-campus, but off-campus too," Jordan added.
Interinstitutional cooperation is a more daunting challenge, given past failures in this arena. David Powers described two tests applied to program approval in the state of Nebraska: one, is there collaboration and cooperation among institutions, and two, are the institutions using technology? The recent actions of the community college system in Colorado to create an Internet-based associate degree in business administration suggest another approach. Jerome Wartgow of the Colorado Community College and Occupational Education System noted that this collaborative degree involving all 13 campuses in the system had a greater chance of success because of the formal structure created for the sharing of developmental costs and for distribution of subsequent revenues.
New organizational structures are needed to support the virtual university. Twigg and Heterick in their paper, along with other participants at the NLII-SHEEO symposium, have suggested that technology and the necessities of improved cost-effectiveness encourage an unbundling of higher education services. One of the pioneers in this arena, George Connick, formerly of the Education Network of Maine, believes strongly that states should create new institutions to serve distance learners, given the historical neglect of this function by traditional campuses. Some of these new organizations will serve as utilities by providing registration, counseling, bookstore, and library support. Others will become centers for instructional development; others, like the developing Western Governors University or the Electronic College of the Southern Regional Education Board, will be competency credentialers or electronic catalogs. Existing institutions, like community colleges, may also dramatically change their roles -- becoming receive sites and counseling centers for imported curricula. In Arizona, where the charter school "movement" in K-12 education has proliferated, there is already "a move afoot to create charter colleges," reported Frank Besnette of the Arizona Board of Regents.
States should seek and support creative public/private partnerships in support of IT needs. At the NLII-SHEEO symposium, Carol Twigg suggested that, given the enormous up-front investment that IT requires, states should "look to private industry, which has access to capital." She told symposium participants that "the trick is to partner with private providers to do marketing, development, and distribution." KPMG's Lee Alley reported that investor money is already going into education in two specific areas: student services (such as bookstores and libraries) and courses.
Thomas West described the California State University system's recent proposal to recognize four companies (Fujitsu, Hughes Electronics, GTE, and Microsoft) as the exclusive providers of networking, telecommunications, and computing technology. Touted in a recent article in The New York Times as "one of the most ambitious partnerships ever forged between the private sector and public education," the consortium was proposed as a way to finance much-needed new technologies for the system's 23 campuses. But because of mounting pressure from students and faculty, who claim the plan is anticompetitive and a threat to the principles of higher education, the system's board decided to delay a vote on the controversial proposal.
If CSU's experience is any indicator of the shape of things to come, then state and system leaders will need to more aggressively educate public sector faculties and students as to the new realities inherent in transformation brought about by IT. Kay Howe, formerly of International University, believes that many faculty are unaware of the changes facing colleges and universities: "The job of state and institutional leaders is to help in that education process." Stephen Jordan added that given the opportunity faculty can become part of the solution to integrating technology rather than part of the problem. He recommended that "boards need to work with faculty over time because it is long term systemic change we are talking about."
FINANCING AND INVESTMENT STRATEGIES
Approaches to financing technology acquisition are as diverse and varied as the states. They are also in considerable flux. For the most part, technology support from state governments reflects the bolt-on strategy of technology application found at the campus level. In good budget years, legislators tag on technology funds to base budget appropriations aimed at a potpourri of statewide and campus infrastructure initiatives. Seldom are these funds part of a comprehensive plan, nor is there much agreement as to the appropriate sources of revenue for different types of expenditures. Technology, like other hot-button issues, is treated as a vehicle for garnering greater financial support to the system. Everybody is happy in the short term, until the inevitable disappointment sets in when the potential for technology to either improve quality or lower costs goes unrealized.
This ad hoc approach to technology funding, fortunately, is giving way to more thoughtful and strategic thinking in some states. Given the pervasive influence of IT on higher education described by Twigg and Heterick, it is not surprising that virtually the entire array of financing policies that govern higher education is under scrutiny. The following list of issues and recommendations gleaned from symposium participants' discussion represents an ongoing financing agenda that needs to be addressed by states, systems, and policy researchers.
Financing plans should outline mutual state and institutional obligations for funding with the state focus on achieving important system wide goals. The first step toward a comprehensive plan for technology use is agreement over mutual obligations for funding. The source of funds for technology purchases and applications are several: base budgets, revenues from tuition and product sales, productivity savings, student technology fees, and earmarked funds from the legislature. But what revenue streams should support what purchases? Symposium participants generally agreed that if the state is going to invest earmarked funds in technology development, these funds should accomplish objectives that might not otherwise be undertaken by individual campuses. Too many states are financing the purchase of desktop equipment and other campus infrastructure initiatives with special appropriations, while strategic investments in important programmatic and learning objectives are being neglected. Participants agreed that investments in statewide infrastructure were needed, as well as multicampus approaches to support distant learners (e.g. library and virtual catalog initiatives). Program initiatives that are tied to state economic development priorities or unsolved learning problems (e.g. remedial mathematics) should also be considered.
Beyond the issue of sorting out the various revenue streams and setting priorities for technology investments, participants identified a number of other questions that need to be addressed by statewide systems such as: What purchases should be funded from current revenue? What from debt financing or leasing? How do we build in replacement costs to our budget and financing models? How are issues of standardization related to technology costs? What opportunities are there for system-wide purchasing? Can network investments substitute for capital construction? How should strategic statewide goals such as economic development be supported through technology investment? What should be the size and use of technology fees?
State investments in broad-band digital networks should be used to leverage price and service advantages from telecommunications providers. During the Denver symposium, both Robert Heterick and Mark Luker of the National Science Foundation encouraged states to increase their investments in statewide digital networks. Collective action to develop digital statewide networks has several advantages. State entities charged with representing a broad range of governmental agencies, K-12, and higher education can effectively garner significant price and service advantages from telecommunications carriers. This is especially helpful to small and rural agencies and institutions. But beware of promises to state policymakers that all needed services can be adequately handled by the telecommunications companies, several discussants warned. Many statewide network administrators are finding, for example, that the telecommunications companies are struggling with meeting increased customer demands and their own transitions to digital technologies, leaving them with unreliable delivery networks. Many statewide network entities are concluding that they must provide additional technical and help-desk support to institutions.
Pricing policies for electronic delivery of courses, modules, etc. needs a thorough examination. A market-driven system of higher education for electronic delivery suggests that the price charged to students be set according to market factors. With the choices for Internet delivery growing daily, students can choose between price and quality (or reputation) or try and maximize each. They may ask, for example, what is the highest level of quality I can get for the lowest price? Or what additional price am I willing to pay for the convenience of not having to go to campus? Current practice appears to be evolving toward an electronic rate, which is somewhat higher than in-state public rates, but lower than out-of-state tuition. As more and more providers enter the market and quality improves, one would expect the e-rate to fall significantly.
Unfortunately, this pure market approach may have serious shortcomings that will necessitate specific state intervention. As Dennis Jones put it, "Individual consumer responses don't necessarily add up to state need." Curriculum development may be skewed by the willingness of third party payers to cover the costs (more electronic curricula for engineers, doctors, and high tech employees, little or none for government employees, childcare workers, etc.). Such programs and their students will need state subsidy. A market-driven system of higher education for electronic delivery suggests that the price charged to students be set according to market factors.
State funding should encourage collaboration across departments, institutions and states. In a background paper developed for the NLII-SHEEO symposium, Dewayne Matthews urged states to develop mechanisms for developing joint courses and programs. While the traditions of campus autonomy have often constrained joint program development, the competitive factors brought about by global learning networks may be enough to push institutions to collaborate out of economic necessity. "It would be in the state's interest for institutions to hook up with others to develop new programs and distribute them across a wider geographic area," noted Matthews at the symposium. States can reinforce this objective through changes in their program approval criteria and by providing funds directly to new collaborative structures. Receive-site funding is also needed since currently most dollars flow directly to the credit granters.
Matthews believes that two of the state policy constraints operating against collaboration are residency policies and nonresident tuition. He believes that these policies discourage interstate sharing of programs and resources. "State policies have been to charge in-state students the lowest tuitions and charge out-of-state students the highest. But this can be seen as protectionist rather than saving state resources," according to Matthews. One stimulus for the elimination of such policies in the West, spearheaded by Governors Roy Romer of Colorado and Michael Leavitt of Utah, may be the emerging Western Governors University.
States and campuses should rethink program cost accounting and related allocation policies. Concomitant with the organizational changes brought about by unbundling educational services, the disaggregating effects of technology described by Twigg and Heterick may also change the way in which states fund higher education programs. Frank Jewett of the California State University System, in an NLII-related project (funded by the federal government), has been studying the costs and benefits of various approaches to technology mediated instruction. One of the most valuable contributions of this study will be to disaggregate the various activities that are bundled under what we call instruction-for example, course development, marketing, delivery, transmission, student support, amortized capital costs, and assessment costs. The CSU study will allow a closer examination of the cost dynamics related to various delivery modes and permit systems and campuses to change their allocation and revenue flows to recognize the contributions of multiple contributors to the instructional delivery system.
CONCLUSION
Developments as far reaching as those described in Part I of this report will require equally bold responses from state and system boards. Throughout the day-long NLII-SHEEO symposium on Public Policy Implications of the Information Technology Revolution, the participants debated and discussed the scope and nature of change states will need to make. Initiatives such as the Western Governors University demonstrate the willingness of policymakers to take these bold steps. But participants also reflected on the reality of public policy making in higher education and its bias, as Robert Perry of the South Dakota Board of Regents noted, for "choosing on the incremental side and connecting policies to existing structures." At the same time, it was readily apparent to this group of state and system leaders that the global learning infrastructure posited by Twigg and Heterick was likely to call for a more global policy framework as well. Clearly, participants agreed, public policy decision making is shifting away from a provider-driven and toward a customer-driven focus. And technology is the vehicle through which this revolution in perspective is taking place.
REFERENCES
Goldstein, Michael B., Commentary on the NLII Visions, (unpublished remarks prepared for the NLII-SHEEO Symposium on Public Policy Implications of the Information Technology Revolution, November 12, 1997).
Hezel Associates, Educational Telecommunications: The State-by-State Analysis, (Syracuse, NY: Hezel Associates, 1996).
Matthews, Dewayne, The Transformation of Higher Education through Information Technology: Implications for State Higher Education Finance Policy, (unpublished paper, Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, January 26, 1998).
Ruppert, Sandra S., Going the Distance: State Legislative Leaders Talk About Higher Education and Technology, (Washington, D.C.: NEA, 1997).
Lee Alley
Senior Manager, Planning & Technology
KPMG
Frank Besnette
Executive Director
Arizona Board of Regents
Don W. Brown
Commissioner
Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board
Shirley M. Clark
Vice Chancellor, Academic Affairs
Oregon State System
of Higher Education
George P. Connick
President
Distance Education Publications, Inc.
Warren H. Fox
Executive Director
California Postsecondary Education
Commission
Michael B. Goldstein
Partner
Dow, Lohnes & Albertson
Bruce D. Hamlett
Executive Director
New Mexico Commission on Higher
Education
Robert C. Heterick, Jr.
President
Educom
Kaye Howe
President
International University
Sally M. Johnstone
Director
Western Cooperative for Educational
Telecommunications
Dennis P. Jones
President
National Center for Higher Education
Management Systems
Stephen M. Jordan
Executive Director
Kansas Board of Regents
Mark A. Luker
Program Director, NSFNET Program
National Science
Foundation
Dewayne Matthews
Senior Program Director
Western Interstate Commission
for Higher Education
Margaret A. Miller
President
American Association for Higher
Education
James R. Mingle
Executive Director
State Higher Education Executive
Officers
Mark D. Musick
President
Southern Regional Education Board
Dwayne C. Nuzum
Executive Director
Colorado Commission on Higher
Education
Robert T. Perry
Executive Director
South Dakota Board of Regents
David R. Powers
Executive Director
Nebraska Coordinating Commission for
Postsecondary Education
Sandra S. Ruppert
Research Associate
State Higher Education Executive
Officers
Carol A. Twigg
Vice President
Educom
Jerome F. Wartgow
President
Colorado Community College and Occupational
Education System
Thomas West
Assistant Vice Chancellor, Information Resources and
Technology
The California State University System
The Public Policy Implications of a Global Learning
Infrastructure
by Robert C. Heterick, Jr., James R. Mingle, and Carol A.
Twigg
ŠEducomŽ1998, Interuniversity Communications Council, Inc.
Educom
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