Educom Review recently challenged a group of information technology leaders in higher education to provide answers to such basic questions as: Why use technology at all? What will justify its cost? What value will it really bring to education? What will its adoption mean for the future of colleges and universities? And what will the future hold? The distinguished individuals who gave us their thoughts were:
Laurence R. Alvarez
Associate Provost, University of the South
Carole A. Barone
Associate Vice Chancellor, Information Technology, University of California/Davis
Polley Ann McClure
Vice President & CIO, and Professor of Environmental Science, University of Virginia
Martin Ringle
Director, Computing & Information Services, Reed College
John E. Stuckey
Director of University Computing, Washington & Lee University
Thomas W. West
Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Resources & Technology, California State University System Office
Technology, Electricity and Running Water
by Laurence R. Alvarez
I sometimes wonder about whether there were complaints when an art historian first began to assemble a slide library so students could see images of famous works of art. And about who was standing at the doorway to keep college buildings from being wired for electricity? And about whether there was a protest movement against indoor plumbing in the dorms?
Defining Basic Technology
The liberal arts curriculum is designed to liberate students; to give them the basic understanding they need to maintain their education throughout their lives. The tools are just now beginning to emerge that make technology easy enough for typical faculty members to use technology to enhance their students' learning. Technology is used in a liberal arts education to expand the opportunities for students, not for the sake of technology alone. Technology can enhance communication between faculty and students. (Phone calls from students at 3 a.m. are unacceptable, but electronic mail at that hour is perfectly reasonable.) Technology can provide students with educational experiences, which they could not otherwise experience. (Models of molecules rotating in space on a computer screen convey much more information than pictures in a book or sketches on a chalk board.) Technology can open doors for students that they did not even know existed. Colleges that do not expose their students to the proper use of technology are cheating them, and their students leave college ill equipped for the society of continual learning into which they move.
At the University of the South, some of the Mac Pluses we purchased in 1986 are still fulfilling useful lives on campus as is at least one 1987 automobile. Both are obsolete in some sense. We will not send our president out in the car; neither do we put a Mac Plus on the desk of the chair of our English department. We do not purchase high-end cars for transportation, but we do need to provide basic transportation for faculty and staff who must travel in their work. Neither do we purchase high-end workstations for general purpose use, but we must provide basic technology.
The real problem is in deciding what basic technology is. The answer is different for each school. Access to the Internet with a computer and network connection is basic. Access to classrooms and labs where students and faculty can use technology easily is basic. Access to word processing and distributed printing and copying is basic. Access to supercomputer centers for some is basic. Small schools do not need to be on the cutting edge of technology, and they certainly do not need to own everything they need access to. But they must provide their faculty and students the tools which will allow exploration of the world of information out there.
Just as schools do not throw money at their transportation needs by buying Rolls Royces, they should not throw money at their technology needs by replacing new hardware and software with newer hardware and software just because it is available. What educational need is being met, and whether it is a legitimate need are the questions to answer. Having said small schools need not be on the cutting edge of technology, let me note that much of the innovation in teaching comes from small schools, and small schools have been way ahead of the pack in providing Internet connections in each residence hall room.
Changing Expectations
The use of technology is changing the expectations of students and faculty. Students who grow up in a technological age will not accept lectures that fail to draw upon the information resources on the Internet and elsewhere. Schools that do not provide their faculty with classrooms where dynamic audio and visual media are easily used will be unable to attract good faculty and good students.
Using technology does not imply distance learning and virtual colleges, although those activities will reach increasing numbers of students. Many students will want the setting of a residential college where technologically enhanced learning takes place. Those students come to college expecting better access to information than they had in their high schools and home. The residential college, as contrasted to a mega university, is in a perfect position to provide excellent access to information wherever the student works - classroom, library, study rooms or residence hall rooms. That access, mentored by excellent teachers, is what many desire in a college experience. Distance learning will not be able to provide that combination until the national information infrastructure reaches each home, and even then the mentoring will be suspect. Students must learn not only subject matter content, but they must be able to develop as human beings. Learning how to develop two kinds of relationships is important. One kind happens when people are gathered at the same place and time; the other happens when the gathering is produced by devices that convey audio and video communications. Residential colleges are ideal environments for learning about both kinds of relationships.
Risk Management in the University Setting
With change comes risk. Maintaining the status quo in technology puts schools at a greater risk than moving ahead with it. Expecting information technology not to change is as unrealistic as expecting no more mathematics to be discovered. The best advice is: do your homework, make a decision, and take action now. For instance, in the future wireless data transmission may supplant the wired connections we now have. Big deal! The wire and fiber we have installed now will serve well throughout their projected 20-year life; ours is already five-and-a-half years old. Any school that wants to wait until high speed wireless date transmission is cost-effective may do so, but their students will miss years of opportunities to use conventional methods of gaining access to the electronic resources of the world. Schools cannot wait until information technology stabilizes; they must take advantage of what is available and be prepared for continuing change. Success comes with change, not from maintaining the status quo.
A Sense of Urgency
Schools hoping to attract good faculty and good students cannot ignore the overwhelming force of the wave of the technological future. Schools can wait and be a bit behind the wave, but to ignore it or try to avoid it is to drown under its weight. In a few years most of what is now thought of as instructional technology will be as much a part of the infrastructure as electricity and running water. We are seeing that trend now with the creation of campus networks which, once in place, are taken for granted. The future will bring campus centers where faculty can obtain assistance finding and using information resources in their teaching; at the same time, academic computing as we know it will blend into the background.
Full Speed Ahead-With Caution
by Carole A. Barone
Asking the question: "Why technology?" reflects the mindset of an older generation. We do not have to promote the technology any longer. Instead, we are dealing with unrealistic expectations of what technology will accomplish and with regard to its ease of use. Information technologists lost credibility in the past by over-promising and under-delivering. Today we find ourselves in the dubious position of cautioning our colleagues against unrealistic expectations of information technology and counseling them about the investment and commitment required to enjoy its benefits.
We need to engage the campus community in a dialogue about the appropriate role and goals of technology in the life of the campus. Like business and industry, campuses cannot afford to ignore technology. Few are able to keep up with the costs of doing things as they have always done them. Most face the choice of either cutting services and/or programs, doing things the same way but at lesser quality, or doing things differently. We need to focus on the purpose, and use the technology to achieve the same, high quality outcome differently, i.e., affordably. The subject matter in ancient disciplines, for example, remains largely consistent from year to year. The question is: Can our campuses afford to teach those disciplines in the same manner as they have for decades or centuries? I would argue that most cannot.
Certainly, institutions of higher education are different from business and industry with respect to goals, values and culture. Our campus leaders are, nonetheless, faced ever more frequently with the need to make decisions rapidly with the best information available to them. Many are desperate for decision support systems. Many would argue that information technology will enhance productivity and decision-making, enable them to mount new course offerings, tap new student markets, and, thus, maintain their competitive position. In this regard, we are no different from business and industry - we are using information technology to stay in business.
Justifying Costs
Technology costs money, lots of money. The up-front cost of purchase is just the tip of the iceberg. Either we have not been totally forthright in the way we have presented the full cost of ownership to our campus financial planners, or those who have made the investment decisions thought that they were, instead, making one-time purchases. Whatever the reason, we continue to have too many campus financial planners failing to deal with the reality of the financial commitment to the life cycle of ownership. This problem is equally severe whether we are dealing with equipment on the desktop or the costs of operating, maintaining and enhancing campus infrastructure. Expensive or not, value-added or not, technology is an indispensable element of teaching, research and administration on our campuses today. To pay for it planners and managers, at all levels, must engage in the unpalatable exercise of budget reallocation.
Because we have come to equate the outcome with the method of achieving it, some of our campuses have been paralyzed by the grip of fear that set in when funds began to dwindle. Technology has the potential to liberate campuses from the debilitating obsession with conserving scarce resources.
Let us hope, for example, that the "threat" of technology, will serve as an impetus to face the reality of the general deterioration in quality of instruction. Few institutions can afford to offer the personal experience of small classes, taught by first rate, ladder-ranked faculty. Students, especially at the lower division, find themselves in large lectures and faculty find themselves scrambling to meet student needs, using traditional instructional modalities. Faculty speak of being over-burdened because of budget cuts; they believe that they need to stop doing things in order to regain control over their working environment. During this period of transition, the quality of the outcomes, student instruction for example, is suffering. Technology offers the potential of once again achieving high quality outcomes by allowing faculty to teach, and students to learn, differently.
Educom's National Learning Infrastructure Initiative is an example of an effort to bring about systemic change in teaching and learning by focusing on initiatives that use information technologies to improve quality, increase access and reduce costs.
Beyond Fear and Trembling
Higher education traditionally has been deliberate in its decision making, seeking consensus, and conservative in its approach to risk. We tend to value careful planning and, perhaps, to be overly critical of unsuccessful initiatives. Technology is a threat to these cherished values and habits. Moreover, we continue to have individuals in decision-making positions who are not at ease with the technology. This is not merely a skill-set deficiency; it is a mindset discordance. The questions we should be asking are, How quickly can we make the investment in the technological future of our campuses? How should we go about making sensitive and enlightened decisions regarding the nature of that investment?
For example, I do not believe that we need to worry about requiring students to come to campus with their own computers; I expect that they will make that decision themselves. Implying that we are passing the costs of the technology on to the students ignores the fact that the students who will be coming to our campuses in the future will already be accustomed to using computers as tools in their daily lives. We will not have to pull the student to the technology, our students will arrive expecting to use the full range of information technologies . . . and we had better be ready for them. In a few years the laptop in the backpack will be the equivalent of the three ring binder in the arms of my generation. We need to focus on providing the infrastructure that will enable students to use their technology tools easily and effectively in the learning process or they and the faculty will go elsewhere.
The technological advances of the past five years - widespread use of e-mail, the WorldWideWeb (WWW), networking, home computing, the penetration of networking and computing throughout the K-12 sector - have set the future course for institutions of higher education. What happens over the next five years or so will be an acceleration of the pace of change, as the effects of these technologies spread through the disciplines and across the campus.
Technology Plans and Measurable Outcomes
by Polley Ann McClure
The key to understanding "Why technology?" is realizing that technology is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. The human species is crossing the turbulent boundary between the Industrial Age and the Information Age. All aspects of our economy and society are being required to shift from reliance on atoms and industrial models of value production to reliance on bits and new information-based systems. I suppose in a truly cosmic sense, we have a choice about this. We could exert our will and resist the evolutionary forces driving us along this trajectory, but I don't think we're going to. Information technologies are just the tools we use to function in this new environment. No aspect of society or economy can function effectively and compete without such tools. It would be like deciding not to exploit the steam engine as we transitioned into the Industrial Age. In the same sense any institution that decided to "opt out" of support for information technology would be educating people to live in a world that no longer exists.
The information technologies are tools for manipulating ideas and images and for communicating effectively with other people. These are precisely the functions performed by higher education, especially the liberal arts. I believe that information technologies are going to transform the humanities and liberal arts to at least the degree that they already have transformed the conduct of science. No scientist I know would argue that modern science could be performed effectively without computers and networks. We're on the verge of that same transformation in other areas.
Making the Investment
The cost of investments and support for information technologies are high, probably significantly higher than most presidents and trustees really realize. But, while we must be smart and careful about the choices we make for technologies to support, we really do not have the option of "saying no." Experimenting and developing ways to exploit technology to improve teaching and learning and the administration of our institutions is the price of existence at this particular time in human evolution. There are precious few examples (but there are some!) of significant gains in productivity in higher education due to technological interventions. By and large, the results of investments in technology are improved quality, ease of learning and enhancements to service that would not be possible without technology. But I know of only a few examples, especially on the purely academic side, where the investments have been shown to be paid back and more through measureable improved outcomes. Part of this is due to the difficulty in measuring "learning," but the other part is because we are still in the "R&D phase," where costs are always higher than payback.
Where all this will end is with the transformation of higher education into a new kind of enterprise, in which people learn and help others learn with new tools and resources. Some institutions will respond to the needs of new groups of learners, and become "placeless" purveyors of instruction at a distance to students who need to learn in nontraditional ways and in nontraditional times and settings. At other institutions, 18-year-old students still will enroll to come to a place where others of their age and social/economic groups come to learn and grow. These institutions, as well, will be changed by the power of information technologies to facilitate communication among students, with their teachers, and others in the world, to facilitate access to information, and to organize and display information in new ways.
Making a Game Plan
Presidents and trustees should establish institutional strategic plans and establish the profile for information technology (bleeding edge, early follower, lagging edge, etc.) and ask the institution's chief information officer to propose a technology plan that supports these. The technology plan should be totally relevant to the particular mission of the institution. Trustees should have the opportunity to see the list of institutional objectives, with each one followed by objectives for the information technology function needed to support it. There should be measureable outcomes for each, along with estimated costs and timelines, and examination of the consequences of taking a different route.
The consequences of doing nothing are bleak. I don't think any decent institution could survive for ten years with no new investments in information technology. Many have yet to complete basic communications infrastructure, which if deferred for a decade would leave the institution in the dark. At the end of ten years of no investment, every desktop would be nonfunctional in terms of then-current software. Major opportunities for improved service to students would have been lost, probably with serious enrollment consequences. The institution would not be at the forefront of scholarship in any discipline. It would be operating with archaic internal administrative processes since modern processes will require technology support in order to reduce cycle times and improve efficiency. Few young faculty would be attracted to such an institution; no progressive administrators would see a career future there.
The Well-Rounded Institution
by Martin Ringle
A look at the mission statement of many liberal arts colleges reveals that a common theme is to "provide an education in the . . . arts and sciences with emphasis on the highest
. . . scholarly standards." (From the Reed College Mission Statement, 1971.) The recent growth in the use of electronic technology across the entire undergraduate curriculum - including access to literary and historic databases, simulations in the social sciences, digital imagery in art, theater and architecture, virtual laboratories in chemistry, biology and physics, and many other things - means that these colleges must provide their students and faculty with an appropriate level of technological tools. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the use of electronic information resources in undergraduate instruction is not a "luxury item" for a few select institutions; it is a sine qua non for any liberal arts college that prides itself on its ability to provide an educational environment of "the highest scholarly standards." While colleges must carefully weigh their investments in technology against more critical institutional priorities, such as faculty salaries and financial aid costs, they cannot afford to overlook the broad impact that new technology is having on the nature of teaching and learning.
Technology, and Teaching, Too
Colleges and universities have a miserable track-record when it comes to conducting cost-benefit analyses of their own operations. As with so many aspects of academic investment, the relationship between the cost of technology and the ability of a college to produce a well-rounded, highly educated member of society is elusive, at best. Many studies have been done; few have been compelling. A growing number of faculty and students, however, recognize that electronic mail, instructional uses of multimedia, access to electronic resources on the Internet, classroom projection of digital images, etc., are as much a part of their environment as chalk, blackboards or telephones. Broad generalizations about technology costs, cost-benefit ratios and collegiate "productivity" aren't very helpful, unfortunately.
None but the technologist in the trenches (and the chief financial officer) really worries about whether today's computer will be tomorrow's doorstop. And that's precisely the way it should be. Electronic technology is changing at a pace that is absolutely unique in human experience. Moreover, the electronic tools that are used to build new electronic tools are themselves changing, hence the entire process of innovation is itself accelerating. We cannot jump at every new technology but neither can we afford to hang back too long waiting for a period of "technological stability" that is unlikely to ever return. Colleges and universities must collaborate more effectively with one another and with the technology industry itself in order to achieve cost-effective life cycles for equipment.
As with all budgetary decisions, appropriate spending levels for technology must be determined by individual institutions, based on their specific goals. Does an institute of music need to spend as high a percentage of its operating budget on computing as a engineering school? Probably not - unless the institute has composers who require access to sophisticated music notation software or musicologists who require multimedia Internet access to music libraries around the world.
There has been a great deal of talk about how technology is "transforming" teaching and learning. Can we envision a time, perhaps two or three decades hence, when undergraduate, residential liberal arts colleges have disappeared from the landscape of higher education? Hopefully not. The distinguishing feature of this type of institution is its ability to provide students with the experience of being in a "learning community." Granted, there are "virtual communities" evolving on the Internet. Yet, by its very definition "virtual" is not the same as "real." Being able to read an electronic text, examine a digital image, or conduct a video-teleconference on the Internet is not the same as sitting in a circle on the lawn and reading passages of The Iliad aloud. The "communitarian" aspect of a liberal arts education responds - among other things - to some very basic needs for physical presence and human interaction. While technology may radically enhance instructional methods and promote as-yet-unimagined changes in curriculum, some traditional facets of undergraduate education may prove far more resilient than many people expect.
Working Together for Leadership
Ten years ago, a group of 55 selective liberal arts colleges had heated debates about whether or not academic and administrative computing should be coordinated in a single organization. Today, 80 percent of those colleges have unified technology organizations and wonder, with some amusement, why the issue seemed so controversial just a few years ago. It's obvious to many people that financial pressures, converging technologies, campus-wide information resources, and plain old common sense dictate that the best strategy for small colleges is to eliminate organizational competition, conflicts and redundancy by having a coherent technology service operation.
Today, the debate is beginning to heat up about whether or not technology organizations should also be unified (or at least tightly coupled) with the library, audio-visual services and other groups. This discussion may prove to be lengthier and more controversial. In the long run, however, it will probably yield to the same forces that have resulted in coherent technology organizations. Information technology and information resources are going to depend more and more on one another and the community - faculty, students and staff - are going to be less and less interested in turf wars or competition for funds or decision-making authority. Cooperation, cost-effectiveness and results will be the dominant themes in future strategies for staffing and organization. Are we prepared to take these steps? Do we have qualified personnel to play such roles? In general, the answer is "no." This is probably the greatest opportunity for "technological" leadership liberal arts colleges have; this is a future that we are going to have to find a way of creating very quickly.
Negotiating the Slippery Slope of Technological Progress
by John E. Stuckey
Some years ago it may have been necessary to "promote" technology. Today I promote it the way I promote the law of gravity when I slide down an icy slope. It's all I can do to keep my balance, juggling the demands of faculty, students and administration for information resources.
The major research universities are the most likely laboratories for technology development, but the benefits of applying that technology are greatest at smaller institutions. Information tools can reduce the resource gap between the large schools (where the major libraries and laboratories are concentrated) and smaller, more specialized schools (which can now access the same resources). Information is the raw material of knowledge, and increasing the speed, volume and diversity of access to information will, once the hype dies down, profoundly affect the nature and quality of education.
The Burden of Support
It's fair to say that hardware is no longer the primary cost consideration in information technology. Even software in many areas can be acquired as consumer items. The surprise for most of us was the need for continuing or even expanding support activity. The next turn in technology may reveal a self-supporting structure in which end users are easily made independent (that's a possible consequence of the Java concept, for example), but I'd hate to bet anything of value on the possibility.
The support burden may seem especially onerous because administrators like to rock their financial boats as little as possible. At the same time, it has been an article of faith to better, not worsen, the faculty/staff ratio in our institutions. Faculty salaries are the principal fixed ingredient in institutional budgets, leaving little discretionary flexibility. If information resources truly enhance a faculty member's productivity, then fewer faculty members should be able to deliver a comparable result if they are honestly and appropriately supported.
The productivity gains are real but have been masked by a rapid escalation in the amount of information handled. Instead of showing up as reduced staff, they show up as projects larger and more complex than were previously possible. My school just completed a highly successful capital fund-raising campaign, exceeding its goal and adhering to a rigorous schedule that would have been unthinkable without its reliance on information technology.
The Added Value of Technology
I can't predict with confidence the future of a college that becomes immersed in technology, because the technology will permit growth in many different ways, according to the institution's own identity and mission. What's easier to predict is the fate of an institution that chooses not to embrace technological tools to enhance its intellectual and administrative activities, limiting its options and the quality of the educational product it can deliver. Intensive use of information resources is not an option or an experiment today; it is a necessity whose time has come.
If there is value in the traditional model of liberal education (and I firmly believe there is), then technology in an institution should be applied in ways that do not undermine it. Distance-education technology can enrich course offerings and make some course offerings affordable, but it won't do either if it is depended on purely as a cost-reduction measure. I'm not smart enough to predict the effect of these technologies on the faculty and their disciplines, but I do know that change is characteristic of vibrant, productive organisms. To wish to be sheltered from the uncertainty of change is understandable but naive.
Planning for Progress
The uncertainties of what we do make our business risky, but they also make it worthwhile. There are no formulas to determine when a new development is reliably mainstream enough to justify its deployment or when it is time to switch from one networking protocol to another. Human intellect and judgment are, thank goodness, still essential.
Making an academic information-resources plan forces one to concentrate on trends and goals, since only a fool would try to predict what technology tools he will need a few years hence. An institution's plan has to be linked to its mission, because only the mission provides grounds for rejecting interesting but irrelevant technological tools. A relevant and persuasive plan should sound familiar to the successful sort of person who serves as a trustee, because it echoes the concerns he or she has to face "at home." Trustees from a corporate environment are having to make the same difficult choices, and the most successful enterprises are not trying to make quick profits but to ensure continued profitability by devoting a growing proportion of their budgets to information-systems support.
I don't see the encouragement of students' personal ownership as passing technology costs on to them. I see it as matching the technology and its principal user/beneficiary. At Washington and Lee, we have neither a requirement nor a formal recommendation about personal ownership, but we do explain the situation to entering students, and this school year 75% of them - an all-time high - owned computers by the beginning of classes. We still have an obligation to support computing labs and, increasingly, the network infrastructure to make those systems even more productive.
The Perils of Procrastination
If my university refrained from making technology investments for the next ten years, it would slip into fiscal and intellectual jeopardy. The quality of the academic offerings would atrophy, administrative efficiency would stagnate, and students, noticing those effects, would choose to study elsewhere. Opting out may have rhetorical value, but it's not an available alternative.
I would expect to see wireless networking make a major difference in the way we use information resources in the next few years. Students will be able easily to carry their computers in their backpacks from place to place without compromising their connectivity. Continued bandwidth growth should mean that World Wide Web home pages (or whatever has succeeded them by then) should appear as soon as they are requested.
I'd like to predict Dick Tracy-like wrist computers or hologram displays - something specific and sexy. What's more likely, though, is the incremental and the evolutionary, taking unpredictable paths but building on what's gone before. Despite myself, I still usually think of innovation first as a hardware phenomenon, but each major hardware innovation creates a platform on which a profusion of applications may develop - a profusion limited only by the amazing intellectual energy of a gifted faculty.
I really do believe that the faculty is the essence of an educational institution, and I view my proper role not as telling them what they can and cannot do but as facilitating their creativity and responding to their needs.
Leveraging Technology
by Thomas W. West
Despite the admitted hype and rhetoric, technology in all its forms is nothing more than a tool. In that sense, there is nothing theoretical or metaphysical about it any more than a telephone or hammer are tools. I can not think of any practical reason not to use such tools in all the institutional types that comprise the American higher education system. The challenge is for each institution to use technology in specific ways to advance its own unique mission. You have to look beyond the rhetoric about digital revolutions and information superhighways to see what is actually involved and how technology is best employed by your institution. Technology simply makes everything in an institution easier to accomplish, from teaching to learning to research to administration. If an institution's culture does not believe technology can be used as a tool, there is no reason for it to invest in it.
For the institutions that comprise the California State University, leveraging the uses of technology is critical to advancing our mission and providing an enhanced quality undergraduate education to a growing number of learners with diversified backgrounds and educational needs at a reasonable cost. For our type of institution technology must become the "beef."
All Costs and Benefits Are Compared to What
In discussing the costs of technology, there are three important points to be made. First, we do not have good productivity measures in higher education, and even if we had, the data to speak authoritatively about such things is notoriously poor. So we have real problems defining the nature of costs and benefits in the institution, and even more problems (political as well as technical) in gathering data about them.
Second, cost-benefit ratios really beg a more fundamental question - compared to what? If we compare, for example, network delivery of instruction to traditional delivery methods, we have to compare both the initial investments of each system and the ongoing operational costs. I cannot cite specific data, but intuitively I have to believe that over time a network infrastructure will be demonstrably less expensive than building and maintaining a traditional campus physical plant. For instance, we estimate that it would take $750 million of capital funds to construct a new campus for 15,000 students. For the same amount we can build out the networking infrastructure of our 22 campuses and provide a network with sufficient bandwidth to handle the interactive video, high speed data and voice necessary to share instruction and information resources. To accomplish this trade-off we would need to have an average 5 percent increase in each campus's enrollment within existing resources.
Third, we must look beyond institutional costs and benefits to those of our two major constituencies - students and faculty. If learner and faculty productivity is improved through more efficient uses of their time, that alone may be reason enough to make technological investments. This is specifically important in the California State University system where the majority of the learners are part-time, older and employed.
Just Do It
Institutions face the same problem as individuals - deciding when to take the plunge into a new technology, knowing full well that something faster, more powerful and probably cheaper will appear in the short-term future. But if such worries lead to paralysis, the only sure outcome is falling even farther beyond one's competition. The important thing is not becoming too wedded to a single type of hardware or software because you never know where the next technological breakthrough will occur. Things will never "shake out" to a point where we can see the future without risk. What we can do is identify the broad parameters of technological progress and the major themes within them. If we make investments in those areas (for example, wireless networks, ATM, multimedia, interactive environments, etc.) then we can ride the waves of technological change without becoming engulfed in them.
The use of technology, and planning for it, is more a process than a destination or single outcome. It is not synonymous with any single form of teaching and learning, or with any single institutional type. Technology has a role in the traditional classroom as much as in a virtual university or distance learning environment. The student market will demand and can support a wide array of institutions, but to be competitive, I believe that all must make significant investments in technology. In historical perspective, higher education always has been able to meet new social and technological challenges by creating new ways of doing business; the current era of transformation is simply the latest stage in that process. I do not think the issue is whether old forms will disappear as much as new ones will achieve prominence and even dominance in the next century.
Ticking Away . . .
Long-term, strategic planning for technology is essential, and it must be integrated with all other forms of major planning in the institution - physical, academic, fiscal and human. And that planning must speak to the major concerns and responsibilities of both academic and administrative leaders. It should address issues of productivity and re-engineering for policy actors such as presidents and trustees. It should directly confront questions of learning outcomes, quality and changing teaching-learning paradigms for chief academic officers. Most important, such planning must assess the relevance of the institution's mission in the light of new and emerging technologies. In today's environment, for the campuses which comprise the California State University that means re-focusing the mission to become more learner-centered, with all that implies about restructuring and transforming the institution.
It is easy to dismiss talk of revolutions in education - witness television and computers, which have had minimal impact on the way teaching and learning are conducted. Perhaps because we have lasted for so long without fundamental change, there may be a certain amount of arrogance that we do not have to change. Other industries come and go all the time; is it possible, even conceivable, that higher education as we know it could pass from the scene? I think this time it is all for real. Students will have so many options for learning that traditional formats, void of much technology, will have little to offer in the marketplace of the next century. I believe the clock is ticking for higher education, and it may be wired to a bomb unless we act fast to take advantage of the opportunities, and avoid the threats, of a fully digital, networked, interactive, multimedia world.