For better or for worse, education has become a cause clbre for the technology industry. To give students a jump-start on the job market, many companies offer a gamut of programs - from internships to mentoring to curriculum modules centered around work. They also donate millions of dollars in equipment, materials, cash and employee time.
More than half of the worldwide contributions of IBM Corp., for example, go toward education. Microsoft CEO Bill Gates donated the proceeds of his book, The Road Ahead, to an educational foundation. Microsoft Corp. itself has a myriad of programs, from sponsoring "school technology nights" to funding technology-based curricula. Intel Corp. is a major force for improved math and science courses.
There's no doubt that such programs have done some good: encouraging high school students to pursue interests in math and science that lead them to college degrees, equipping schools with technology they might otherwise not get, or helping teachers revise lesson plans to incorporate the technology revolution. But getting computers into the schools is a bare first step, and virtually useless by itself.
"In the late '80s people thought that when the truck-full of computers was delivered to your doorstep, education would be transformed," says Jerry Uhl, professor of mathematics at the University of Illinois in Urbana. "Now we realize that knowing what to do with a computer in, say, a math classroom is not a simple matter."
He says when another university got computers in their math department, "they decided to solve the even problems the regular way and the odd problems with the computer." Says Uhl: "When you have this change in medium, you can't simply transfer whatever people did in the past to the new technology."
Though much of the technology companies' efforts are focused on K-12 education, they extend into higher education, usually by way of community colleges and technical schools. Technology companies typically underwrite curriculum grants and training programs designed to funnel graduates into their workforces. They also offer paying internships that give students actual work experience.
Obviously, the companies have their own interests at heart in promoting education. First of all, perhaps more than any other economic sector, the technology industry needs a steady stream of trained engineers, programmers, mathematicians and others coming out of our schools to remain competitive globally. Then too, as anyone who has ever wrestled with loading Windows or surfing the Web realizes, it takes a certain knowledge base just to get technology to work properly. Highly educated consumers are the primary buyers of home computers. Finally, the marquee value of donating to education is not lost on the technology industry.
Partnerships for Progress
The largest technology company in the nation, Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM has a tendency to do things in big ways. Thus, when IBM tackled educational improvement, it sought global change, not backyard diddling with one or two neighborhood schools.
"Our strategic focus has been to figure out the ways you can use technology to systemically fix the flaws in school systems," says Stanley Litow, president of the IBM Foundation and director of IBM's corporate support programs. "We're a technology company that knows how to solve problems. We decided to treat [education] as if it were a very important and sophisticated business problem."
Under "Reinventing Education," conceived in 1994, IBM picked 10 public school systems around the country to receive about $2 million each in cash and equipment. The idea is to target programs where "we can make a major breakthrough and demonstrate a new way to solve an educational problem," says Litow.
At the college level, IBM is undertaking a similar sweeping program. It has picked 11 universities to receive technology grants to conduct environmental research. Two examples: the University of California at Santa Barbara is developing a new prototype computational technology to address the problem of identifying and planning new nature reserves to promote biological diversity and species conservation. Syracuse University is developing modeling techniques to document seasonal and year-to-year variations in water quality.
What IBM looks for, in short, is an opportunity to create a partnership in which it seeks to solve a complicated problem through the application of technology. Ideally, IBM wants a solution that can be applied broadly, not just to the institution involved.
"The new equation is the power of technology," says Litow, who worked in public sector school administration for 25 years. The gain for IBM if broad-based initiatives succeed: "We'll be seen as a company that can solve your most difficult problems."
Connected Learning
In an initiative called "The Connected Learning Community," Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft aims to link students, educators, parents and the extended community via computers. The company offers free software to facilitate home-school interaction, and works with partners in the telecommunications arena to wire schools. Microsoft also sponsors "The Global Schoolhouse," an educational resource on the Internet.
Separately, CEO Gates has donated $3 million - proceeds from his book The Road Ahead - to the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education, an arm of the National Education Association. The money is funding a professional development program offering grants, training and mentoring on the use of telecommunications and multimedia technology to 22 community/teacher teams.
Such generosity on Microsoft's part has a definite ulterior motive: to help break Apple Computer Inc.'s dominance of the educational market. By giving free Windows-based software and computers to schools, Microsoft hopes to accelerate the movement away from the old Apple IIs to Windows, rather than Macintosh, machines.
"We do not have a separate foundation for education," says Barbara Dingfield, Microsoft's manager of corporate contributions and community programs. "We have an understanding that the best way for corporations to add value to society is doing what they do best. In our case, it's helping people gain access to technology."
Investing in a Workforce
Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel offers another pattern of educational philanthropy. Intel is fiercely committed to strengthening math and science curricula and creating budding workers for its fabrication plants, or "fabs," located in areas such as Rio Rancho, N.M.
For the most part, "we don't do sweeping global efforts," says Pat Foy, Intel's New Mexico workforce development manager. Intel's focus in New Mexico is "to create curricula that will prepare students coming out of high school to go into the workforce," notably the technological workforce.
Intel's K-12 goal is to get kids interested in math, science and technology, with particular emphasis on attracting girls and minorities. It provides resources - equipment, training and personnel - to help schools develop lessons that teach math and science. By the middle-school level, career awareness becomes a part of that curriculum. In high school, Intel brings student interns in to work in its fabs. It also offers teachers opportunities for employment during the summer.
At the higher education level, Intel is working with six community colleges in New Mexico to develop a specialized associate degree in semiconductor manufacturing. The six colleges include Albuquerque Technical Vocational Institute (TVI), Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, Luna Vocational-Technical Education Institute, Santa Fe Community College, Northern New Mexico Community College and San Juan Community College.
At TVI, the first program to be up and running, Intel helped the college open a cleanroom training lab that simulates conditions in an actual fab. Intel also donated manufacturing equipment that students can use to gain hands-on experience.
"What we do isn't really philanthropy, which is giving something away," says Foy. "This is about making an investment in our community and our educational system. If we don't make those kinds of investments, we're going to go out of business. We take a businesslike approach to education, not because we're mean and cold-hearted, but because this is where we can make the best contribution."
Symbiosis in the Workplace
Nearly every medium- to large-size technology company has some kind of education initiative, whether it's giving employees time off to volunteer in schools or sponsoring adopt-a-school programs or donating equipment and cash. Other companies with a tradition of educational involvement (but by no means an exhaustive list) include Apple, of Cupertino, Calif.; Applied Materials Inc. of Santa Clara; Cisco Systems Inc. of San Jose; Digital Equipment Corp. of Maynard, Mass.; Hewlett-Packard Co. of Palo Alto, Calif.; Silicon Graphics Inc. and 3Com Corp., both of Santa Clara.
Corporate educational efforts, not surprisingly, are flavored with the character of their sponsoring company. Networking powerhouses Cisco and 3Com, for example, place a great deal of emphasis on wiring schools for online access and enabling collaborative learning. Applied Materials, which prides itself on the diversity of its executive team and workforce, stresses aid to school districts serving minority and lower-income areas.
Or take Hewlett-Packard, whose empowering, egalitarian management style - known as "the HP Way" - has gained national prominence. It extends the same philosophy to education, even to lending employees to work full-time on programs such as the East Side Academy, a San Jose-based institution that tries to keep "at risk" students in school with a combination of traditional subjects, mentoring and workplace activities.
"School districts do not have the resources or the processes in place that allow them to keep up with the pace of technological change," says Bess Stephens, HP's manager of corporate K-12 education relations. "We try to share with them our business practices - providing training for staff, taking them through our quality improvement systems and helping them set strategic goals and implementation plans."
Another HP effort is developing tools that measure educational improvement, one of the yawning gaps that has yet to be filled. When new programs are started, "we get lots of anecdotal feedback that teachers are improving in their [technology] skills and students are more excited," says Stephens, but hard evidence is rare. "Measurement is challenging and must be viewed from a long-term perspective," she adds. "Test scores are not the only indicator."
Despite their seemingly incompatible methods, the education and technology worlds have overwhelming incentives to work together. It goes far beyond getting the basic equipment - computers, networks and software - into the schools, though that is an important first step. It also means recognizing each other as equal partners; not a donor-donee relationship.
The ultimate beneficiaries of industry-education partnerships are students like Cristal Johnson and Jose Vitale, as well as the technology companies where they'll probably wind up working. It is a symbiotic relationship.
Nineteen-year-old Johnson, now a sophomore at Prairie View A&M University outside of Houston, majors in electrical engineering and hopes one day to design a space ship. She credits a Motorola Inc. school-to-work program with helping her get there, and continues to work in the company's Austin, Texas plant during the summers.
When she finishes college, she probably will work full-time for Motorola or another technology company. "Before I entered Motorola, I was looking at different colleges for their names," she says. Working at Motorola, "I found a lot of smart people here did not graduate from MIT or Harvard. I realized it's not where you go, it's how much you know when you get out."
Twenty-two-year-old Vitale is now a junior majoring in mechanical engineering at San Jose State. He attended East Side Academy and has worked at HP part-time for five years. "If I hadn't joined the academy program, I wouldn't be where I am now," he says.
Karen Southwick is senior executive editor of Upside. kwick@upside.com