Cyberprof: The University
in the Next Millennium
by Greg Bothun
The
university as "the Academy" has existed for the last five centuries,
able to withstand several social and technological revolutions. In its
ideal form, the Academy is a forum for the creation of new knowledge
and for the open and free discussion of new ideas. It is a center for
innovation with a positive and long-lasting influence on all of society.
Indeed, the very advancement of civilization depends on the creation,
dissemination, and evaluation of new ideas. Without such a mechanism
to advance innovation, society stops moving forward and becomes mired
in mediocrity, destined to wallow in a steady state of stale ideas.
The Academy provides the opportunity for the acquisition of this new
knowledge -- the lifeblood of the scholar. Above all, the Academy is
a place where excellence is achieved on a consistent basis. Such excellence
is defined by scholarly research and teaching unfettered by external
pressures or conventional thinking.
But today we stand
far removed from this ideal. Today many have questioned the value of
the Academy and have characterized its inhabitants as esoteric individuals,
disconnected from the body politic. The Academy is under increasing
public pressure, often from state legislatures, to become more accountable
for what it produces and for the relevance of its product to society.
Various business and management plans have been proposed for colleges
and universities, and the whole concept of higher education is now being
reduced to a market commodity as if somehow the creation and dissemination
of new knowledge can be equated with and treated like so many cans of
beans at the corner grocery store. In any market economy, those vendors
that offer the highest perceived quality for the lowest unit cost will
win the contract. Colleges and universities are now encouraged to become
more entrepreneurial in their approach to education; success in this
new arena is largely based on packaged products and slick marketing
strategies as opposed to intellectual content and academic rigor. We
are being forced to sacrifice excellence and quality, items that require
continual investiture, for a more expedient and efficient operation
to produce the end product -- a degree for our customers.
And so we approach
the next millennium with considerable trepidation. If unchecked, this
market approach to higher education will introduce a new character,
CyberProf. Simply put in a token, pull the lever, and CyberProf will
spew information. To be sure, the information will be beautifully organized,
fully supplemented by stunning graphics and interactive interfaces and
appropriately packaged for ease of navigation. But is this how we want
to wield information technology (IT) in the digital age? Do we want
to use IT merely as a way to expand our markets and find new audiences
or to offer course-management tools to improve efficiency? Are we feeling
pressure to offer distance-learning programs in response to some perceived
new market? Is the college or university with the spiffiest Web-based
courseware now the institution of choice? What happened to the roots
of the Academy and the revealing of knowledge via the structure of rigorous
inquiry? Has all of this been usurped by market forces and the crazy
notion that information and knowledge are the same thing?
These are the kinds
of questions facing the Academy. In a reactive and pressured climate,
each individual institution will form its own idiosyncratic strategy
to resolve these issues. Yet such individual reactions will serve only
to diminish the Academy. We cannot afford to stand in isolation on these
issues. Our future success is facilitated by collaboration in which
each institution can supply its own unique perspective, resources, and
expertise to the central mission of the Academy: the creation of new
knowledge. IT in this context is merely an enabling technology not too
dissimilar to the development of the printing press. IT allows for new
dissemination mechanisms and new ways for students to engage in inquiry-based
learning. It opens up new avenues for faculty collaboration to create
more robust teaching products that naturally integrate individual research
into the curriculum, thereby increasing the quality of the educational
product. IT is thus not about packaging, efficiency, lower unit cost,
or any other accounting footnotes.
IT is only a tool.
Our challenge is how to make the right investment to empower our faculty
to use this tool to improve the quality of the learning environment.
Lesser goals should be unacceptable. The Academy must continue to point
the way toward a greater enlightenment and understanding of the natural
world and our place in it. The Academy cannot become a reflection of
what society thinks it wants. The Academy must remain an open forum,
one bounded only by the rules of scholarship and academic honesty and
one in which new ideas are formulated and expressed in different ways.
Network technology and its associated high-tech tools do offer a new
way in which ideas can be generated, communicated, and assessed. IT
does offer new methods for students to interact with each other and
with their instructors. There is even limited evidence that it increases
the dialogue between professor and student as the artificial barrier
of hierarchy becomes less visible. Improvement along these lines will
certainly facilitate the building of a learning community in which the
stakeholders are those interested in the acquisition of knowledge.
Every college and
university administrator is struggling with the basic issue of how to
best use network technology in the educational mission. In some sense,
however, this is the wrong issue to focus on and at best represents
a short-sighted goal. Instructional technologies in their current form,
including those at the University of Oregon, which has been cited as
being on the cutting edge, are used largely as an improved means of
delivering course material to large, information-oriented classes. Though
initially impressive, such a use has not significantly altered the learning
dynamic, despite claims to the contrary. Furthermore, it is precisely
this use that has inflamed the paranoia of faculty members and resulted
in the widespread apprehension that they will be replaced by the Web-based
"Course-in-a-Box" approach to teaching. Indeed, this might happen, but
it will happen only at those institutions that are not interested in
having a future or maintaining the roots of the Academy. The Web-based
Course-in-a-Box leads to Degrees-in-a-Box, and that approach is well
beneath the dignity of the Academy. The Academy cannot choose this path.
The fundamental
challenge facing the Academy is to remain true to its educational mission,
despite economic and market forces, and to continually reinforce the
fundamental truth that the value of knowledge is priceless. Indeed,
this is the principal difference between a college or university education
and a can of beans: knowledge is priceless. Adherence to this truth
has led to the survival of the Academy as one of the world's great institutions.
We must be ever vigilant in the next millennium to keep this principle
alive. To be sure, IT will allow for greater access to this knowledge
as time and place constraints are removed. But such greater access must
be laid on the foundation of academic excellence, integrity, and rigor.
Each college or university and each individual faculty member deviating
from this principle ultimately diminishes the entire Academy.
Note:
This essay was written as part of a speech delivered by University of
Oregon President David Frohnmayer at the "Information Resources for
the 21st Century: Content, Access, and People" conference in Portland,
Oregon, on May 5, 1999.
