TechWatch
PARTNERS IN
EDUCATION
A Commerce Department report recommends that businesses, governments,
and educational institutions band together to train more IT professionals.
Taking this advice, the University of Nebraska has opened the Peter
Kiewit Institute, a computer science center that combines offerings
from its College of Information Science and Technology and the Lincoln
College of Engineering and Technology. The center is funded by local
businesses and the state government. Further, local businesses are funding
scholarships and internships for students of the institute. The institute's
curriculum will focus on practical classes that teach students how to
fulfill business requirements. To accomplish this, the institute will
offer an "experts-in-residence" program, which will invite IT executives
from leading companies to teach and/or mentor students for a year or
longer. (InformationWeek)
WELCOME TO COLLEGE:
NOW MEET OUR SPONSOR
The University of Memphis, the University of Idaho, Villanova University,
and more than five hundred other institutions of higher learning will
be receiving free intranet service in return for allowing their campus
Web pages to be used for advertising purposes. Allowing commercial control
of the Web pages and e-mail services of what was once considered a sacred
domain -- academia -- is resulting in contentious debate. However, many
universities, particularly public ones that have seen their budgets
shrink rapidly but that still must keep up with technological trends
to attract students, say the concept is too attractive to resist. The
cost for a medium-sized public university to create an internal Web
service could be more than $2 million. This is where Campus Pipeline
comes in. The startup, which is heavily invested in by Dell Computer,
Sun Microsystems, and McKinney & Company, among other firms, began offering
to set up campus Web sites for colleges late last year. The cost has
been free so far to the few campuses that have already had the systems
installed, but Campus Pipeline may charge colleges installation costs
of as much as $32,000 in the future. (New York Times)
"VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY"
HAS QUIET START
The Western Governors University (WGU) has been offering online classes
for a year and is off to a disappointing start, some say. Although Utah
Governor Mike Leavitt estimated that thousands of students would be
taking courses from WGU within a few years, only about 120 students
are now enrolled. WGU offers courses from thirty-nine higher-learning
institutions with the aim of providing courses for rural citizens as
well as training for employees in technical fields. WGU President Robert
Mendenhall believes that thousands of students have used the online
school's course catalog but have then dealt with the university offering
a course rather than with WGU in order to avoid WGU's $30 processing
fee. As a result, WGU has eliminated the fee and will instead collect
30 percent of the tuition from students who sign up through WGU, as
part of a deal with participating universities. WGU needs 3,000 students
enrolled in its degree programs to break even and should reach this
goal within three years, Mendenhall says. (Associated Press)
INSTITUTE WANTS
ALL KNOWLEDGE ON THE WEB
The goal of the non-profit Information Access Institute is to assist
in the distribution of library and museum knowledge records on the Internet.
Its director, Kevin Marsh, dreams of a day when any questions or any
interests can be satisfied on the Web. Currently Marsh and the institute
are helping put historic Texas constitutions online and are supporting
the efforts of the Florida State Photographic Archive and Texas museums
in cataloguing their holdings and putting them online. Marsh believes
that by placing informative data on the Web, he and others will be able
to overcome the Internet's reputation for more salacious offerings.
"It's like New York," he says. "Everything from museums to red-light
districts. The way we fight the red-light districts on the Internet
is not by censorship but by putting more of the good stuff online."
(Associated Press)
FOR MOST CAMPUS
USERS, INTERNET2'S NETWORK ADVANCES ARE INCREMENTAL
Although Internet2 aims to revolutionize the research community by linking
it on a fast version of the Internet, users have seen only minor changes.
Currently, Internet2's primary achievement is updating the hardware
and software owned by universities in order to prepare them for the
innovative connections promised by the project. Until campuses upgrade
their networks, there will be little difference in the speed provided
by the new national backbone. Furthermore, users are only now beginning
to develop software programs that will utilize the backbone's speed.
One concern is the price of these hardware and software upgrades; whereas
federal grants have financed many upgrades so far, universities may
struggle in the future to raise the necessary funds. The network's engineers
maintain that the technology is necessary to allow research organizations
the same opportunities that are available to the commercial sector.
(Chronicle of Higher Education Online)
YEAR-2000 BUG
SAID TO IMPERIL DELIVERY OF FEDERAL STUDENT AID
A report from the Education Department's Inspector General's Office
says that colleges are not prepared for Y2K and that there may be a
"high risk" of disruptions in student aid. The report lauded the department's
educational and outreach efforts to raise awareness of Y2K but said
the department should continue to expand its outreach. The study also
calls on Congress to promote Y2K awareness at colleges and universities.
The report says that although there is not enough concrete information
about schools' Y2K readiness to make any firm conclusions, the lack
of information indicates they may be at high risk. The report indicates
that few colleges and trade schools are participating in tests of data
exchanges between updated computer systems and that only three of the
fifteen schools that had performed the tests completed them successfully.
(Chronicle of Higher Education Online)
SCHOOLS GET
DOWN TO THE VALLEY
Prominent business schools are opening satellites in Silicon Valley
to take advantage of the proximity to the epicenter of the growing electronic
business industry. Schools such as Harvard Business School and the Tuck
School of Business Administration have been the first to create these
research facilities to prepare their students for jobs in Silicon Valley.
Through these outposts, students can make business connections and experience
the culture. The Harvard facility features a research center in which
faculty study Silicon Valley businesses and write case studies while
students study these cases and form solutions. The Tuck satellite features
an office for visiting students and faculty and, later, will most likely
have one or two permanent faculty members. Also considering the idea
are the University of Michigan Business School and the Haas School of
Business at the University of California at Berkeley, while Stanford
takes advantage of its existing proximity to Silicon Valley. (Wired
News)
SURF YOUR WAY
INTO COLLEGE
For many years, various companies have offered scholarships and prizes
to students who excel in one field or another. Now some companies are
looking for students who are whizzes at Internet research or who design
nifty Web sites or games or programs. ArsDigita head Phillip Greenspun
is looking for teenagers "who can contribute to an interesting and useful
Internet future," and ArsDigita is awarding $10,000 and access to the
company's digital equipment to a top young programmer with a useful
site. Accounting.Net offers scholarships for accounting students --
they must explain how the Internet has changed the business. The Chicago
Tribune awards local children who design sites for nonprofit groups,
and the Technology Association of Georgia looks for Web sites by and
about Georgia high school students. (PC World Online)
YOUNG WEB USERS
RESHAPING INTERNET USE
The Internet is having a profound impact, to a degree heretofore unseen,
on the lives of users between the ages of 16 and 22, according to "The
Net-Powered Generation," a report from Forrester Research. The report
finds that the younger generation averages nine hours a week surfing
the Web, nearly 38 percent longer than the average for adult Internet
users. Young people also visit a wider range of Web sites than adults,
use the Internet to listen to music and read Web zines, and desire high-speed
Internet access. Further, the report finds that 47 percent (12.4 million)
of the 16-to-22 age group are Internet users; the 16-to-22 age group
as a whole accounts for 10 percent of the U.S. population. Forrester
also notes that 40 percent of these 12.4 million users shop on the Internet
and will make a total of $1.5 billion in electronic-commerce purchases
this year. (Newsbytes)
GLOBAL SECURITY
SURVEY: VIRUS ATTACK
An InformationWeek survey indicates that viruses are at the top of the
list of IT managers' security concerns and that the problem is growing.
According to the survey, about 64 percent of companies fell victim to
a virus attack in the past twelve months, up from 53 percent the previous
year. In the United States alone, viruses hit 69 percent of companies,
which is about four times as many as that of the next-highest category
of security breach, unauthorized network entry. Only 22 percent of companies
reported no security breaches at all. Hackers and terrorists were blamed
for the majority of security breaches, at 48 percent, while only 14
percent of the respondents blamed hackers last year. Contract service
providers were blamed by 31 percent of respondents, up from 9 percent
last year, while the percentage of respondents blaming authorized users
and employees was down to 41 percent from 58 percent last year. (InformationWeek)
