Transforming Higher Education in the Information Age: Presidents Respond


Copyright 1991 CAUSE From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 14, Number 3, Fall 1991. 
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             TRANSFORMING HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE INFORMATION AGE: 
                            PRESIDENTS RESPOND

ABSTRACT: Richard Nolan says, "Too many executives today just don't get 
it!"--in higher education as well as industry. What do college and 
university presidents and chancellors think about Nolan's challenge to 
transform their campuses for survival and competitive advantage in the 
information age?


Much has been written in the business sector about the need to
"transform" today's corporations to survive in the Information Economy.
Current theories include encouraging flatter organizational structures,
empowering employees through distributing responsibility and decision-
making, evaluating work/business processes to align them with the
capabilities of information technology and thus increase productivity,
and increasing the quality of products and services delivered.

In an article published in the Winter 1990 CAUSE/EFFECT, Richard
Nolan1 proposed that too many executives "just don't get it"--"it" being
the importance of transforming their organizations and their management
principles in order to survive in the Information Economy. After
exploring lessons to be learned from previous economic transitions, the
idea that technology drives transformation, how new technology can
enable new ways to do work, and why the network organization, rather
than the functional hierarchy, is the more appropriate form for managing
in today's economy, Nolan concluded:

To remain the best, our colleges and universities must transform. They
need to add information technology to their strategic equations to
formulate viable 1990s strategies. Then they need to internalize and
incorporate the Information Economy management paradigm to achieve a
higher level of performance and sophistication in educating the future
knowledge worker labor supply.

What this means personally to senior executives (both in business
and higher education) is that information technology shifts from a
spectator sport to a participatory sport. As spectators, senior
executives had IT proposals brought to them in a form that they could
choose from. Now the senior executive must engage in the process of
creating opportunities to strategically apply information technology.
New ideas, vocabularies, and skills must be learned.

It is extremely difficult and frustrating to learn to play a new
sport. Likewise, it is difficult and frustrating to learn to play IT for
strategic advantage. But executives have a mandate to learn to play IT
strategically to successfully lead their organizations in the 1990s and
beyond. Strategies without information technology are hollow.

CAUSE/EFFECT asked several higher education executives to respond to
Nolan's article, inviting them to share their views on transforming
their campuses, both to meet new needs and to take advantage of new
capabilities in the information age. We are grateful to those who
accepted our invitation. Their willingness to take the time to
participate demonstrates their recognition of the importance of the
question, and their responses provide evidence that some executives do
get it!

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Richard D. Breslin
President
Drexel University
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Reading Richard Nolan's article, one understands almost intuitively that
his analysis is correct. What we do not get from Nolan's article are the
real reasons that executives are not getting the message that
information technology is a vital key to restructuring our universities,
breaking down boundaries (artificial walls which have been created by
virtue of over-decentralization), and encouraging collaboration.

Information technologists, in the main, talk to information
technologists and too frequently have not been able to penetrate the
upper levels of administration. Chief executive officers have been so
preoccupied with raising money, contending with legislative matters, and
fighting to balance budgets in economic times not seen in higher
education circles for five decades, that they have not chosen to invest
their time and interest in information technology which, unbeknownst to
many of them, holds significant answers in resolving some of the
financial conditions confronting them on an all too regular basis.

It strikes me that Nolan's thesis is precisely correct; but, until
we raise the status of the chief information officers on our campuses
and make them regular ongoing participants in the president's cabinet,
then little will change in a systematic, planned way. The economic
realities of the 1990s will force change, but the information technology
personnel need to speak a language that is understood by the
nontechnologists, as most university presidents are not technologists.
Even some of Nolan's language begs for translation. For example, when
Nolan states, "Most organizations that are successful are operating in a
shadow 'network' organization that floats over the functional hierarchy
... ," one needs to ponder the real message being conveyed by Nolan. A
rational person will get to Nolan's bottom line, but the day-to-day
seemingly bigger problems will get in the way of putting into practice
Nolan's thesis unless it is translated into dollars and cents. It is my
contention that if we can model what the real savings are in terms of
personnel and dollars saved, then the full implementation of information
technology will move extremely quickly, rather than glacierlike as now
is the case.

My conclusion is that chief executive officers are not "getting"
the message, not because Nolan's thesis is incorrect, but because CEOs
are mired in matters permitting precious little time to be diverted to
an understanding of and a commitment to the full implementation of
information technology. In the 1990s, "business as usual" will not fly;
information technology can change the manner in which we conduct our
business, but we need data to demonstrate that it will transform our
campus communities. Hence, our chief information officers must take
greater initiative in spelling out the "good news" of information
technology and our presidents must take the time to listen, learn, and
lead.


David M. Clarke, S. J.
President
Regis University
Denver, Colorado

My reaction to Richard Nolan's article and his contention that
executives "don't get it" is one of some admiration. Richard Nolan has,
in my opinion, accurately assessed the relationship between most chief
executives and information technology. The topic is particularly
relevant because information technology is changing quite rapidly and
enabling the kinds of managerial analysis and problem assessment which
is powerful when used in a decision-making structure that has taken that
technology into account.

On the other hand, it is my perception that today's executives are
wrestling with several forces. They are being challenged with mission-
oriented questions while being tugged at by economic realities and
teased by technology. They are, in fact, pulled in at least three
different directions as though they were being spread on a rack by the
mission, the economics, and the technology.

I, for one, think it's more important for executives to focus on
the mission of their organization and the service goals which they are
called upon to deliver for society. They must develop themselves, their
systems, and their people and then they will find their reward, both
monetary and psychological, in the fulfilling of society's needs. I
believe it was Tom Peters who said that no great company has ever been
built by focusing on the bottom line. I would expand that by saying that
no great company will be built by focusing only on technology. Great
companies and great organizations are built by the passion to deliver
service to their customers and to the society they live in. Simply put,
I would like to urge executives to pay massive attention to their
mission and that of their organization and then to let economics and
technology take their rightful places within the decision-making,
because both are essential.

I would add that Richard Nolan, together with many other writers,
looks at manufacturing history as the place to find the experience for
dealing with the future. These writers insist on bringing us out of that
manufacturing mentality which, I admit, most of us are in. But if you
want to find helpful history for dealing with the information technology
age, a stronger example may be movie-making. First, movie-making is
instantaneous. It was the NeXT computer seventy years ago because it
transported you and your senses to another environment. Second, it gave
you an experience in living through the eyes and senses of another. And
third, it made a permanent change in the participant because once you
experienced it, you were never the same. In dealing with the rapid
change of technology, I believe the development of movie-making, which
led to the emergence of television as a pastime, seems more fruitful
than reviewing the assembly line and manufacturing protocols when we are
looking for relevant historical experience.


Joseph Cronin
President
Bentley College
Waltham, Massachusetts

Business colleges, charged with preparing tomorrow's managers and
executive leaders, must be able not only to survive the transformation
to the information technology/network, they must lead that
transformation by example. The transformation has been under way for
some time at the more innovative institutions.
During the 1980s, Bentley College made several strategic decisions
regarding information technology:

  *  To require every freshman to buy or lease a desk-top computer in
order to prepare them for the new world of information processing. Much
of the College's curriculum and pedagogy also changed to take advantage
of the new technology.

  *  To publish a journal linking accountancy with computer information
systems.

  *  To create a Vice Presidency for Information Services to coordinate
the massive academic and administrative conversions necessary to make
the College ready for 1995, Nolan's critical crossover date.

How well has Bentley done? While the College was recruiting me to
succeed the visionary Gregory H. Adamian as president, the Xerox
magazine Sourcebook listed Bentley as one of the top five providers of
undergraduate computer information systems education in the nation. Of
course, the real test is whether the administrative operation of Bentley
College can follow the vision of an information society Nolan describes
and which much of the College's faculty already embraces.

In 1988, Bentley wisely decided to upgrade every internal
information system and to continue the move away from normal, labor-
intensive procedures. This process has proven effective with financial
operations, development and alumni relations, human resources
management, maintenance and energy control systems. It holds out great
promise for marketing, recruitment, admissions, financial aid,
registration, and records management. Bentley also placed institutional
information, electronic mail, and access to the library and to external
networks on the desktops of every faculty member and most professional
administrators.

Will technology help the teaching process become more productive?
One Stanford University professor offers seventeen courses, a task that
would be impossible were it not for extensive use of interactive
computer materials. Is this a harbinger of future increases in
instructional productivity? Will it be possible for fewer professors to
reach more students, or at least to offer two or three times as many
advanced courses through technology each year? We can only speculate.

The entire notion of a traditional college library is challenged by
the information revolution. Must every college buy every book, journal,
and report, or will information retrieval systems soon provide the
materials on line? How will access to vast amounts of information,
together with the ability to search and organize it quickly, change the
way people work, pursue scholarship, teach, and learn?
Another frontier is the use of satellite dishes not only for
teleconferencing and corporate seminars, but also for the campus to
receive timely information from sources all over the world. Bentley
currently receives information via satellite and is in the early stages
of taking advantage of international broadcasts that will add
inestimable value to the curriculum.

Do colleges resemble R&D firms? Yes--both discover and disseminate
knowledge. But colleges also resemble such service entities as hotels
and athletic camps. They are akin to social service agencies in their
efforts to develop well-integrated adult citizens and workers. Colleges
exist to transmit old and familiar cultural values, while at the same
time to lead in transforming the way the society does business.

Recently I attended a Harvard University seminar for new presidents
of colleges and universities. The two dozen new chief executives
reflected the incredible diversity of American academic institutions:
state universities, small liberal arts colleges, technical and church
schools, an aeronautical university, West Point, and Bentley. We have
much in common, but we also display impressive variations in mission,
history, and philosophy. Will a church seminary and a military school
respond to information technology in the same way? Probably not. But
while some institutions have the luxury of taking their time in deciding
how to do so, schools that prepare tomorrow's corporate leaders must be
in the forefront of the information/technology transformation.

Thus a business college, or a comprehensive college with a strong
business and management faculty, ought to be able to show the way by
example for non-business schools. We must serve our "customers" more
effectively, less bureaucratically, and design network organizations
with less staffing and more performance. We appreciate the provocation
and inspiration of Dick Nolan, our corporate neighbor.


Thomas Ehrlich
President
Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana

Dr. Nolan argues that the transformed organization in the
information/service economy will need only half the work force of its
non-transformed counterpart. The keys to success are the use of
technology managed by a networked organization, with knowledgeable
workers rewarded for performance, and products designed to meet the
needs of customers.

Much of what Dr. Nolan says makes sound sense for colleges and
universities, though I recoil at some of his jargon. As is often true of
provocative articles, however, the author states important points by
overstating them. He is on target: that the information/service economy
is not coming but here; that information technology enables new ways to
work; and that many-layered bureaucracies are ill-equipped to use
technology with maximum productivity.

His talk was given to leaders in higher education, but it seems
insensitive to differences between business and higher education. As an
enterprise with an annual budget of $1.4 billion, Indiana University is,
in one sense, a business. Even apart from numerous auxiliary
enterprises, the major service it performs--education--can be viewed as 
a series of products delivered to customers. And there are great
advantages to a customer-oriented approach in education.

On the other hand, the article seems to ignore the reality that the
basic business of higher education is information--ideas and facts. We
create information, we transmit it, and we store it. Our academic
structures are generally already networked along the lines Dr. Nolan
advocates. Even our administrative structures are usually less
hierarchical than most business corporations, and there are other
differences as well. Many of these seem ignored by Dr. Nolan's comments.

Dr. Nolan's article also omits a number of technology-age issues
that are particularly relevant to education (though not necessarily
higher education). An illustration is the need to take better
educational advantage of the reality that most of our students grew up
as video junkies.

I certainly concur, however, that a dominant challenge facing
higher education is to use technology in ways that will reduce staff.
The process is well under way in the administrative areas of many
universities. Staff reductions have also occurred in specific academic
areas. Video and computer technology have led not only to increased
learning in particular Indiana University classes, for example, but also
to reduced reliance on graduate student assistants. Insofar as I am
aware, however, no college or university has met this challenge in the
curriculum on a pervasive basis.

We have used technology to do a better job of teaching our students
and assisting our faculty in their research. Information technology also
offers the potential for the same number of faculty reaching more
students, and in this way increasing the productivity of our
institutions. But this potential has been available for several decades,
and we have not capitalized on it in significant ways.


Donald N. Langenberg
Chancellor
The University of
Maryland System
Adelphi, Maryland

Nolan's right! How do I know that? Because we agree. Not completely,
mind you. I wouldn't be an academic if I couldn't quibble with a jot
here and a tittle there. But, on the whole, he's right. So now let me
embroider a little added pattern on Nolan's tapestry, in the hope of
strengthening it, or adding to its aesthetic value.

First, we certainly do need more executives who "get it"--but not
all that many more. We're in the midst of what Nolan calls a
transformation. I think it's a revolution. Revolutions are not
democratic, in the sense that a popular consensus must develop before
anything can happen. All it takes is a few dedicated revolutionaries who
do "get it." Then it will happen.

I'm reminded of a story about the early days of electronic
computers. Once upon a time the first (okay, I know about the
controversy--an early) programmable electronic computer was built to
calculate artillery firing tables for the U. S. Army. Its builders,
thinking it might have some profitable civilian uses, contacted a well
known vendor of business machines to see if there might be some
commercial interest The vendor did a market survey and found that the
total potential market for a machine with such unheard of computational
power (equivalent, maybe, to a low-end PC today) was perhaps ten units,
worldwide. The well known vendor demurred, and the revolution proceeded
without it (for a while, at least).

Nolan uses the example of the nineteenth century transition from an
agrarian economy to an industrial economy to make the point that such
transitions are driven by an underlying technology. Fair enough. But I
wish he had dwelt a bit more on another of their essential features. He
does write, "Productivity gains require both incorporating the new
technology and changing the organization structure for doing work." I
think it's worth noting that the agricultural revolution involved going
well beyond simply "changing the organization structure for doing work."
It required nothing less than the invention of an entirely new type of
university (the land-grant university), plus the first academic
organizations deliberately designed to do "technology transfer," the
agricultural experiment stations and the cooperative extension services.

That bit of history suggests that the transformation/revolution
Nolan and I agree is in progress means more than the presence of a
powerful new underlying technology. It also means truly revolutionary
changes in every kind of institution touched by that technology.

And of all institutions, none are more profoundly linked to
information technology than our universities. Why? Because information
is the fundamental working fluid of academe. It is to scholarship what
steam was to the industrial age. It follows that what is now happening
to our capability for handling information portends enormous and
inevitable changes in our universities.

Elsewhere, I have tried to envision what might become of our
libraries ("Supporting the Global Scholar," in Academic Computing,
January 1989). Other aspects of our universities will surely follow some
variant of Nolan's path from hierarchical organization to networked
organization. It will be fascinating to see how we do that, for
universities are very different from business organizations. We are
already a bizarre mixture of network and hierarchy. On the one hand, our
faculty are networked in "invisible colleges" that span the globe and
link able practitioners of disciplinary specialties, with scant regard
for age, rank, or institutional affiliation. On the other hand, they are
organized within our universities in hierarchical ranks and in
disciplinary departments and colleges of a rigidity and inflexibility
unparalleled in the business world.

How all this will spin itself out, I cannot predict. I am quite
certain of a few things, however. There is a revolution in progress in
our universities. It is closely linked with the contemporary information
technology revolution. I am a committed revolutionary. I mean to place
my own institution in the vanguard of the revolution, if I can. And,
while too many of my colleagues today "just don't get it," they soon
will.


Harold McAninch
President
College of DuPage
Glen Ellyn, Illinois

Dr. Nolan's article holds up a convex mirror to corporations and higher
education institutions and challenges us to recognize ourselves in the
reflection. Are we really too hierarchical, inflexible, production-
oriented, and non-performance oriented? Will those of us who linger with
the traditional infrastructure be "left on the farm," so to speak, when
the industrial age becomes as obsolete as the agricultural age? Are Dr.
Nolan's the only and true criteria for judging whether an institution
has properly "transformed" itself, or should we be looking for other
ways in which institutions "get it"?

As Dr. Nolan indicated, acting on concepts incongruent with our
past experience is difficult and disorienting. Trying to envision a
future escape based on an architecture of information technology, a
global perspective, and a competition for intangibles is like trying to
read the encyclopedia through a crystal ball. And yet it is incumbent on
the College of DuPage as an institution of higher learning to reexamine
its mission and vision and determine how information technology and its
support infrastructure fit into that mission and vision.

The state of Illinois mandated a mission in 1970 which states: "A
fundamental goal of the people of the state is the educational
development of all persons to the limits of their capacities." The
community colleges were set up to provide quality education at a low
cost to all residents of the college district. In the College of DuPage
vision statement we stated: " ... seek unexplored paths which may help
prepare our community for the challenges of the next century." This
emphasizes the importance of looking at all new technology and
management techniques. It is obvious that information technology has and
will have an ever increasing role in our homelife and workplace. If the
College is to fulfill its mission, it is very important for the College
to be a leader in information technology by modeling the use of
technology in its own operation, as well as by teaching the use of
technology to students.

We have been in operation for twenty-five years and have had to
change or transform our organization to keep pace with the economy. Our
programs and services have changed to meet growing public needs. Since
our programs are based on community needs we must constantly update our
curricula to meet those needs.

The College of DuPage is also unique in that it is located in a
high-tech corridor where many of our students work in the information
industry. In most of our curricula, computer use has evolved from one in
ten students using computers in 1985, to one in four in 1991.
Projections show that one in every two students will be using computers
in their courseworkby 1996. Information technology has had an impact on
our campus and the way we do business from the classroom to the office.

However, information technology was not the driving force in this
change; our vision, mission, and goals drive our direction and future.
Information technology is simply a tool for our students, faculty, and
staff. Students use information technology to enhance the learning
process and ready themselves for the business world; faculty use
information technology to improve the teaching process and classroom
management; and staff use information technology to increase
productivity and effectiveness.

In the last six years we have become proactive in dealing with
information technology. We have modified our management structure to
reflect the impact of information technology. Organizations need to be
flexible in order to deal with the changes. We find ourselves doing
business more often by "task forces" made up of representatives from
many areas addressing a common problem. As Nolan stated, "we are in a
transitional economy moving toward an information/service economy." How
we integrate and use the technology determines how quickly we move to
the information/services economy on our campus. There are many questions
that need to be answered concerning what technologies to use and when,
and we struggle in addressing these. We know our institution must be
ready to use the technology but not acquire technology just to have the
latest and greatest. The key element in the transition is planning.

Information technology planning must be integrated into our
institutional planning process, into our mission, into our goals, and
into the very vision we have of ourselves as an institution of higher
learning. When did a family farm successfully transform itself into a
successful corporate enterprise? When it changed its self-vision to plan
for change in a proactive way, and switched from a simple tactical use
of technology to an entire strategic architecture. We also must be
prepared to make a similar paradigm switch.


Donald C. Swain
President
University of Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky

Bringing about a transformation in higher education is going to be
difficult, but it can be done. Frankly, I believe transforming change as
advocated by Richard Nolan will result less from the application of
powerful analytical ideas than from gutty, forceful, transforming
leadership by governing boards and, especially, college and university
presidents and chancellors.

Powerful ideas are endemic in higher education; they are the coin
of the realm in any good university. It's the will to change that is
usually missing. This is why leadership is fundamentally important. It
must find a way to shift paradigms, and must provide vital reinforcement
to the members of the faculty, staff, and students who are capable of
thinking fresh thoughts about higher education itself.

In 1990-91, the University of Louisville engaged in a far-reaching
restructuring and reallocation process. If not transforming, it was at
least daring and thorough. We developed an ambitious agenda of change
for the next five years designed to position U of L for the challenges
of the 1990s.

We decided to return to basics--an emphasis on strong general
education--at the undergraduate level. This led to: the restructuring of
the College of the Arts and Sciences; a shift to a five- year teaching
credential in the School of Education; a broadening of the School of
Music (which was becoming more and more specialized and narrowly
focused); an enrichment of our Business School degrees with an infusion
of liberal arts; and many other changes.

We decided to increase graduate enrollments, while focusing on
selected doctoral programs of high quality. In a related strategy, we
committed ourselves to invest in interdisciplinary research, which is
where the great intellectual ferment is occurring, both in Ph.D.
programs and in advanced research. We will also internationalize much
faster than previously planned.

We decided to change U of L's culture to develop a stronger service
orientation and for greater resistance to the tendency, which is hoary
with tradition, of adopting complex rather than simple solutions. This
tendency obviously inflicts on the institution unnecessary procedures,
bureaucracy, and overhead costs.

One of our biggest challenges was to identify a pool of $15.3
million, to be generated through internal reallocation and new revenues,
to strengthen the University's highest priority programs and services.
The toughest part of this battle was over requiring each academic and
administrative unit to reallocate 5 percent of its base budget each year
to assure that the unit heads shift resources from low priority to high
priority activities, as called for in our strategic plan.

All in all, it was some year!

We learned a few lessons about the process of transforming a
complex institution of higher learning. These may not be transferable to
another university, but they could provide a valuable point of departure
for other institutions that may want to spark needed change.

1. Having an established strategic plan in place, which sets the
general strategic direction of the institution, is essential. If such a
plan does not exist, the president should take the lead in crafting one,
then tackle restructuring and reallocation.

2. Make sure the governing board is fully informed about the urgent
need for change. With its staunch and unwavering support, change is not
only possible but unstoppable.

3. Strong executive leadership is indispensable. The president must
assure that the most open-minded, imaginative faculty, staff, and
students are deeply involved, and that bold, fresh thinking is
encouraged throughout the university. The president's own vision for the
institution's future should be interjected at an appropriate point in
the process.

4. Concentrate on concepts and ideas in initial discussions of
change; avoid getting bogged down in premature disagreements over the
details of implementation. These details, though important, must wait
until the guiding concepts are adopted.

5. Think proactively about how to handle disagreement, conflict,
and controversy. A college or university is full of smart, articulate
people who speak their minds. The president should set the tone of
reasonableness and openness but should establish unequivocally that when
the debate is finished, decisions will be made. People must know that
the controversy will end.

6. In a public institution, change inevitably involves the public.
Some effort to solicit comments and reactions from interested citizens
and community leaders is desirable. This should be done toward the end
of the process, but well before any final decisions are made.

7. This is a time for risk-taking and boldness. Don't play it safe.
A series of relatively small changes will often trigger resistance and
trauma. Think big! Large changes will probably be only marginally more
difficult to deal with.

8. Plan for a consolidating, stabilizing year immediately after
reaching agreement on concepts and the general directions of change.
During that year, forego most initiatives and focus on implementation.
Let the waters calm down!

9. Prepare to do the whole thing again in five years or less. The
pace of change in the world is accelerating, which means that the
process of transforming colleges and universities is now literally
endless. Institutions of higher learning would be wise to plant this
idea even while struggling through their initial round of institutional
change.

10. Accomplishing some significant structural change--even one
limited in scope--will set the context for more substantial changes in
the future. It's critical to demonstrate that, yes, an institution of
higher education can begin transforming itself.

I'm sure we've not had our last disagreement over change at the
University of Louisville. It's a dynamic, rapidly evolving institution.
However, we got through this restructuring and reallocation process
fairly well. In my judgment, U of L is facing up to change as well as or
better than most universities in the United States.

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Footnotes

1  Richard L. Nolan is Chairman and Co-founder, Nolan, Norton & Co., and
Professor, Harvard Business School. He is the originator of the Stages
Theory for analyzing data processing growth.

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