Campus Newcomers Arrive With More Skill, Better Gear

A look at freshman computing lifestyles at 5 institutions

By FLORENCE OLSEN

With the new Class of 2004, colleges are getting their first look at the generation of students born in 1983, when the I.B.M. PC was just a year old. In the years since, colleges have learned to cater to students who increasingly expect to

ALSO SEE: Laptops and Add-Ons at Wellesley Growing Number of Colleges Require Students to Own Computers Strictly Business at a Community College At the University of Minnesota, Different (Key)strokes At a Religious Black College, the Internet Is Seen as a Tool and a Temptation At Caltech, 'Paradise for Geeks,' Students Build Their Own Gadgets

use personal computers in the classroom, in the library, and anywhere else they happen to be on the campus.

This fall, colleges saw at least half of their freshmen arrive with their own computers and proficient at using Windows, word-processing software, the Internet, and electronic mail. Fewer freshmen were conversant with spreadsheets, databases, or presentation software -- skills that many colleges now include as part of their computer-literacy requirements.

Freshman men are more likely than freshman women to claim proficiency in computer skills -- "as you would expect," says Gail Hogan, a senior research associate at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

In this issue, The Chronicle offers in-depth looks at the computing lifestyles of freshmen on five college campuses. The students vary widely in their knowledge of computers and experience with them. One freshman, at the California Institute of Technology, built his machine from scratch, while another -- at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities -- happened across hers at a Best Buy.

The students also vary in the uses to which they put their computers. For some, the computer is as much an entertainment appliance as a scholarly tool. A student at Wellesley College, for instance, uses the controversial Napster file-sharing program to collect digital recordings of Dave Matthews songs. Another student, at Huston-Tillotson College, uses a public terminal there to search for news about the singer Christina Aguilera. Students at Northern Virginia Community College, by contrast, say they use computers for entertainment relatively rarely, focusing instead on tasks such as algebra exercises and architectural drawing.

Survey data on the computer choices and computing skills of college freshmen are hard to come by. But academic-computing officials agree on some general points, not all of them likely to please faculty members or administrators.

From his post as vice provost for libraries, computing, and technology at Michigan State University, Paul M. Hunt is quick to observe that the typical freshman "seems quite capable of getting Napster running." But the same freshman is also "a pretty good Web surfer using Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer," and is familiar with word-processing and simple spreadsheet functions.

In the freshman dormitories at Michigan State, it is not uncommon for 56 percent of the students to be using the campus network or the Internet simultaneously, at least during periods in which computing officials have gathered statistics on network use, Mr. Hunt says. Such numbers indicate that students are using the network, and using it, at least part of the time, for academic research, he says.

At institutions where upper-level students typically live off campus, freshmen and sophomores usually benefit from the best network-computing services their colleges have to offer. Many freshmen live in wired dormitories with one -- and often two -- standard Ethernet ports in their rooms, says Michael R. Zastrocky, an analyst who follows higher education for the Gartner Group, a technology-consulting company.

"It's a different ball game," Mr. Zastrocky says. Colleges are installing extra communications lines in the dorm rooms "so the students can have their own fax machines, as well as their own computer connections, as well as their own phone lines."

Ms. Hogan, at SUNY-Buffalo, speaks for many of her colleagues when she says, "Trying to keep ahead of the kids is tough."

This fall, a growing number of colleges required each freshman to own or lease a computer, a trend that has raised the average annual cost for attending those institutions by at least $1,000. Laptop-computer requirements have been especially popular.

But many students still buy -- and often prefer -- desktop computers for their education and entertainment. This fall, freshmen who purchased a desktop computer from their campus computer store could choose among several high-end configurations priced at $700 to $800 less than a standard laptop computer.

Virginia Tech is a research institution where 25 percent of the 4,679 freshmen are engineering majors. This semester, first-year students could meet the university's baseline computer requirement by purchasing a PC with a 500-megahertz Pentium III-type processor, or a Macintosh with a 300-megahertz G3 processor. Both types of computers have 128 megabytes of random-access memory and 10-gigabyte hard drives. With their computers, the students also got a sound board and speakers or headphones, and -- if they bought desktop models -- 17-inch monitors. The price tag? From $900 to $2,000.

Colleges often try to decide as early as March what their configuration standards will be for the following fall. "A lot of the parents like to buy the computers as high-school-graduation presents," says Dianna M. Benton, coordinator for first-year programs in the provost's office at Virginia Tech. "We tell them, 'Buy the best computer you can afford.'" Otherwise, she says, there is a good chance that the computer a student brings to college will require "a very major upgrade" before he or she graduates.

Freshmen expect a lot in the way of computer and network services, colleges say, and their expectations have progressed far beyond simple Ethernet access. Many students now expect such services as free, unlimited laser printing. That's by far the most frequent request he hears, says Michigan State's Mr. Hunt. But many colleges, he says, remain reluctant to offer a service whose costs are difficult to control.

Students also come to college with the expectation that lecture notes, outlines, and other materials related to their courses will be online, Ms. Benton says. "They ask, 'Why isn't this online? I wish you would do this online.'" The pressure comes not from college administrators, she says, but from students, "for Professor Jones to do what Professor Smith is doing."

The current crop of freshmen is "very comfortable with technology," Ms. Benton adds. On their first day in the dormitories, they start using instant-messaging systems to communicate with classmates. E-mail gives students an easy way to contact professors too, and they use it, she says.

A not-so-typical computing service that has proved popular with freshmen on large campuses is a computer games lab, open only on weekend evenings. Its purpose? "To help diversify the entertainment options," says one administrator. The labs feature networked games -- Starcraft, Alpha Centauri, and others -- where groups of students can compete in the same game worlds and avoid the types of weekend activities that college administrators find undesirable.

At Hamilton College, where David L. Smallen is director of information-technology services, computer ownership among freshmen hit 90 percent this fall. Mr. Smallen says he's noticed that a majority of freshman students don't attend voluntary computer-training sessions, nor do most of them use services to help them connect their computers to the campus network. It may be that they find technology easy to use, or that they're getting help from friends. He can't say for sure.

But Mr. Smallen says he worries about the 10 percent of Hamilton students who, for financial or other reasons, do not own computers. Are those students privately afraid or anxious about using technology? Are they holding back and not asking for help in using computers or software?

Colleges should try to find the answers, he says. "In the press, everybody's saying they should be able to do all this stuff, and maybe they can't."

Easy-to-print version

E-mail this article