Technology Reshapes Universities, Report Says

Information technology is likely to reshape research universities -- changing how they are organized, financed, and governed -- and will prod them to put more emphasis on instruction, a new report from the National Academy of Sciences predicts.

The report, issued this month, warns academe against "complacency" in the face of fast-paced technological developments and competition from online and for-profit institutions. The report warns that research universities should respond "with carefully considered strategies backed by prudent developments -- not just to avoid extinction, but to actively cultivate opportunity."

The document, "Preparing for the Revolution: Information Technology and the Future of the Research University," was written by a committee that included current and former college administrators, leaders of higher-education groups, foundation officials, and industry officials, but no representatives of faculty groups.

The report says the changes will be driven by expanded computer-network bandwidth and big improvements in both hardware and software, like notebook computers much more powerful than today's models and programs called "software agents" that will autonomously collect information.

In light of those developments, the report suggests a possible future for higher education that may not sit well with many faculty members: an academe dominated by freelance instructors selling their services to many institutions, which in turn will compete for students who buy courses à la carte from multiple colleges.

'Fundamental Relationship'

"Although the university has survived earlier periods of technology-driven social change with its basic role and structure more or less intact, the changes being induced by information technology are different, because they alter the fundamental relationship between people and knowledge," the report states.

For example, information technology, by allowing students to learn at a distance and at their own pace, will undercut two familiar features of undergraduate instruction: lectures and a common reading list. Instead, the report predicts, students will collaborate online with one another and their instructor.

"The faculty member of the twenty-first century university could thus become more of a consultant or a coach than a teacher, less concerned with transmitting intellectual content directly than with inspiring, motivating, and managing an active learning process," the report says. "That is, faculty may come to interact with undergraduates in ways that resemble how they interact with their doctoral students today."

"Higher education as a cottage industry, in which individual courses are made to order by individual faculty, may not be able to compete much longer in either cost or quality with commodity educational products," the committee adds.

Mark F. Smith, director of government relations at the American Association of University Professors, said he has grave concerns about the role of the professor devolving into little more than that of an education consultant. A college education, he said, ought to rely upon faculty members who are deeply enmeshed in students' learning, through activities such as guiding discussions and presenting their expertise to students. "There still is an important role for human interaction in a controlled sense," he said. "Information technology can enhance that experience, but it can't totally substitute."

James J. Duderstadt, president emeritus of the University of Michigan, was chairman of the committee that wrote the report. Individual universities will have to conduct "grass-roots conversations" with faculty members about the need to respond to technological change, he said during a seminar at the National Academy of Sciences, where the report was released.

New Competition

The report also warns of the potential impact of competition from for-profit institutions, like the University of Phoenix and Jones International University. Research universities routinely subsidize their research and graduate training with profits made from large lecture courses and from professional training -- areas into which for-profit universities are likely to expand, it says. "Their success in the higher-education marketplace could therefore undermine the current business model of the research university and imperil its core activities."

Meanwhile, educational institutions have not developed instructional techniques that take advantage of recent developments in information technology, the report argues. The report says research universities must go to greater lengths to train faculty members to use technology. "They are unprepared for the new plug-and-play generation of students."

Douglas E. Van Houweling, president of the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, which oversees the Internet2 project, was a member of the science-academy committee. He said that while researchers have already embraced advanced computing, "what we have not seen yet is a similar impact on the learning environment." Students, who generally are more comfortable with information technology than are faculty members, already are demanding more-sophisticated uses of information technology in instruction, and those demands are likely to increase, he said.

Academe must adapt its approaches to governance, too, to react more nimbly to technological changes, the report says. "It must begin to do so by reconsidering the academic culture that sometimes allows the demand for consensus to thwart action, and in which consultation is often defined as consent."

But the AAUP's Mr. Smith said it would be unwise to short-circuit campus discussions about the impact of information technology. Consultation and consensus-building are important in shared governance, in part to make sure that decisions are made thoughtfully, he said. "It's important that all members of the community are involved."