By now, everybody knows about it -- about the tremendous advances in
computer networks as tools of inquiry; about the free communication links
among researchers around the world; about the loss of stifling
organizational hierarchy and coercive governmental controls; and about the
ethic of sharing information instead of commercializing it. Technology, it
seems, has created a new set of tools for academic endeavors,
strengthening and enriching the existing research environment.
Parts of this exciting scenario are indeed coming true. Yet to conclude
that the global academic village is all gain and no pain (beyond perhaps
the need to protect against a few immature but creative youngsters) would
be naive. True, communications technology will link the information
resources of the globe. But as one connects in new ways, one also
disconnects the old ways. Thus, while new communications technologies are
likely to strengthen research, they will also weaken the traditional major
institutions of learning, the universities. Instead of prospering with the
new tools, many of the traditional functions of universities will be
superseded, their financial base eroded, their technology replaced, and
their role in intellectual inquiry reduced. This is not a cheerful
scenario for higher education.
Scholarly activity, viewed dispassionately, consists primarily of three
elements: (i) the creation of knowledge and evaluation of its validity;
(ii) the preservation of information; and (iii) the transmission of this
information to others. Accomplishing each of these functions is based on a
set of technologies and economics. Together with history and politics,
they give rise to a set of institutions. Change the technology and
economics, and the institutions must change, eventually.
The Old Direction of Information Flows
Information institutions started about 5000 to 8000 years ago when, at
different places around the world, priests emerged as specialized
preservers and producers of information. Collectively, they were also the
primary information storage medium of their societies. Because reliance on
individual and group memory to transmit information across time and space
was inefficient, recording methods emerged. Writers had to be trained, and
schools emerged. Writing, in turn, led to the establishment of formal
information storage institutions. Under the Assyrian king Assurbanipal
(668 to 627 B.C.), the royal library in Nineveh stocked over 10,000 works.
Documents were arranged by subject such as law, medicine, history,
astronomy, biography, religion, commerce, legends, and hymns, each in a
separate room in a compound. Wise men congregated there to use the
information and to add to it. No doubt they also argued among themselves
and were surrounded by disciples. Thus, knowledge and inquiry were already
being organized along lines strikingly similar to today's university
departments.
This model-- centrally stored information, scholars coming to the
information, and a wide range of information subjects housed under one
institutional roof-- was logical when information was scarce, reproduction
of documents expensive and restricted, and specialization low. lt became
also the model for the most formidable of knowledge institutions of
antiquity, the Great Library of Alexandria. At its peak, the library
amassed nearly 700,000 volumes. Less recognized is its role as a graduate
university. From the beginning, Ptolemy I Soter and his librarian,
Demetrius, recruited some of the foremost scholars of the Hellenistic
culture, such as the geometrician Euclid, to what was called the "museum."
These scholars were surrounded by disciples and apprentices. Again, the
pattern was similar. Scholars came to the informationstorage institution
and produced collaboratively still more information there, and students
came to the scholars.
The New Direction of Information Flows
This system of higher education remained remarkably stable for over
2500 years. Now, however, it is in the process of breaking down. The
reason is not primarily technological; technology simply enables change to
occur. The fundamental reason is that today's production and distribution
of information are undermining the traditional flow of information and
with it the university structure, making it ready to collapse in slow
motion once alternatives to its function become possible.
Most branches of science show an exponential growth of about 4 to 8%
annually with a doubling period of 10 to 15 years. As an illustration of
this trend, Chemical Abstracts took 31 years (1907 to 1937) to publish its
first 1 million abstracts; the second million took 18 years; the most
recent million took only 1.75 years. Thus, more articles on chemistry have
been published in the past 2 years than throughout history before 1900.
The response of organizations to the increased volume of information
has been to improve processing capabilities by various means, such as
better education, larger staffs, internal reorganization, and investment
in technology. The main strategy, however, has been to increase
specialization. As the body of knowledge grows, fields of expertise evolve
into ever narrower slices.
The inexorable specialization of scholars means that even research
universities cannot maintain coverage of all subject areas in the face of
the expanding universe of knowledge, unless their research staff grows at
more or less the same rate as scholarly output, doubling every 5 to 10
years. This is not sustainable either economically or organizationally,
nor would it permit the existence of smaller-sized elite universities. As
a result, universities no longer cover a broad range of scholarship. They
might still have offerings in most of the major academic disciplines
(whatever that means), but in only a limited set of the numerous
subspecialities. For the same reason, many specialized scholars find fewer
similarly specialized colleagues on their own campus for purposes of
complementarity of work. Instead, scholarly interaction increasingly takes
place with similarly interested but distant specialists, that is, in the
professional rather than the physical realm.
None of this is new, of course. But as the information-induced
pressures of specialization have grown, so have the means to make the
invisible college the main affiliation. Air transport established the
jet-setting professoriate. Even more so, electronic communications are now
creating new electronic scholarly communities in response to the
elementary need for intellectual collaboration. Ironically, it is the
university that pays for the network connectivity that helps its resident
scholars to shift the focus of their attention to the outside world or, in
the jargon of electronic communications, to join virtual communities in
cyberspace. As this happens -- and we are only at the beginning of
convenient technology -- the advantage of physical proximity of scholars
in universities declines steeply.
The second function of the university is the storage of information. It
has been said that a university is as strong as its library. But here,
too, considerations of economics and technology change everything. As the
production of scholarship increases exponentially, so does the cost of
acquisition and reference. For example, in 1940 an annual subscription to
Chemical Abstracts cost $12; in 1977 it was $3500; and in 1995 it was
$17,400. As comprehensive library collections have become unaffordable,
electronic alternatives have become powerful in their storage capacity,
broad-ranging in content and efficient in retrieval. Therefore,
universities are gradually shifting from investment in the physical
presence of information to the creation of electronic access. It is a
logical response and undermines the fundamental role of the university as
the repository for specialized information. Soon the combination of laptop
computer and phone line will serve this function as well and often better
anywhere, anytime.
The third function of the university is the transmission of
information, its teaching role. It is hard to imagine that the present
low-tech lecture system will survive. Student-teacher interaction is
already under stress as a result of the widening gulf between basic
teaching and specialized research. And the interaction also comes with a
big price tag. If alternative instructional technologies and credentialing
systems can be devised, there will be a migration away from classic
campus-based higher education. The tools for alternatives could be video
servers with stored lectures by outstanding scholars, electronic access to
interactive reading materials and study exercises, electronic
interactivity with faculty and teaching assistants, hypertextbooks and new
forms of experiencing knowledge, video- and computer-conferencing, and
language translation programs. While it is true that the advantages of
electronic forms of instruction have sometimes been absurdly exaggerated,
the point is not that they are superior to face-to-face teaching (though
the latter is often romanticized), but that they can be provided at
dramatically lower cost. A curriculum, once created, could be offered
electronically not just to hundreds of students nearby but to tens of
thousands around the world. It would be provided by universities seeking
additional revenues in a period of declining cohorts, though probably not
at first by elite colleges, which guard their scarcity value.
Already, electronic distance education is available for a wide range of
educational instruction through broadcast, cable, on- line, and satellite
technologies. Such forms of instruction appeal to motivated students with
full-time jobs, family obligations, limit- ed mobility, distant locations,
and needs for specialized courses. An example is the Agricultural
Satellite Network (AgSat), which allows two dozen agricultural colleges to
exchange their course offerings and "reduce duplication." Such efforts at
cost reduction are not likely to be welcomed by the beneficiaries of
low-tech teaching, the university faculty, which finally defines the
mission and structure of its institutions and is as resistant to change as
any other profession.
In any event, the ultimate providers of an electronic curriculum will
not be universities (they will merely break the ice) but rather commercial
firms. Textbook publishers will establish sophisticated electronic courses
taught by the most effective and prestigious lecturers. At present,
tuition fees at private universities are nearly $50 per lecture hour per
student, not counting most of the public and philanthropic support that
universities receive or the opportunity cost of students' time. With such
Broadway show-sized prices, alternative providers will inevitably enter
the electronic education market.
Today's students, if they seek prestigious jobs or entry-restricted
professions, usually have no choice other than to attend university.
However, this is a weak and mostly legal reed for universities to lean on,
and is only as strong as their gatekeeper control over accreditation and
over the public's acceptance of alternative credentials. When this hold
weakens, we may well have in the future a "McGraw-Hill University"
awarding degrees or certificates, just as today some companies offer
in-house degree programs. If these programs are valued by employers and
society for the quality of admitted students, the knowledge students gain,
and the requirements that students must pass to graduate, they will be
able to compete with many traditional universities, yet without bearing
the substantial overhead of physical institutions.
It is likely that commercial publishers will assemble an effective and
even updated teaching package, making the traditional curriculum at
universities look dull by comparison, just as "Sesame Street" has raised
the expectations of pupils for a lively instructional style. Already
available on video is the "Greatest Lectures by America's Superstar
Teachers," distributed by a company advertising itself as "your own
private university, staffed exclusively by a 'dream team' of America's
best lecture professors." Degrees are granted by the all-electronic
International University College, affiliated with the big cable TV company
Jones Intercable. The same company also offers courses on its Mind
Extension University channel that receive credit by the degree programs of
several dozen colleges.
Commercial providers will offer primarily mainstream undergraduate and
professional education. At the same time, some of the invisible colleges
of interlinked specialists will be transformed from a wide-openness that
is unmanageable, into more structured virtual departments that may offer
graduate credentials, specialization, socialization, and apprenticeship,
thus weakening these roles of the universities, too.
Of course, another reason to attend a university is to participate in a
rite of generational passage into adulthood, and its associated social
networking. While this is an important aspect of university experience, it
could be replicated in other waysÑas it was in the thousands of years
preceding mass college attendanceÑand often in more attractive locations
and climates.
If the university's dominance over higher education falters, its
economic foundation will erode. In these times of budgetary squeezes, most
universities will not be able to compensate for tuition losses by
increased public funding. The role of the private sector will have to grow
in order to fuel and maintain the existing system. Yet private donations
are likely to decline, if anything, with the university's reduced central
role in research and teaching and with increasing disillusionment about
the ability of higher education to solve society's problems.
The Impact on the University
The problems affecting universities will not be uniform. In the area of
teaching, the most negative impact will be on mass undergraduate and
professional education and on highly specialized and advanced fields.
Least affected will be contact-intensive programs such as selective and
tutorial-based liberal arts education (especially if they are backed by
healthy endowments), as well as skill training that requires hands-on
instruction and feedback, and small but stable fields of graduate study
that are not lucrative for commercial providers.
In the area of research, least affected will be fields that do not
experience substantial growth and specialization, and where researchers
share a strong core. (They will be financially squeezed, however, by the
loss of cross-subsidies from previously grant-rich parts of the
university.) Most affected will be highly specialized research, where
keeping up to the minute is critical. This is not to say that research
requiring teams and shared equipment will not necessarily be located on
campus, but it will be connected primarily to other units elsewhere in
academia, industry, and government. The university will then exist as a
sort of office park of semiautonomous units, each a soft money tub on its
own bottom. The administration of universities is then likely to be even
more decentralized than today, and partly run from a distance by
telecommuting staff and specialized subcontractors.
The Future Role of the University
In presenting this bleak scenario for the future of the university, it
is easy to appear as yet another dismal economist or technological
determinist, and to invite a response reaffirming the importance of
quality education, academic values, the historic role of education in
personal growth, and the human need for freewheeling exchange. Such
arguments are correct, may make one feel good, but are beside the point.
The question is not whether universities are important to society, to
knowledge, or to their members, they are, but rather whether the economic
foundation of the present system can be maintained and sustained in the
face of the changed flow of information brought about by electronic
communications. It is not research and teaching that will be under
pressureÑthey will be more important than ever but rather their
instructional setting, the university system. To be culturally important
is necessary (one hopes) but, unfortunately, not sufficient for a major
claim on public and private resources. We may regret this, but we can't
deny it.
This scenario suggests a change of emphasis for universities. True
teaching and learning are about more than information and its
transmission. Education is based on mentoring, internalization,
identification, role modeling, guidance, socialization, interaction, and
group activity. In these processes, physical proximity plays an important
role. Thus, the strength of the future physical university lies less in
pure information and more in college as a community; less in wholesale
lecture, and more in individual tutorial; less in Cyber-U, and more in
Goodbye-Mr.-Chips College. Technology would augment, not substitute, and
provide new tools for strengthening community on campus, even beyond
graduation.
In research, the physical university's strength lies in establishing on
campus specialized islands of excellence that benefit from the
complementarity of physical proximity. This requires the active management
of priorities, and a significant unbundling of the credentialing,
teaching, housekeeping, and research functions. In the validation of
information, the university will become more important than ever. With the
explosive growth in the production of knowledge, society requires credible
gatekeepers of information, and has entrusted some of that function to
universities and its resident experts, not to information networks. But to
safeguard the credibility of this function requires universities to be
vigilant against creeping self- commercialization and self-censorship.
The threats to universities may not appear overnight, but they will
surely arrive. People often overestimate the impact of change in the short
term, but they also underestimate it in the long term. They recall that
earlier promises about the potential of broadcasting as a tool of distance
education failed to materialize, and they now believe that even a vastly
more effective interactive medium will meet the same fate, forever.
Yet the fundamental forces at work cannot be ignored. They are the
consequence of a reversal in the historic direction of information flow.
In the past, people came to the information, which was stored at the
university. In the future, the information will come to the people,
wherever they are. What then is the role of the university? Will it be
more than a collection of remaining physical functions, such as the
science laboratory and the football team? Will the impact electronics on
the university be like that of printing on the medieval cathedral, ending
its central role in infromation transfer? Have we reached the end of the
line of a model that goes back to Nineveh, more than 2500 years ago? Can
we self-reform the university, or must things get much worse first?