Chemical Education Today
Editorial
Higher Education in Transition Often we concentrate so much on our discipline, department, classes, or daily routine that we fail to consider changes on a wider scale that may completely alter our professional lives. One such change is the tremendous growth in communications and data processing technologies, and their ever-increasing impact on the ways people live and work. According to Peter Drucker, who has correctly predicted numerous social changes, “Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won’t survive. It’s as large a change as when we first got the printed book.” Others disagree, pointing out that Drucker has also been completely wrong in some of his predictions. Nevertheless, it is useful and prudent to think seriously about the impact information technologies are likely to have on universities— and on all educational institutions. This has been done in detail in a white paper (1) prepared by Russell Edgerton, Director of the Education Program of the Pew Charitable Trusts. (The Pew Charitable Trusts provide more than $30 million of support to education programs every year.) Tracing the history of higher education in America, Edgerton points out that during the last 20 years of the 19th century a system of classics-oriented, residential, liberal-arts colleges affiliated with various religions gave way to or were transformed into universities. The new wave of universities had undergraduate programs that were loosely modeled on the English colleges that had dominated higher education up to the Civil War, but their graduate programs emulated the German ideal of an eminent faculty dedicated to research and the training of new generations of scholars. By the turn of the 20th century the new university model was becoming the norm, and it has remained so for 100 years. However, it may be changing. It is possible that we have lived through the beginning of a similar transformation of higher education during the last decade of the 20th century—one that will continue for another decade or two into the new millennium. Harbingers of change are a variety of Internet-based or World-Wide-Web-based distance-learning courses, such as Stanford’s online master’s degree in electrical engineering (developed in cooperation with Microsoft and Compaq Computer). Online courses are also offered by, among others, Washington State University, Oklahoma State University, the University of Colorado, Regents College (New York), and the University of California. Companies such as Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, and Novell have supported the Western Governors University, a consortium of 18 states and Guam that brokers virtual courses offered at different universities. A pilot project at Washington State University has been supported by a $500,000 grant from the Virtual Education Foundation, which is headed by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. Some in the academy argue that faculty members’ independence and intellectual property are being sold to the highest bidder—usually private industry. Instruction is becoming a salable commodity, and students and teachers may well be losers if instructional materials become the property of universities or companies. Does a university that has spent a
lot of money to help a faculty member develop a course own that course? Or does the faculty member who has spent a lot of time and effort own it? Suppose a business supplies the funding? Those who develop software, hardware, or information systems for startup companies usually get stock options that make them rich if their company prospers. Should faculty members who develop really good …higher education is virtual courses expect likely to change the same benefits? Or should all of the profdrastically over the next its go to the institu20 years. It will require tions that supported our best efforts to channel course development? Edgerton argues that change in ways that that higher education will protect the interests faces “three continuof our students and ing challenges: costs, quality, and connecourselves. tions to the public agenda.” The children of the baby boomers are beginning to attend colleges and universities, swelling the numbers enrolled at a time when government support for higher education provides a declining percentage of total budgets. Quality of higher education has not been held to a high enough standard, because there are inadequate incentives for faculty and administrators to pay attention to ongoing quality improvement. And higher education is no longer seen by the general public, or by policymakers, as a major player in addressing the country’s most pressing problems. Edgerton summarizes the challenges we face as follows. In the face of rising costs and declining revenues, colleges and universities cannot continue to conduct business as usual. As educating institutions, they are not nearly as powerful as they could be—and need to be— to meet America’s emerging challenges. And to reclaim their status as a worthy public investment, they need to more actively engage in the problems that are now on the nation’s agenda.
By analogy with the changes that occurred at the end of the 19th century, those universities that most successfully address these late-20th-century challenges will be the leaders of 21st-century education. If none can do so, then other entities will, and Drucker’s prediction may come true. In either case, higher education is likely to change drastically over the next 20 years. It will require our best efforts to channel that change in ways that will protect the interests of our students and ourselves.
Literature Cited 1. Edgerton, R. Education White Paper; Pew Charitable Trusts, 1998; http://www.pewtrusts.com/Frame.cfm?Framesource=programs/ edu/eduindex.cfm.
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 76 No. 3 March 1999 • Journal of Chemical Education
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