Redefining quality the Educause way

by Christopher Hanlon

Debates over whether and how information technologies should affect the profile of higher education are shaped primarily by the interests of faculty, students and administration, right? Think again. In recent years, a fourth interested faction has come to dominate such discussions--that of nonprofit but corporate-funded entities known as "educational collaboratives."

The largest such collaborative is Educause, an organization whose stated values are the most hostile to those that have traditionally shaped this country's system of higher education. Educause also has been the most successful at inculcating its message in the upper floors of administrative buildings across the globe.

More than 1,800 colleges and universities across six continents have signed up as Educause members. With them are a legion of dues-paying corporate members who provide the ballast of Educause's nearly $11 million budget.

A glance at Educause's corporate roster reveals whose interests the organization is designed to serve. The 196 corporate sponsors of Educause include Adobe Systems, Apple Computers, Cisco Systems, Dell, eCollege.com, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lotus Development, Microsoft, Nortell, Palm, Questia, Sun Microsystems, Toshiba, Verizon, WebCT and Xerox, to name just a few of the best known information technologies and communications companies.

They are motivated by more than $200 billion in revenue circulating through the American system of public higher ed annually. It's not surprising that entrepreneurs from across the NASDAQ and beyond would like to divert more of these dollars their way. Under the guise of nonprofit consortiums like Educause, and through an array of heavily funded books and position papers [see box for those cited in this article], they have made the case for undertaking what one Educause author calls a "redefinition of quality" in higher education. Their goal is to reorganize priorities to make tomorrow's campus a more "efficient"--and definitely more profitable--place to do business.

Consider, for instance, Educause gurus William Massy and Robert Zemsky, who, seven years ago, urged college administrators to hire fewer faculty so that they can instead buy more computers. "The 'career' of a workstation," they explained, "may well be less than five years, whereas that of a professor often exceeds 30 years. Workstations don't get tenure, and delegations are less likely to wait on the provost when particular equipment items are 'laid off.'" By appropriating budgets to purchase more computers rather than to hire more people, universities and academic departments "will gain a larger zone of flexibility as the capital-labor ratio grows."

In other words, numbers of tenured faculty will dwindle, being gradually replaced by smaller numbers of lower-paid, untenurable "knowledge workers." In the process, incidentally, high-tech manufacturers and service providers will reap rich profits.

Consider also Educause's lobbying efforts to deregulate higher education in the United States. Carol Twigg, a former vice president of Educom, a predecessor organization for Educause, explains that since "deregulating higher education will allow a wide range of providers to develop and deliver content and to set standards," multicampus governing boards and regional accreditation bureaus "should be replaced by national and global frameworks in much the same way as we have deregulated the railroads, airlines, securities exchange and banking industries." In order to effect such deregulation, Educause has budgeted more than $1.7 million this year for its Federal Relations and Outreach program. One immediate goal of the program is to appoint Educause members to the leadership of the secretariat of the American Council on Education (ACE), the major higher education council in Washington, D.C.

Consider, lastly, that former Educom president Robert Heterick likes to envision the future "industry" of higher education by smiling over the effects corporations like Wal-Mart have had on the economy. With the advent of monoliths like Wal-Mart, Heterick points out, "we have seen the rise of specialty stores for consumers seeking something more than the fixed inventory of the mega-chain store."

In a similar way, Heterick predicts, the Wal-Martification of higher education will undoubtedly produce a subset of students who "seek something more," a niche market of those who still crave close contact with real professors on physical campuses--"consumers" who "are willing to pay a premium" for what will become the educational equivalent of organic produce or Sumatran coffee.

So emerges the blueprint of higher education in the United States as these social engineers chart it: There will of course always be a small number of ivory towers left in which the affluent few may indulge a taste for individualized instruction and seminar rooms, the same sort of people who "prefer" to shop on Rodeo Drive or Madison Avenue. Others we will entrust to the same market that has brought us Wal-Mart.

Those who find such arguments compatible with the core values of a strong system of higher education are guilty of willful naivete at best. On behalf of our own interests as well as those of future students who find themselves on the wrong side of the Wal-Mart divide, faculty must recognize the contempt with which Educause and other corporate-driven "educational collaboratives" regard our traditional mission. Countering it is a job no one else is going to undertake for us.