Certainly gains of efficiency and productivity are there to be had, but these are more likely to come from the ground up, from within the institutions themselves, than from any collection of overseers with little understanding of the purpose and nature of universities. Their time horizons are taken from business and politics and are at odds with the longer horizons needed for the `advancement of learning'.
Many of these efficiency gains will continue to be had through the judicious use of technology. But technology must integrate with and serve the functions of the institute - if it does not, it will not and should not be deployed. Universities were early adopters of e-mail, word processing, and the world-wide web because these technologies fit; they facilitated the normal working of the institute.
Further considerable gains in efficiency are being realized as more of the day to day administration of the university is being moved on-line - university policy and records keeping, student registration and course selection, career services, financial services, and university government. There is room for productivity gains in the administration of teaching and research as well. Communication of course information - handouts and course notes, postings of solutions and grades - can be done on the web. The announcement, scheduling, and organization of research seminars, workshops and conferences are ideally suited to the web. In all this, the productivity promise is to reduce the administrative overhead within the university community so that more time can be given over to its mission.
The web however is larger than this. Huge investments are now being made in cabling and switching infrastructure by government and business to provide high bandwidth information networks across nations and around the world. The net is now perceived to be of strategic economic importance by all levels of government. The world-wide web is stumbling towards adolescence and there is much wonder about its place in society. And in particular, about its relation to the university.
Three things together distinguish the internet from previous technology. First is its unprecedented physical reach. High-speed connections to the home and workplace are there now or will be shortly; lower speed wireless connections enable access from the most remote locations. A single-web-server can reach around the planet. Second, the net is open. Whatever information we choose to provide will be accessible world wide - no further special arrangements need to be made. Third, its currency is information. People access the net to find out something; school-children are trained to search the net as they would a library.
Here then is an unprecedented opportunity for the university to connect directly with the society that supports it. Not through any intermediate like government or business, but directly. An opportunity to offer information. An opportunity to define itself in the public eye.
A common suggestion, particularly from the overseers and network builders, is the development of completely web-based courses with `facilitators' rather than instructors. Indeed a few so-called virtual universities have recently been established with the goal to provide all of their courses on the web.
This should give one pause for several reasons. Here are three. First the pedagogical soundness of such courses is suspect. As C.W. Eliot put it in his presidential inaugural address in 1869
``...none know how crude are the prevailing methods of teaching these subjects as those who teach them best. They cannot be taught from books alone, but must be vivified and illustrated by teachers of active, comprehensive, and judicious mind.''If it is difficult to write a good textbook, how much harder to construct a good web-course?
This leads to the second point, namely the task is an undertaking of some magnitude. One estimate based on experience suggests 150 hours labour for each hour of quality web material, or about four years for a typical university course.
My third reason for pause is that the approach is founded on, and conveys to the public, the pre-Elizabethan model of a university as the caretaker of knowledge rather than as its developer. One suspects then that research must be done somewhere else, where the manuscripts are not quite so beautifully illuminated.
The population, our supporters, are most ignorant about the research role of the university. Though we often express frustration that this is the case, we take few steps to remedy the problem. Even amongst researchers, in a world which produces many thousands of periodicals annually, it is difficult to access existing relevant research. Integrative research, described in a recent Ontarion government discussion paper as requiring
``...that the researcher know about and understand advances in research in an area and can distil them for the greater understanding of students, other researchers, and the public''generally falls outside the domain of established research journals, and is lost to all but a few colleagues and students.
To me, the best, most valuable place for a university's web effort is in the organized dissemination of its entire research effort. This would include: every research paper, every scholarly treatment of any subject, every public speech, and web-based pedagogical pearls which illustrate important concepts. The university's web space should be the first and permanent publication vehicle for its members. It should be completely open to the public.
Collectively, the university web spaces would constitute a virtual research library that could be indexed, searched, and accessed globally. The initial steps toward this goal can already be taken. If achieved, this would constitute a fundamental change and would be of lasting value. It would position universities well for the future.