Student Demands or Strategic IT Planning?

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Student Demands or Strategic IT Planning?

10/1/2003

By Terry Calhoun

Are we placing too much importance on students’ needs when making IT decisions? A new survey’s findings include the fact that at today’s higher education institutions "executives place students well ahead of faculty and staff in their adoption of IT." According to Jose-Marie Griffiths, chair and professor of information science at the University of Pittsburgh, and an author of the survey’s report, much of the IT agenda – including things like connectivity on- and off-campus, mobility, smart classrooms, distance learning, course management systems, help desks, and more – is driven by a competition to recruit students. This is not necessarily bad, but she sees it creating a subtle disconnection from institutional strategic planning that might be diminishing the attention paid to the potential IT might have for the academic disciplines.

I agree, and further, I think that there is a direct relationship between this "disconnection" and the failure to recognize and reward early adopter work in technology applications for non-technical research and for teaching and learning. The issue is further complicated by a strong aversion, again on the academician side, toward getting involved in all that strategic planning stuff – especially if it means working with people who aren’t subject-matter experts. And this is killing liberal education.

The survey research study, titled "Information Technology Success and Best Practices in Higher Education," is a compilation and analysis of survey responses from 400 higher education executives at the president, chancellor, CFO, CAO, CIO level. [See Resources, below.]
These top executives believe that financial support for IT is critical to institutional growth and reputation. Consequently, they want their institutions to move further toward the early adopter position in developing and implementing new technologies. They’re also concerned about privacy and security issues. All of this is good news for IT staffers – it means more money, more "stuff," and more prestige on campus.

The same leaders also believe that IT is important to the achievement of institutional strategic goals, although they acknowledge that measuring its impact is not something we yet know how to do very well. Also, a lack of coherent IT planning processes is a major concern.
That sounds pretty mundane, but it’s also pretty important. Part of what it means is that if you define institutional goals as more students and you can show that you attracted more students because you have the coolest wireless network around (just like having the coolest campus around works in recruitment brochure pictures), then you can measure that success. But if your institutional goal is more students, then that’s not a whole lot different from saying it’s "more sales" of a product, and then you’re just another company.

What about success of a more esoteric sort? You know, the "core of the academic mission" sort: teaching, learning, research, scholarship? I think this is what Griffiths is getting at, and I think she’s right. Most of what has been spent on campus IT has been driven by students’ needs, or at least by their perceived needs. And it is important to keep them coming in the door. But, while that’s a precursor for institutional success, it isn’t what the institution is aimed at, necessarily, unless you work for a for-profit.