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Elephants in Our Room
6/9/2004
Instead of discussing the fundamental costs and associated trade-offs of a massive organizational distribution of IT authority, chief business officers point fingers at CIOs as unbusinesslike, techno-centric spendthrifts while CIOs brand their business colleagues as myopic, bean-counting anti-intellectuals. Perhaps if those of us responsible for the stewardship and guidance of our institutions' resources could implement a cease-fire, we could then grapple with the real conundrum. That conundrum, of course, is the likelihood that (1) the IT costs associated with teaching and learning must and should overtake the IT costs for "administering" the institution; (2) the IT costs of administration are not likely to go down; and (3) total revenues for higher education (on the whole) are not likely to rise. The two elephants are on a collision course.
This essay is not intended to either defend or disparage the practice of devolving responsibility for various IT operations at many colleges and universities. It is, however, intended to publicly reveal the elephants in the room. For the first time in the sixty-year history of computing, there is a real likelihood that advances in computing and communications will enable genuine breakthroughs in learning and instruction. A revolution in our core production function is possible if we in higher education information technology can acknowledge the elephants in our room. To realize the promise reflected in our investments in networks, enterprise systems, and so forth, we need to break out of the "zero-sum-ness" of our funding environment. To do this, we need to engage our colleagues and our constituents in an open discourse about the real costs and benefits of letting one thousand flowers bloom. Although it seems axiomatic that we should vest in our faculty and investigators nearly complete authority in the classroom and laboratory, can we continue to grant them de facto authority over large portions of the IT infrastructure, including the rights to adopt ad hoc technology standards, security protocols and practices, and equipment life-cycle management?
Can we talk about those elephants?
Are the costs of doing IT the way we do it on campus "out of control?" You can bet that there are a number of CBOs/CFOs who would find it appropriate to label it in such a way. It's in the best interest of the IT folks and the business folks to talk about those elephants and ensure that the dollars we spend are spent on the right things, but that we definitely get to spend those dollars. IT matters as much to higher education as it d'es to any other industry. For us, it's more than just "infrastructure" and that also needs to part of this dialogue.
*****
Posted/reprinted with permission. EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 39, no. 3 (May/June
2004): 68. http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm04310.asp
*****
About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society
for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.
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