Review by: Zellweger, Franziska (2005-01-04)

As the director of the Higher Education in the Digital Age (HEDA) project at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkley, Diana Harley investigates the policy implications of ICT for higher education. In the present working paper she explores the future landscape of higher education and how it depends on the reaction of the many different institutions to internal and external pressures related to educational technology.

She starts by pointing out the lack of reference models for decision makers in a situation that requires leaders to position their institution on internal and external online learning markets.

Similarly, it seems difficult for researchers in higher education to make predictions about the future impact of ICT. One difficulty stems from the diversity of American universities and the diversity of learner groups within a single institution such as the California university system. This diversity leads to a multiplicity of initiatives, most of them fueled by the efforts and enthusiasm of individual faculty, and not by a centralized strategy. Today, the coordination and integration of these efforts into a more cohesive strategic endeavor is becoming more urgent. For example, the University of California system foresees an over 40% increase in student enrolments over the next 10 years while expecting stagnating budgets. Consequently, UC Berkeley runs some large scale technology experiments to explore potential strategies. Harley illustrates these efforts through a case study of a large chemistry gateway class.

The research findings suggest that the future landscape will depend on how institutions respond to a number of variables:

• Costs and sustainability,
• Technology,
• Students,
• Public expectations and needs,
• The realities versus perceptions of new competitive markets.

Harley assumes that there will always be a market for residential higher education but that new markets will emerge. The structure and function of these markets will be determined by an array of internal and external pressures such as different institutional missions, changing student demographics or the controversies that accompany a university entering the marketplace. The latter issue includes intellectual property, faculty time and incentives, conflicts of interest, and preservation of quality. Successful strategies flexibly arrange online and face-to-face teaching, and are the result of careful planning. They are adjusted to the requirements of the subject matter, the student needs, faculty culture, and the institution’s mission, goals, and budgets.

Over a period of four years, the HEDA project facilitated the dialogue among American higher education leaders in educational technology with regards to the future landscape of higher education and the impact of educational technology. From this work many interesting products such as this paper resulted. However, this article leaves the impression that the initial goal – to provide orientation knowledge for decision makers or evidence on how to reconcile institutional strategies, faculty goals, and student expectations – remains open.

Harley herself indicates in her writing that they set out to observe “a fast-running experiment which lacks the traditional data sets and methodologies that social science researchers need for analysis.” But is it really possible that the best recipe available for leaders as well as researchers is to rely on their imagination when preparing for the future?