Cover Story - Technology

Technology Transforming Higher Education

If you’re the parent of a college freshman, don’t bother camping out by the mailbox come December waiting for those first semester grades to arrive. You’d likely be wasting your time. Evidence of just how far technology has progressed on college campuses is that student grades are now posted on a password-protected web site.

It will do parents no good to protest that they are paying the tuition bills so the grades ought to come to them. “It’s actually federal law that mandates that individuals over the age of 18 own their student information,” explains Tom Canepa, associate vice chancellor for enrollment services at Western Carolina University.

Since the days of vacuum tubes and bulky mainframes, colleges and universities have been ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting new technologies. In fact, much of what we now know as the Internet was developed by academics wanting to share research data with their far-flung collaborators. In recent decades, technology has driven much of the delivery of distance learning, beginning with cable television, audiotapes and videotapes, two-way satellite transmissions and the growing assortment of online courses available today.

But technology — personal computers, fax machines, cell phones, voice mail systems — is also transforming the business of higher education, in ways that may surprise the parents of today’s college students.

“From an administrative standpoint, technology has saved us,” says Craig Fulton, director of admissions at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. With his institution undergoing a feverish growth spurt, having access to time and labor saving tools has enabled Fulton and his colleagues to meet growing demands without a corresponding expansion of administrative overhead. “Technology has revolutionized the admissions process just in the last two years,” he says. Gone are the piles of paper applications that had to make their way around campus in mail pouches. Today, nearly half of UNCC applicants apply online. Nor must today’s college applicants rush to the mailbox seeking their hoped-for acceptance letters. “About 70 percent of our kids find out they were admitted by checking the Internet,” Fulton says.

From faculty and support staff through the presidential level, technology has dramatically altered the work habits of those on campuses across the state. “The mobile phone has been one of the best management tools I can think of,” says Tony Zeiss, president of Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte. “With it, I am accessible no matter where I am, and so is everybody else.”

Students at many colleges now have the choice of being able to interact with student services either in person (i.e., the old-fashioned way), via the web or through automated telephone systems. In addition to applying, browsing courses, registering and making payments online, students may check cafeteria menus, schedule interviews with visiting corporate recruiters, seek tutoring or crisis counseling, and much more.

“Students love the flexibility that technology provides,” says Marvin Allen, dean of business technologies at Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem. And because technologies have opened a world of new learning opportunities that are independent of place and time, colleges that don’t offer students convenient services may find their traditional student populations enroll elsewhere. “Today’s students think much more like consumers,” Allen says.

But there is a dark side. Employers groan about today’s graduates being spoiled on too much anytime-anywhere time management, forgetting what it’s like to live by a schedule. “Too much flexibility doesn’t cultivate the discipline that employers need,” says Allen. And some parents wonder if the rich social interaction that has always been so central to the college experience isn’t slowly disappearing. Mike Wallace, a coordinator at N.C. State University’s Department of Campus Activities, has begun to notice some students emailing friends who are sitting in an adjacent dorm room. “We frequently wonder what all this will do to students’ ability to communicate face-to-face,” he says.

Especially, one wonders, when it comes to grades and their parents, likely the ones footing the tuition bill. “We do everything we can to make sure that our students are talking to their parents,” assures Canepa.  -- Lawrence Bivins

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