Law, Policy—and IT?

Microsoft wants Google's market share in higher education applications. They want it badly enough that they are prepared to deal with us. They come to the table with an understanding of our needs. They answer the phone when you call. They get FERPA, and what it takes to meet requirements for HIPAA, including a Business Associates Agreement. They use a real contract, not one by URL. They are even willing to provide financial assistance (as was reported to be the case for the University of Nebraska) for implementation.

A decade or more ago when I began work in higher education administration, many a nose looked down on Microsoft. For some time now that perspective has been changing.

University of Virginia news in the last couple of weeks deserves all of the attention that it is getting, and more. In a previous blog I suggested that these events revealed the criticality of addressing technology at a strategic level for traditional not-for-profit higher education, public and private, large and small institutions.

Has technology left people such as Mrs. Karen Klein behind?

I almost began an entry yesterday on the University of Virginia situation.

Gone is the day when I have read everything the NYT has in the technology section and I am searching around for more, or, better yet, thinking about all of the issues out there that they have not covered. For some time now, and especially since Jill Abramson took over as executive editor, the Times has been doing an excellent job of covering Internet issues. The coverage reflects the important place that those issues have in society. The integration of Internet issues into our everyday life means that it is no longer necessary to explain that "Internet" refers not simply to a technology but a world-class historical phenomenon, meaning further that it touches every area of human experience.

I am working on a presentation today, a riff on a theme I have often mentioned in these blogs under the title: The Internet transfigures humanity. In the course of reviewing the history of U.S. higher education in the twentieth-century, I reread President Eisenhower's farewell speech. In search of understanding the context around which he coined the famous "military-industrial complex" phrase, I discovered that higher education has a walk on role in the drama. Here is what President Eisenhower had to say:

I have read three articles this morning. NYT's Thomas Friedman's "Come the Revolution," and the top two articles in IHE, "Rethinking the Humanities" and "Outsourcing On Line Coaches." To use a phrase that was a good one until the book with the same name made it hackneyed, higher education is undoubtedly at a tipping point. Not even in idyllic Ithaca can I or anyone else pretend that serious and enduring change is upon us, from for-profit education in its myriad forms to new programs for Ph.D.s and worthwhile venture described in this article.