Plenary Panel Introduction Will universities become extinct in the networked world

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Plenary Panel IntroductionWill universities
become extinct in the networked world?
ICDE 21st World Conference Hong Kong, 2004
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The Networked WorldInternet Access Population
(millions)

• USA 182.1
• Japan 56.1
• China 45.8
• Germany 44.1
• UK 34.3
• South Korea 25.6
• Canada 16.8
• Australia 12.8
• Netherlands 10.4
• Sweden 6.7

Total global population estimated at 655 million
Source A C Nielsen, Sept 2003
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• Joseph Schumpeter (1934) predicted that every 50
  years or so, technological revolutions would
  cause
• "gales of creative destruction
• in which old industries would be swept away and
  replaced by new ones.

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Driver for Change

• 'The death of distance as a determinant of the
  cost of communications will probably be the
  single most important economic force shaping
  society in the first half of the 21st century'.
• Cairncross (1997)

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The Knowledge Explosion
Over 90 of the relevant literature in many
technical fields, such as biotechnology,
astronomy, computers and software, and
environmental sciences, has been produced since
1985. J B Quinn (2001)
Traditional programmatic approaches to education
simply cannot keep up...
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Explosion in Demand

• A recent IBM report forecasts a threefold (US4.5
  trillion) jump in global education expenditure
  during the next 13 years.
• (Source Richard Gluyas, New Nabs e-School Deal
  http//finance.news.com.au, 22 April 2000).

• The World Bank expects the number of higher
  education students will more than double from 70
  million to 160 million by 2025.

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Leadership Challenge From Elite to Mass Higher
Education
In 1946 8 Australian universities teaching
about 26,000 students. In 2003 38 Australian
universities teaching about 890,000 students.
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Future Projections

• By 2005, e-learning will be the single most used
  application on the web.
• (Source Harris, Logan Lundy, Gartner
  Research, 2001).

• Corporate investment in e-learning will grow from
  US2.1 billion in 2001 to US33.4 billion in
  2005.

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The Knowledge-based Economy
There are increasing signs that our current
paradigms for higher education, the nature of our
academic programs, the organization of our
colleges and universities, and the way that we
finance, conduct and distribute the services of
higher education may not be able to adapt to the
demands of our time. J J Duderstadt (2001)
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Any new technology environment eventually
creates a totally new human environment
Marshall McLuhan
The e-Revolution
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Leadership?
The fact that the present traditional approaches
based on conventional classroom-based teaching
and learning will not be capable of meeting the
escalating demand for higher education in the
knowledge society has apparently failed to
register in the minds of many executive managers.
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Leadership Challenge
Stepping onto many a university campus in 2004 -
as the information economy gains momentum a
visitor from 1950 would feel quite at home.
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Leadership Challenge
Technology is the key variable making possible,
and imperative, the reinvention of the
corporation. Stace
Dunphy (2001)
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Institutional Capacity for Change
While there is a great deal of business
literature on companies that have restructured
and re-engineered to respond to new competitive
threats and rapidly changing market conditions,
universities are generally regarded as being
stubbornly resistant to change as a result of the
typically conservative and reactionary pressures
both internal and external to the organization.
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• The problems faced by mass higher education
  today come from a system which has become mass in
  its size but remains elite in its values.
• The recent external changes of numbers,
  structures, finance, and governance have not been
  matched by appropriate internal changes of
  values, purpose and activities.

Source Wagner (1995) p.21
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Trying to change a university is like trying to
move a graveyard ---
Organizational Inertia

• it is extremely difficult and you dont get much
  internal support.

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The transition from the Industrial to the
Information Age was encapsulated by Dolence and
Norris (1995), who argued that to survive
organisations would need to change from rigid,
formula driven entities to organisations that are
fast, flexible and fluid.
Fast, Flexible and Fluid
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Random Acts of Innovation
The potential benefits of e-learning will not be
achieved in the present vertical academic silos,
which are typified by the random acts of
innovation of individual academics rather than
by systemic strategic planning.
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Institutional Sustainability
Fast, flexible and fluid organizations that can
provide customized, high quality, value added
services that satisfy customer needs with speed
and accuracy at the appropriate price point , are
the only institutions that will survive and
thrive in the 21st century.
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Fantasyland
Is this fantasyland for universities typified
by the hierarchical, bureaucratic academic
structure in which the provision of effective
services to students is significantly inhibited
by personal agendas and dependence on management
via multiple layers of committees that move with
glacier-like momentum?
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Organizational Inertia
The greatest danger in times of turbulence, is
not the turbulence.. it is to act with
yesterdays logic.
Peter Drucker (1991)
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• In 1803 the British deployed a military
  attachment to stand on the Cliffs of Dover to
  watch for Napoleon.

• It was not until 1927 that the detachment was
  disbanded.

• Napoleon Bonaparte died in 1821.

Source Stace Dunphy (2001)
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Will universities become extinct in the networked
world?

• Within the next decade, the view that
  universities, like dinosaurs, may be unable to
  adapt to the increasing pressures of
  technological development and globalization is
  likely to gather empirical support.