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Wednesday, October 18, 2000

Massachusetts May Require All Public-College Students to Own Computers By FLORENCE OLSEN Massachusetts will move ahead with a plan requiring all public-college students to own laptop computers as soon as three years from now, the state's Board of Higher Education decided unanimously on Tuesday. But a way of paying for the plan remains to be worked out. The computer requirement is the cornerstone of a proposed three-year information-technology plan for public colleges that board members say would cost $120-million to set up and $60-million a year in subsequent years to sustain. A copy of the plan, which is called Choosing to Compete in the New Economy, can be downloaded as a portable document file. Judith I. Gill, the board's chancellor, says new programs called for in the plan would guarantee Massachusetts "the kind of high-quality, industry-responsive, I.T.-education programs it needs to keep the economy growing." The chancellor says she and Peter Nessen, a board member who is a former secretary of administration and finance for the state, will spend the next five weeks working out a strategy to put the plan in place and pay for it. "This is something on which we'll need to work with the governor and the legislature and industry," Ms. Gill says. "The governor and the legislature and the residents of Massachusetts are going to be asking questions about the funding, and whether it is realistic." No other state currently requires all students at public colleges and universities to have computers, although some individual institutions have such requirements, including the University of Florida and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Massachusetts requirement, which would also bring computers to all faculty members at the public institutions, would begin in the fall of 2001 as a pilot program involving only three institutions. Students would be able to buy laptop computers at discounted prices, and low-income students would get vouchers that would partially or fully cover the cost of their laptops. The board also approved a new facilities-and-equipment program that would pay for electronic classrooms, the installation of wireless networks on all campuses, and a systemwide electronic library through which all students could gain access to electronic databases. "As computers become as important as textbooks, an institution's facilities and equipment must follow suit," the chancellor said in a written summary of the board's plan. The plan calls for spending $11.7-million in the first three years on recruiting and retaining I.T. faculty members. As part of the recruiting effort, the board approved a "professors of practice" grant program that would bring I.T.-industry employees onto campuses to teach part-time, with no reduction in their pay. Another program would involve faculty members in developing and teaching distance-education courses for several campuses. The $11.7-million sum would also pay for 60 new I.T. faculty positions, market-based salary adjustments, and professional-development activities for I.T. faculty members. Also included in the plan are new instructional-technology programs, estimated to cost $26.7-million over three years, and improvements in existing academic programs in computer science and information technology, costing $10.7-million. A computer-literacy component of the plan, estimated at $570,000, would set minimum levels that students would be expected to reach by the end of their freshman year in college. Reaction to the plan has been mixed. At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, John F. Dubach, associate chancellor of information technology, says a statewide requirement would put an end to a debate that has gone on for at least 10 years on the flagship campus. "We have debated the computer requirement twice a year just about every year," he says. "We may be happy that they just called the question, finally." About 85 percent of students enrolled on the Amherst campus bring computers when they come to college, he says. For the remaining 15 percent, a computer requirement "opens up some financial-aid opportunities" that would help defray the added financial burden. "A good thing about this proposal," he says, "is that it addresses that" and other issues. Some administrators have noted that a mandatory laptop requirement may be more difficult for large public institutions to manage than it is for small private colleges, because of the different procurement rules under which public institutions operate. David G. Brown, a vice president and dean of the International Center for Computer Enhanced Learning at Wake Forest University, says that having a single laptop vendor, as Wake Forest does, greatly simplifies the maintenance-and-support aspects of a mandatory computer program. Public institutions, however, would more likely have to support a variety of laptop models and network configurations, he says, creating "fewer possibilities for absolute and full standardization." A computer requirement brings academic benefits, Mr. Brown says. "If a faculty member must teach to the student who has the least access to the Internet, then there must be a dumbing down of the course, much like teaching without access to a library requires dumbing down a course." But not all administrators are warm to the idea of mandating computer ownership. Whether to require, rather than recommend, that students have their own computers "is certainly an issue we're struggling with," says Samuel F. Averitt, vice provost for information technology at North Carolina State University. As a land-grant institution, the university has a broad mission to serve "the less advantaged," he says. That mission makes it more difficult to set a requirement that would "more than double the cost of tuition." Mr. Averitt says North Carolina State has no compelling academic reason at this time for requiring all students to own computers. The university's libraries and laboratories are well equipped with computers, he says. But he acknowledges that his university and other public institutions feel pressure from outside to institute computer requirements. "We live in an image-sensitive society," he says. "There's an expectation by parents, students, the news media, and so forth who are judging the quality of an institution that if you don't have a PC requirement, then somehow you are not as progressive, you're not providing as high-quality an education" as institutions that have such a requirement. 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