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Special Series: Technology and the CEO >> Part 2: Expense or Investment
5/31/2005
” Information technology is not simply a “thing” we purchase. Rather, it is a means to achieving strategic ends, and therefore deserves the president’s attention. In fact, Ward and Hawkins make the same point that I’m aiming at in this article: “Instead of thinking of information technology as a cost center,” they argue, “presidents would be well advised to focus the discussion on the extent to which the investment in technology furthers both sub-unit and institutional goals.” Why view information technology as an investment? Here are a few practical reasons:First, today’s students expect to be able to use the latest (or nearly latest) computer-assisted, Internet-based systems to gain and exchange information and to handle the “business” of living. They are comfortable with the rapid changes in technology, and increasingly demand 24/7 services. They want to apply to your institution over the Internet, do their research and submit assignments electronically, register and pay their bills that way, and use the electronic superhighway for entertainment. While you may not think you’re losing students because your technology’s not up-to-date, you may not realize how many people never even apply if they discover you don’t have what they want.
Second, many faculty will have similar expectations—or in some cases, unrealistic expectations about what your institution should or should not be providing. Every campus has its technojet- setters and its Luddites among the faculty. Simply spending to satisfy the first group without a sound plan that takes into account the larger educational goals of an institution is sure to bring about a reaction from those who believe that any change from the chalkboard assisted lecture is a change for the worse. When you make it clear that you view investing in technology as a means to achieve educational goals, you can gain faculty buy-in by demonstrating that those whose teaching and research are aligned with the institution’s strategic objectives will be supported appropriately. Ask yourself: What educational goals do I want to achieve? Can those goals be achieved more efficiently and effectively if I enhance current operations through technological innovations?
Third—and this is a direct follow-on to my second reason—developing a plan for investing systematically in hardware, software, and personnel will help you ride out the natural ups and downs that will occur when “the next hot idea” sweeps across the educational landscape. Not everyone needs to be on the bleeding edge; developing long-term goals for your campus’s use of technology will allow you to say “no” to fads while having the resources available to say “yes” when you and your management team decide it’s time to upgrade, expand, or change systems. In recent years, there have been a number of tools developed to measure the effectiveness of technology: Dennis Jones’s Technology Costing Methodology (TCM), or Frank Jewett’s BRIDGE model, both described briefly in Sally Johnstone and Russell Poulin’s article on the cost of educational technology (“So, How Much Do Educational Technologies Really Cost?
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