Remarks by Penn State President Graham Spanier
on
Higher Education's Perspective on Information TechnologyNational Information Technology Workforce Convocation
Berkeley, California , January 12, 1998It is my privilege to join you today to discuss higher education's perspective on information technology. From my vantage point as chair of the Commission on Information Technologies of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, chair of higher learning's Presidential Advisory Board on Information Technology, a founding board member of the University Consortium for Advanced Internet Development (more commonly known as Internet 2), and as President of Penn State, I have the opportunity to witness firsthand the profound impact these technologies are having on virtually every aspect of our colleges and universities.
Let me begin with a story. It's about three University professors and three computer programmers on a train on their way to a meeting. All of the programmers had a ticket in their pockets. The professors had only one ticket for all of them. (Universities, you know, are always looking for ways to stretch a dollar.)
"How are three people going to travel on only one ticket?" asked one of the programmers.
"Watch and you'll see," said one of the professors.
So all three professors cram into a restroom and close the door behind them. Shortly after the train departed, the conductor came around to collect tickets. He knocked on the restroom door and said, "Ticket please."
The door opened just a crack and a single arm emerged with a ticket in hand. The conductor took it and moved on.
The programmers saw this and agreed it was quite a clever idea. So after the meeting, they decided to copy the professors. When they got to the station, they bought a single ticket for the return trip. To their astonishment, the professors didn't buy a ticket at all.
How are you going to travel without a ticket?" said one perplexed programmer. "Watch and you'll see" was the answer.
When they boarded the train, the three programmers went into one restroom and the three professors went into another one nearby. The train departed. Shortly afterward, one of the professors left his restroom and walked over to the one where the programmers were hiding. He knocks on the door and says, "Ticket please."
My theme today is that we are all on the same train. My most important message is that it is imperative that higher education accelerate its efforts to meet America's needs for new workers to address the explosion in information science and technology professions. We will need your help. We will need to vastly expand resident instruction degree offerings. And it will continue to be our mission to contribute through research to the continuing advancement of information technologies. But the single largest growth area for higher education in this country is in continuing and distance education, and no professions will be greater beneficiaries of new instructional programming than information science and technology.
There can be no doubt that information technologies are revolutionizing higher education, just as they are radically changing the way business and industry is conducted. This transformation is of tremendous importance to our nation, as just even a few pieces of data show:
-- ITAA previously has estimated that there are about 1 in 10 positions for skilled information technology workers currently unfilled, about half in IT companies and half in other industries.
-- The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that more than 1 million new computer scientists and engineers, systems analysts, and computer programmers will be needed within a matter of years -- most of them to fill newly created jobs.
-- Information technology -- encompassing both computing and telecommunications -- is now the nation's largest industry. A study released last fall by the American Electronics Association and the NASDAQ stock market reports that industry sales grew 57 percent since 1990 to $866 billion.
-- Business Week magazine estimates that the total number of high tech jobs in the nation--including the core industries of computers, software, and communications, associated industries such as sales, and the programmers and technicians employed in other areas of the economy--totals 9.1 million.
-- The use of the Internet for business -- which has really only just taken off in the last year -- is projected to grow phenomenally in the next several years, to support more than $220 billion in commerce and $100 billion in sales of Internet-related products and services, according to the International Data Corporation.
-- Yet as industries and organizations of every kind increasingly rely on advanced digital technologies, the lack of skilled workers is a significant impediment to their growth. According to ITAA, 68 percent of IT company executives say so, citing this reason nearly twice as often as any other.
The grave economic implications of this constellation of facts are a call to action not only for the companies who are in dire need of IT workers but for universities who play a major role in educating computer scientists and engineers, systems analysts, and other skilled information technology professionals. This is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate higher education's key role at the confluence of economic development and human development. It's an important opportunity to exercise the unique leadership of our institutions for the future.
Our educational challenge is fourfold: First, we must vastly increase the number of graduates in information science and technology fields. Second, and more important, we need to transform the technology skills and awareness of all students to better meet marketplace needs. Third, we can contribute to the continuing education that is inherent to such a quickly evolving field. And last, but by no means least, we must rapidly deploy our institutions to address all of the above in response to a rapidly changing industry and society.
Without a doubt, there's a need to graduate more individuals in the technical fields of computer science and engineering. We know that the number of computer and information science degrees is dramatically down compared to 10 years ago, to about 25,000 baccalaureate graduates in 1994 -- the most recent year for which data are available. We also know that only about 2 percent of students earning bachelor's degrees earned them in computer science. Correctly, and as is recognized by one of the task forces for this meeting, the effort to build the skills and interests needed for these fields must begin in the elementary and secondary school years, particularly as they relate to mathematics and engineering.
But based on my observations at Penn State, I believe the tide may already be turning. Demand for our computer science program greatly exceeds its present capacity. We are now seeing the first generation of graduates that has grown up with personal computers. These young people demand access to them on campus for solving problems and completing projects in their courses; they know that digital technologies are important tools in virtually every field of work. And many are savvy enough to see the excellent job opportunities awaiting graduates with high level information technology skills.
What we must do is capitalize on these interests and do so in such a way as to meet the full array of needs for information science and technology workers. There's a need for a spectrum of skills and sophistication ranging from two year degrees to PhDs. One size doesn't fit all. While there will continue to be a substantial demand for bachelor's degrees in computer science and engineering, there appears to be a significant niche for individuals educated at the associate level who, for example, are conversant in the latest programming languages or who are trained to support the growing demand for inter-connectivity between large servers, local networks, and individual PCs. There also is a need for professional master's degrees in areas such as management information science and other discipline-based applications and for masters in information technology management, one of the most rapidly growing areas of demand. And there's a need for students in nearly every major to develop significant competency in information science and technology applications.
As we better articulate this array of programs, there is a need also to address the criticism that our graduates require additional training beyond their degrees before they are ready to work in an information technology job. According to the ITAA survey, almost 70 percent of IT companies feel that only a fraction of the applicants for their jobs have the right skills. Anecdotal evidence abounds on this point. Employers also are looking for previous work experience -- something that certainly can be factored into education through internships and co-op experiences.
We also know that employers are in need of workers who can translate technology to a given area of application as well as workers who can interpret client needs. The largest growing area in the computer and data processing services industry is for systems analysts where jobs are projected to more than double by 2006. These individuals not only must be articulate in information technologies but must also understand the unique features of an organization's information needs in areas such as manufacturing, engineering, sales, education, or health care.
There is an obvious tension between the desire for our graduates to hit the ground running right out of school and the desire for broadly educated employees who can respond positively to the tremendous opportunities continuing technological change generates for the IT industry. Cooperative partnerships between companies and higher education institutions are the very best way to respond to this tension. The possibilities for such efforts will only grow as new technologies that support distance learning further integrate education and the workplace.
There is obviously a tremendous need also for constant updating in an area where change is frequent and continues to accelerate at an astounding rate. Just a few years ago, for example, there were virtually no business employees in Internet applications. Today, there are more than three-quarters of a million. New models of connectivity, new media, new applications, and new languages fuel an information training industry that was estimated at $16 billion last year and is predicted to grow to $27 billion by 2001. If our institutions of higher education were to engage more actively in this market, it would not only provide an important service to the industry but also enhance greatly our sensitivity in providing state-of-the-art education to degree program students as well.
In short, what institutions of higher education must do is balance near-term IT skill needs with long-term competencies in communications, management, and other disciplines. I believe we will accomplish this best through greater integration of information science and technology studies and discipline-based programs, and by partnering with industry to understand quickly and clearly marketplace needs, provide practical experiences for students, and gain access to the latest breaking technologies for the academic community.
Among the options we are pursuing at Penn State is the creation of a new School of Information Science and Technology. While we have not fully articulated the vision for this new approach, my hope is that we would provide a strong core curriculum for students with minors in related fields, or alternatively a minor for students with majors in other fields. Programs would likely span the entire range of options, majors, minors, degrees, certificates, and the entire range of degree possibilities from associate to bachelors to masters to Ph.D. The School would promote multi-disciplinary approaches to education, research, and service. Through this initiative we would hope to build a large cadre of faculty with specific expertise in information technology applications. We would seek partnerships across our existing colleges (particularly Engineering, Science, and Communications) and across 22 of Penn State's campuses.
We also see as a critical component strong relationships with IT companies in support of student internships, curricular innovation, placement of graduates, and research collaborations. This industry involvement is being built from the ground up. In two weeks, a group of IT executives from a dozen major companies will be coming to Penn State to meet with me and the members of a special planning committee. We want to incorporate their views on how best to design educational programs that will prepare a capable IT workforce. We also wish to enlist the continuing industry financial support that is vital to the success of our efforts and ultimately to the success of our graduates. It will be costly for universities such as Penn State to keep up with the technologies necessary to educate the next generation of students. And it will be difficult to get the faculty expertise we need in this area. Close partnerships with IT companies not only will help provide access to the latest software and hardware. They also will enable us to borrow faculty from industry where needed, at least on a part-time basis.
It is simply imperative that America's higher learning communities embrace the advancements in information technology to sustain their leadership. Those of you in industry and government will recognize some parallels in the changes higher education is undergoing as a result of advancing information technology.
For example, instruction is becoming far more interactive. E-mail and other networking modes increase interaction between students and teachers and among students, changing the traditional one-way flow of communication from the professor that has been so much a staple of instruction in the past. The most recent report by the Campus Computing Project indicates that e-mail is now being used in 33 percent of college courses, up from about 25 percent last year, and from 8 percent in 1994 when this measure was first collected. At Penn State, more than 95 percent of our students have activated their access accounts giving them e-mail service and entry on to the web.
Further changes in teaching and learning are being wrought by the enormous availability of resources through the net that may be directly accessed by learners. Data, sound, visualizations, and now even tactile information engage students of every kind more actively in learning.
These changes have profound implications for the structure of courses and programs, for staffing to support both faculty and student technology users, for our library collections and services, and, of course, for the availability of interactive technologies. For our students, this new model of instruction fosters important lifelong learning skills. For the extended learning community we serve, it offers an unprecedented level of flexibility and quality in learning.
Another change concerns the incredible growth in demand for information technology services, and the increased dependence that a university such as Penn State has on a fully functioning infrastructure. This affects all aspects of our mission.
There are nearly 38,000 computers directly attached to Penn State's network, and tens of thousands of computers in faculty, staff, and student residences off campus that are connected indirectly via dial ups. Penn State transmits in excess of 1.7 million e-mail messages per day. Our central Web servers are accessed more than 250,000 times each day from all over the world. Almost 10,000 students have created Web pages that are accessed some 200,000 times per day. Our faculty routinely transmit billions of characters of data in their research to and from other centers around the nation and the world. We have just launched a Penn State World Campus -- a virtual university whose programs and courses will be offered via the Internet and other distance education technologies. The growth of Web-based instruction will vastly increase the number of hours of connectivity required.
With all of these developments, boundaries between the campus, the workplace, and the home are changing and even eroding. Anytime, anywhere access to information and education raises many policy issues that impact on universities and colleges as well as on business and industry. As a result, it is now imperative that higher education participate in the national policy debates on key information technology issues. We can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines and let other interested parties comment on our behalf.
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