I enjoyed some conversations recently about technology in higher education with the chief information officers of a couple prestigious American universities. I’ve been mulling over their observations and thought I would share a couple:

Tim Chester, the CIO at Pepperdine University, remarked that technology is higher education. “If you don’t believe that,” he said, “just turn off the computers for 24 hours and see what happens.” Tim wasn’t suggesting that technology has somehow replaced or overshadowed the learning experience. The interchange that takes place between the teacher and student is still core to the mission of our institutions. His point, which I happen to share, is that information technology has become more than just a convenient tool in the educational process. It is pervasive, omnipresent and critical to learning. It continues to change the way in which our professors teach and our students learn. For example, consider this statistic: a recent study by the Pew Research Center discovered that 26 percent of American adults now read news on their cell phones. And not surprisingly, about 43 percent of those under 50 said they are mobile news consumers, compared with 15 percent of older respondents.

Which leads to something Steve Landry, CIO at Seton Hall University, said that stuck in my brain. He said that when professors tell him they are fearful that they might one day be replaced by a computer, his response is: “If you can be replaced by a computer, you should be.” His point is that if they (which relates to all of us) are still performing transactional tasks that can be performed by a machine, what value are they bringing to the learning process? Technology isn’t a threat. It does for mankind what it mostly has done throughout the ages: it frees us from the mundane tasks to redirect our energy on more strategic pursuits.

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