Electronics and the future of education


                           Andrew Odlyzko


Will electronics lead to a much smaller and less expensive educational
establishment, as some hope and others fear?  My expectation is that
it will not.  This prediction does not deny the value of modern
technology.  PCs and the Internet are powerful tools.  Personally I am
skeptical of the extreme claims for technology.  However, that is not
a crucial part of my argument.  Let us suppose that future
3-dimensional holographic projections and high bandwidth networks do
make distance learning so effective that live lectures can be phased
out.  Even then, I believe teachers will still be employed to provide
other types of instruction.

Technology can replace many teachers in their present roles.  If all
we cared about was to produce what the current system does, we could
indeed operate with fewer people.  However, new demands will arise to
take up the slack.  There have always been demands for more personal
attention from teachers than could be met, and those demands are
likely to increase with increasing world-wide competition.  Education
is not a matter of getting to where the Joneses were 10 years ago.  It
is more a matter of trying to get to where the Joneses are likely to
be 10 years from now.

The basic argument is illustrated by the example of business travel.
Salespeople for video and voice conferencing services have plenty of
testimonials from customers, verifying great savings from elimination
of physical trips.  However, travel budgets have not decreased.
Phone, fax, and email usage have all gone up, but so has airplane
travel.  International business trips from the U.S. have increased by
20% in the last 6 years [Miller].

Why has there been no decrease in business travel?  Some trips have
indeed been avoided, and in a static world that would have led to less
travel.  However, our world is anything but static.  There is growth
in world-wide competition, outsourcing, and partnerships that span the
globe.  Furthermore, as competition decreases the differences between
the leaders, while the payoff to the winner increases [FrankC], the
pressure is to take advantage of everything possible.  The value of
catching your partner's or competitor's body language is hard to
quantify.  Still, when the difference that decides between success and
failure is miniscule, people try to gain any advantage they can, even
if it means a 20-hour flight to Singapore for a half-hour meeting.
Measurable differences between competitors are decreasing, so human
elements are growing in relative importance.

Displacement of a function by technology can produce net savings in
time or money.  Dishwashing machines have reduced time spent cleaning
dishes at the kitchen sink.  In that case, the goal was specific and
new technology was able to satisfy it.  Besides, who enjoyed washing
dishes?  On the other hand, medical care costs have been rising, in
spite of progress in technology.

Historically, education has been more like medical care than like
dishwashing.  As countries have become wealthier, they have devoted an
increasing fraction of GDP to education.  There have been several
waves of massive increases in spending.  First came elementary
schools, then secondary ones, and finally higher education.

Will any of the factors that have propelled educational expenditures
in the past reverse?  There is no sign they will.  The economy is
growing, and with increasing world integration, there is a consensus
that the only way for the rich countries to stay ahead is to upgrade
the skills of the workforce.  Individuals also have a strong incentive
to improve their education.  Earnings of college graduates are much
higher relative to those with only high school diplomas than before.
As a result, college attendance rates have increased in all economic
classes.

Society is paying a lot for education now, and since the value of
education is growing, we can expect society to continue paying at
least as much in the future.  If every institution, from a local
community college to Harvard, uses the same holographic projections of
the world's best lectures, and has access to the same digital
libraries, how will Harvard differentiate itself?  The most likely
answer is through stress on the quality of its teachers in their other
roles.  As with business travel, the leveling by technology of a part
of the competitive landscape is likely to lead to greater emphasis on
the human element, even when the results are hard to measure.

The main reason for expecting no cutbacks in teacher ranks is that
human contact is valued very highly.  How often do you hear of a
politician campaigning, much less winning, on a plank of raising class
sizes?  There are frequent calls for reductions in administrative
bloat, and sometimes even demands to increase teaching loads.
However, it appears that few dare propose increasing class sizes, even
though there is only ambiguous evidence that small classes increase
any measure of educational achievement.  It is likely that no
quantitative evidence would affect public desire for lower student to
faculty ratios.  Close human contact appears to improve the perceived
quality of instruction, whether that improves test performance or not.

If education were a simple matter of teaching the three Rs, the future
might be different.  However, we do not even have a clear idea of what
education is supposed to accomplish.  As an example, what are parents
who send their child to Harvard paying for?  Is it the excellence of
the Harvard faculty?  The Boston social scene?  The chance for their
child to network with future movers and shakers?  The opportunity to
boast to their coworkers and neighbors of their prowess in raising
children?  Probably a combination of all.  Technology will not have
much effect on these perceptions.


Implications

Although education will continue to evolve, it is likely to be less
affected by technology than is forecasted by many people, such as
Peter Drucker or Eli Noam [Noam].  Successful institutions will have
to respond to the need for life-long education, and distance learning
will play a major role.  However, that will only change, and not
eliminate, the role of teachers.  Stress on tradition and human
teaching is likely to be a good defensive strategy for educational
institutions.



References:

[FrankC] R. H. Frank and P. J. Cook, "The Winner-Take-All Society,"
  Free Press, 1995.

[Miller] L. Miller, Pace of business travel abroad is beyond
  breakneck, Wall Street Journal, May 31, 1996.

[Noam] E. M. Noam, Electronics and the dim future of the university,
  Science 270 (Oct.  13, 1995), 247-249.