IT cannot replace eye-to-eye

Technology may save money for the cash-strapped OU but students may suffer

Information technology means job cuts. Not always, not everywhere. But it is now impossible to pretend that the higher education sector is immune. Technology-driven re-engineering has eliminated thousands of jobs in such industries as banking and telecommunications. An education-friendly budget has not assuaged the fear that the campus could be next for the chip chop.

The Open University's financial problems could be seen as evidence that distance education is not working. That certainly is not the OU management's reading of the situation, and its proposed solutions would put more distance, not less, between staff and students. As it prepares to make staff cuts in its network of regional centres, the OU may have been emboldened by a belief that computer communication technologies or "knowledge media" will soon replace face-to-face contact for many purposes.

Strategy plans submitted to the Higher Education Funding Council for England reveal that many higher education institutions plan to use IT to reduce staff numbers over the next three years, even though by HEFCE's own admission this strategy may not work. In its evidence to the Dearing inquiry the council said: "The full costs and benefits of IT are not clearly understood. Investment in technology may not be able to replace investment in staff and more traditional resources."

Job cuts are sometimes euphemistically described as rationalisations, but this does not look rational even from the limited perspective of academic business managers. Institutions are proposing to take on technologies of uncertain cost, for an uncertain financial saving and with an uncertain impact on the quality of education.

They should heed Martin Price, chair of the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association, who says: "It is unlikely that increased use of IT will substantially reduce overall costs, but the rewards in enhanced quality and improved access to higher education will be huge." UCISA's members are the people who run university computer centres and networks. They may be a little starry-eyed about the benefits, but they certainly know about the hidden costs and the technical snags. They are telling us that there are plenty of reasons for investing in IT in higher education, but cost-cutting is not one of them.

Quality then? Everyone is in favour of quality, and if quality is improved by adding IT to the education mix nobody is going to complain. But the agenda is now being nudged from "additionality" towards substitution.

Academic productivity has been pushed as far as is possible within conventional models of teaching and learning. Any further efficiency gains will require that technology is not merely added to traditional teaching but begins to substitute for it. The Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals has rumbled this insidious trend and called for a national debate on additionality or substitution. Awful words, but a vital issue.

The possibility of IT-driven efficiency gains has always been acknowledged. During the blissful dawn of the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme and the Computers in Teaching Initiative, many academics hoped their courseware projects would reduce their teaching hours, enabling them to beef up the publications pages of their CVs. They thought that improved productivity would be used to further careers, not to destroy them. The quality of education would not be threatened. Academics who had developed, say, a computer simulation of chemical experiments would earnestly explain that this was not a substitute for real lab work but a preparation for it.

Such comforting words are beginning to sound strained. Put yourself in the role of a cash-strapped university manager, and you are bound to ask how IT can improve the bottom line. You would be asking yourself, is this a time for caution or for bold action?

If technology will boost efficiency, and quality can be protected, managers might well be tempted to bold action, and damn the social consequences of a few more lecturer redundancies. But even in the most reductive business-driven view of higher education, there is a powerful case for caution.

Let us examine the two premises that might justify a gung-ho approach. Will technology boost efficiency? Nobody knows. When HEFCE discovered that it had very little data on the costs and benefits of technology-based learning, it commissioned a rush research project by the universities of Bristol, Exeter and Warwick. The researchers will deliver their report next month. But a single research project, however well conceived, cannot settle the issue for good and all. Doubts will persist.

Will quality be safe as IT is rolled out on the grand scale? Again, nobody knows for sure. But the burden of proof is on those who claim that electronic communication can be a satisfactory substitute for face-to-face human contact. If you were 18-years-old and one university offered to deliver an entire degree course through the PC in your bedroom, while another required you to mingle with thousands of strangers on a windy campus in a strange city, which would you choose? Me too.

The decision could be very different for someone in midlife who already has a job, a family and a social life, as the OU's founders recognised. But the OU has always stressed the importance of local support and personal contact, and its administrators still give lip service to that principle as they look for a 25 per cent cut in spending on the university's regional support network. Though an OU spokeswoman asserted that "the tutorial system stays", it seems inevitable that students will suffer by, for example, having to travel further to their regular tutorials.

New styles of education heavy on IT and light on eye-to-eye will play an essential role in meeting this country's and the world's educational needs in the coming decades. Flexibility is the buzzword, but it must include the flexibility of residential, campus-based higher education for those who want it and need it. Even distance-education students need some personal contact. Technology should be used to add to that, not to blast it away.

If it is possible to love an abstract noun, consider admitting "additionality" to your affections.

Tony Durham is Multimedia editor of The THES.