The Cost of Innovation and Technology

To either be ahead of the pack, or even with other higher education institutions, colleges and universities must be up to date with their technology, as well as continue to be innovative in order to attack the best students, as well as faculty and staff. Although institutions are continually asked to improve “the academic aspects of institutions performance”, they are warned against going beyond the budgets set forth by board members (Graves, 2005, p. 80).

Institutions have to work with little to no extra funding as well as making sure that tuition does not go beyond what is feasible for incoming students (Graves, 2005, p. 80). William Graves coins this as a “catch 22” when institutions have to be innovative and have the latest technology, but the institutions barely have the means to make their ideas happen. As Graves mentions in his article, policy makers expect higher education institutions to innovate internally, which in their minds, would be economically feasible, but that may not possible. Outside resources can be more objective and supply better means of providing the information needed to make the institutions run properly (Graves, 2005, pp. 80, 82). Internal IT departments must be up to par in order to maintain the technology.

There is also the risk of having technology become obsolete once implemented, or purchasing equipment that may not be necessary or may not ever be used (Bugeja, 2008). An example that Michael Bugeja notes in his article, a department may install equipment to be used with receivers purchased by a class of 400 students at $40 a piece. Although the move is considered to be cost effective by the institution, whether or not it would be a good investment in the future depends on how often, if at all, the equipment is used. (Bugeja, 2008).

As a side note, this did happen in our department. During a meeting earlier this week, our dean mentioned that we had a “state of the art” conference call system that was installed over two years ago into one of our classrooms, but it has never been used. This is an example of being innovative and wanting to move forward and be on the same level as other well-known higher institutions, but not implementing the idea. Investing money into technology and not put it to use takes away from other ideas that that could plausibly be put into motion. Institutions should evaluate the ideas that would not only work out in the long run, but also work out upon implementation.

Graves, W.H. (2005). Improving Institutional Performance Through IT. Educause Review. http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0564.pdf.

Bugeja, M. (2008). Classroom Clickers and the Cost of Technology. The Chronicle of Higher Education. http://chronicle.com/article/Classroom-Clickersthe/6009/.