Plenary Panel Introduction Will universities become extinct in the networked world? ICDE 21 st World Conference Hong Kong, 2004

The Networked World: Internet Access Population (millions)  USA  Japan56.1  China 45.8  Germany44.1  UK34.3  South Korea25.6  Canada16.8  Australia12.8  Netherlands10.4  Sweden 6.7 Source: A C Nielsen, Sept 2003 Total global population estimated at 655 million

Joseph Schumpeter (1934) predicted that every 50 years or so, technological revolutions would cause "gales of creative destruction” in which old industries would be swept away and replaced by new ones.

Driver for Change 'The death of distance as a determinant of the cost of communications will probably be the single most important economic force shaping society in the first half of the 21st century'. Cairncross (1997)

The Knowledge Explosion Over 90% of the relevant literature in many technical fields, such as biotechnology, astronomy, computers and software, and environmental sciences, has been produced since J B Quinn (2001) Traditional programmatic approaches to education simply cannot keep up………...

Explosion in Demand  A recent IBM report forecasts a threefold (US$4.5 trillion) jump in global education expenditure during the next 13 years. (Source: Richard Gluyas, New Nabs e-School Deal 22 April 2000).  The World Bank expects the number of higher education students will more than double from 70 million to 160 million by 2025.

Leadership Challenge: From Elite to Mass Higher Education In 1946: 8 Australian universities teaching about 26,000 students. In 2003: 38 Australian universities teaching about 890,000 students.

Future Projections  By 2005, e-learning will be the single most used application on the web. (Source: Harris, Logan & Lundy, Gartner Research, 2001).  Corporate investment in e-learning will grow from US$2.1 billion in 2001 to US$33.4 billion in 2005.

The Knowledge-based Economy There are increasing signs that our current paradigms for higher education, the nature of our academic programs, the organization of our colleges and universities, and the way that we finance, conduct and distribute the services of higher education may not be able to adapt to the demands of our time. J J Duderstadt (2001)

“Any new technology environment eventually creates a totally new human environment” Marshall McLuhan The e-Revolution

Leadership? The fact that the present traditional approaches based on conventional classroom-based teaching and learning will not be capable of meeting the escalating demand for higher education in the knowledge society has apparently failed to register in the minds of many executive managers.

Leadership Challenge Stepping onto many a university campus in as the information economy gains momentum – a visitor from 1950 would feel quite at home.

Leadership Challenge “Technology is the key variable making possible, and imperative, the reinvention of the corporation”. Stace & Dunphy (2001)

Institutional Capacity for Change While there is a great deal of business literature on companies that have “restructured” and re- engineered” to respond to new competitive threats and rapidly changing market conditions, universities are generally regarded as being stubbornly resistant to change as a result of the typically conservative and reactionary pressures both internal and external to the organization.

The problems faced by mass higher education today come from a system which has become mass in its size but remains elite in its values. The recent external changes of numbers, structures, finance, and governance have not been matched by appropriate internal changes of values, purpose and activities. Source: Wagner (1995) p.21

Trying to change a university is like trying to move a graveyard --- it is extremely difficult and you don’t get much internal support. Organizational Inertia

The transition from the Industrial to the Information Age was encapsulated by Dolence and Norris (1995), who argued that to survive organisations would need to change from rigid, formula driven entities to organisations that are “fast, flexible and fluid”. Fast, Flexible and Fluid

Random Acts of Innovation The potential benefits of e-learning will not be achieved in the present vertical academic silos, which are typified by the “random acts of innovation” of individual academics rather than by systemic strategic planning.

Institutional Sustainability Fast, flexible and fluid organizations that can provide: customized, high quality, value added services that satisfy customer needs with speed and accuracy at the appropriate price point, are the only institutions that will survive and thrive in the 21st century.

“Fantasyland” Is this “fantasyland” for universities typified by the hierarchical, bureaucratic academic structure in which the provision of effective services to students is significantly inhibited by personal agendas and dependence on management via multiple layers of committees that move with glacier-like momentum?

Organizational Inertia “The greatest danger in times of turbulence, is not the turbulence…….. it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” Peter Drucker (1991)

In 1803 the British deployed a military attachment to stand on the Cliffs of Dover to watch for Napoleon. It was not until 1927 that the detachment was disbanded. Napoleon Bonaparte died in Source: Stace & Dunphy (2001)

Will universities become extinct in the networked world? Within the next decade, the view that universities, like dinosaurs, may be unable to adapt to the increasing pressures of technological development and globalization is likely to gather empirical support.