The Information Age University?

Abstract

As a preface to my comments today, I challenge you to consider the following questions. Do the information age technological changes now taking place have the potential to disrupt, or even destroy, the university as we know it? Do these changes have the potential to force restructuring of the land-grant system? My comments today will address these questions. In doing so, however, I will not address problems facing the land-grant system or the agricultural economics profession per se, other than those we face as a part of the overall system of higher education. Others are doing that or have addressed those more unique problems elsewhere. A major National Research Council (NRC) initiative is now examining the relevancy of the land-grant system in the context of today's society; the W. K. Kellogg Foundation has funded an initiative to facilitate positive change within the land-grant system (Warner); and Eidman, in his 1995 American Agricultural Economics Association presidential address, summarized key concerns and issues facing the agricultural economics profession and how we are responding to them. I contend that overlaying the NRC and Eidman concerns is a series of fundamental changes taking place that has the potential to drastically modify the higher education model as we presently know and understand it.