Feature

The information technology (IT) leader on campus today is more likely to spend his or her time preparing business plans than checking server configurations. As high technology has embedded itself into the day-to-day teaching, learning, researching, and administrative tasks of colleges and universities, there has developed a need for IT managers to be able to speak the language of return on investment (ROI), as well as understand the many and varied needs of faculty and students.

Pick up any newspaper and you'll see headlines that scream about skyrocketing tuition costs and cuts to aid programs. University Business Editor Tim Goral recently spoke with a panel of tuition experts to find out what these changes hold in store for for higher education.

Take this quiz:

A) Continually escalating in cost

B) Continual demand for upgrades and increased functionality

C) Lackluster faculty adoption

D) All of the above

If you chose D--all of the above--you're in good company.

Stephanie Huck knows a deal when she sees it. Or rents it.

After transferring in from another school, Huck was excited to learn that she would save 60 percent on her textbook bill each semester thanks to Southeast Missouri State University's rental program. Now, she pays only $85 per semester for all of her books.

In order to produce learned, well-spoken alumni, IHEs nowadays need to assess the skills and abilities of students when they first walk onto campus. "No college wants to churn out people who don't know their subject," one software company president has said. IHEs already know the GPA and SAT score of a student, as well as what his or her teachers thought of them through letters of recommendation, but sometimes, freshman arrive with reading, writing, and math skills that are in need of remedial education.

Web services technology is like special effects in motion pictures: the more effective it is, the less you notice it. In your office or in your class, web services is an enabling layer of technology that finds and accesses information. That's pretty much it. But the benefits of the technology are becoming very noticeable.

Randal Lemke, executive director of the Fairfax, Virginia-based International Communications Industries Association (ICIA) defines smart classrooms as simply bringing audio-visual, telecommunications and information technology tools together.