Corporate education

Profits should not trump academic environment

While Bill Gates testifies in Washington, American technology companies continue to prosper. Their market seems all but invincible and recently, colleges and universities throughout the nation have made plans to make their own contributions to these growing giants, often at the expense of the students whom it is their goal to educate and serve. In what appears to be a growing trend in higher education, Clayton and Floyd colleges - both in Georgia - have signed joint ventures with several corporations dealing in technologies from computer manufacturing and Internet providers to telephone companies. The stated purpose of these partnerships is to better acquaint their institutions with technology - for a price. Although this trend is catching on nationwide, the University should not hop onto the bandwagon - students already have enough of a burden covering tuition.

Clayton and Floyd now require that students pay a $300-per-semester fee that allows them to rent laptop computers, have Internet access and even be issued a student ID card that can serve as a bank card, phone card and credit card. This should not sound unfamiliar to University students who insert their M-Cards into ATM machines on a regular basis. In exchange for the colleges' generosity to its students, the institutions themselves will receive commissions from the contracted technology companies based on the number of students who participate - which will be all of them, since they are required to. Richard A. Skinner, president of Clayton college summed it up quite well when he stated, "We're not asking you to do this because it's noble and right and true. We're asking you to do this because it's a good business proposition."

Closer to home, Northern Michigan University has already approved a plan that will require all students to buy a laptop computer or lease one form the school by fall 2000. Students at NMU will pay $600 per year to lease an IBM laptop. At Michigan State University, students matriculating in the fall of 2001 will be required to buy a laptop. The requirement to purchase laptops rather than desktops has clear intentions. Both of these universities want students to be doing the majority of their work - including taking notes in class - on computers rather than paper. As the examples at Clayton and Floyd demonstrate (as well as at the University of North Carolina, which has just signed a deal with IBM for the same purpose), the motivations for this technological face-lift may not rest solely in the realm of education, but in clear economic benefits for the schools involved. These "benefits" come with increasing costs for students who are already under heavy financial burdens.

While the University has discussed plans similar to those at MSU and NMU, it has decided against them for now. Given that students here already have free access to computers, charging them would be, as University Chief Information Officer Jose-Marie Griffiths said, "an added burden." What is alarming about the eagerness to force students to buy and lease laptops is that it seems that college and university administrators have dollar signs flashing in their eyes.

While schools certainly need to make money, institutions of learning should be focused on education, not profit: Floyd college's Website now features prominent advertisements for AT&T, First Union Bank and Microsoft. At a University where the Nike swoosh has generated heated debate, it would behoove students to be on guard against corporate sponsorship in the perhaps already-soiled environment.

11-25-98