Electronics and the Future of Education

by Andrew Odlyzko, AT&T Labs - Research

Will electronics lead to a much smaller and less expensive educational establishment, as some hope and others fear? My expectation is that it will not, and that the share of the economy devoted to education will continue to grow.

The prediction of growth in education is not based on denying the value of modern technology. PCs and the Internet are much more useful than earlier technological innovations such as radio or movies (which some enthusiasts had expected to revolutionize education, just as computers are predicted to do today). Personally, I am skeptical of the extreme claims for modern technology. I suspect that Sumerian scribes of 5,000 years ago might feel at home in today's classrooms because education is primarily a process of getting students to absorb new ideas and ways of thinking, and it requires extensive social interaction. Replacing clay tablets first by paper notebooks and now by PCs can help, but not much. However, that opinion is not a crucial part of my argument. Let us accept all the claims of advocates of modern technology. Suppose that future 3-dimensional holographic projections and high bandwidth networks could make distance learning so effective that live lectures could be phased out. Even then, I expect teachers would still be employed to provide interactive instruction. Their ranks would grow, not shrink, even though they would not be presenting lectures, and even though computers would be used more extensively and effectively than now for interactive instruction.

Technology can replace some teachers in their present roles. Hence, if all we cared about was to produce what the current system does, we could indeed operate with fewer people. However, we are unlikely to do that. New demands will arise to take up the slack. There has always been a desire for more personal attention from teachers than could be met. Further, as the need for training increases, those demands will be rising. Education is not a matter of getting to where the Joneses were 10 years ago. It is more a matter of trying to get to where the Joneses are likely to be 10 years from now.

The basic argument is illustrated by the example of business travel. Salespeople for video and voice conferencing services have plenty of testimonials from customers, verifying great savings from elimination of physical trips. However, have travel budgets decreased? They have not. Airplane travel has increased, as has usage of the phone, fax, and email. International business trips from the U.S. have gone up by 20% in the last 6 years [Miller]. Trips are shorter, possibly because email and fax allow for better preparation for meetings, but there are many more of them.

Why has there been no decrease in business travel? Some trips have indeed been avoided, and in a static world that would have led to less travel. However, our world is anything but static. The same technological, economic, political, and social developments that have brought us email, fax, and inexpensive jet travel have also brought us world-wide competition, outsourcing, and partnerships that span the globe, which demand more coordination. Furthermore, as competition decreases the differences between the leaders [Gould], while the payoff to the winner increases [FrankC], there is pressure to take advantage of everything possible. The value of catching your partner's, competitor's, or customer's body language might be hard to quantify. Still, when the difference that decides between success and failure is miniscule, won't you try to position yourself or your group to gain any advantage you can, even if it means a 20-hour flight to Singapore for a half-hour meeting? Measurable differences between competitors are decreasing, so human elements are growing in relative importance. "[R]elationship building has become the mantra for corporate honchos" [Sager], as well as for lower-ranking employees. The computer industry leads in relying on conventions to function effectively [Goldberg]. We can expect similar factors to operate in education.

Displacement of a function by technology can produce net savings in time or money. Dishwashing machines have reduced time spent cleaning dishes at the kitchen sink. In that case, the goal was specific, new technology was able to satisfy it--and, in any case, who enjoyed washing dishes? On the other hand, medical care costs have been rising, in spite of progress in technology. Many procedures and pharmaceuticals have been developed that demonstrably do save money compared to traditional treatments. However, total costs have been climbing (as a fraction of Gross Domestic Product, GDP, and not only in absolute terms) in most countries, as more illnesses are treated and people live longer.

Historically, education has been more like medical care than like dishwashing. As countries have become wealthier, they have devoted an increasing fraction of GDP to education. There have been several waves of massive increases in spending. First came elementary schools, then secondary ones, and finally higher education. For example, in the U. S., spending on higher education went from 1.3% in 1960 to 2.4% in 1980 [SAUS]. This increase did not come at the expense of primary and secondary education, which also grew, although much less rapidly. These increases were driven by the rising wealth of the country and the need to prepare for the more sophisticated jobs generated by the economy.

Will any of the factors that have propelled educational expenditures in the past reverse? There is no sign they will. We may not see another wave of growth on the scale of previous ones, but decreases are unlikely. The economy is growing, and with increasing world integration, there is a consensus that the only way for the rich countries not to slip in the competitive race is to keep moving on to sophisticated new products and services. That requires a continuing effort to upgrade the skills of the workforce, and policymakers are responsive to that need. Individuals also have a strong motivation to invest in their own and their children's education. The rising inequality of income has led to college graduates in the U. S. earning 80% more in 1994 than those with only a high school diploma, up from a 50% premium in the early 1970s. While causality has not been proven, the public views education as an important requirement for a successful career. As a result, college attendance rates have increased in all economic classes. Colleges have been able to increase tuition charges much faster than growth in family incomes.

The basic argument of this note is that society is willing to pay a lot for education now, and since the value of education is growing, we can expect society to continue paying at least as much in the future. How will those resources be divided? If every institution, from Podunk Community College to Harvard, uses the same holographic projections of the world's best lectures, and has access to the same digital libraries, how will Harvard differentiate itself? The most likely answer is through stress on the quality of its teachers in their other roles. As with business travel, the leveling by technology of a part of the competitive landscape is likely to lead to greater emphasis on the human element, even when the results are hard to measure.

We have historical experience with one effective example of distance learning, namely that of textbooks, which are available to all schools equally. Their spread has coincided with the great growth in teacher ranks in the last century, and also with increasing differentiation among institutions. Will the effects be different even if live lectures are replaced by recorded ones?

The main reason for expecting no cutbacks in teacher ranks is that human contact is valued very highly. When was the last time you heard of a politician campaigning, much less winning, on a plank of raising class sizes? There are frequent calls for reductions in administrative bloat, and sometimes even demands to increase teaching loads. However, it appears that nobody dares propose increasing class sizes, even though there is only ambiguous evidence that small classes increase any measure of educational achievement. (Japan seems to do well with class sizes that are comparable to those the U. S. had a century ago, and that are about twice the current U. S. sizes, for example.) Perhaps the public will decide that it is paying for more teachers than are necessary. However, that is unlikely, given all the uncertainties in evaluating educational performance as well as in specifying educational goals. There is still controversy about "phonics" versus "whole language" teaching, in spite of extensive experience with both. Moreover, it is likely that no quantitative evidence would affect public desire for lower student to faculty ratios. When people reminisce about their school days, teachers are mentioned far more frequently than textbooks or buildings. Close human contact appears to improve the perceived quality of instruction, whether that improves test performance or not.

If education were a simple matter of teaching the three Rs, the future might be different. However, we do not even have a clear idea of what education is supposed to accomplish. As an example, what are parents who send their child to Harvard paying for? Is it the excellence of the Harvard faculty? The stimulating atmosphere of living and studying with other students with top credentials? A chance to mature away from home? Access to the libraries and museums at Harvard? The Boston social scene? The chance for their child to network with future movers and shakers? The opportunity to boast to their coworkers and neighbors of their prowess in raising children? Probably a combination of all. Education is supposed to prepare an individual for life, but we do not have a clear model of how it does that. With rapid change, we do not even know what life to prepare for. Therefore replacing some elements of the current educational experience by technology is unlikely to diminish the human element provided by teachers.

Implications

Although education is not facing serious dangers, it will have to change. Even the medical system, which is growing, is going through a painful transformation in the U. S. We probably will encounter demands for greater accountability in education, including attacks on the tenure system, and for greater concentration on teaching as opposed to research. However, resources devoted to education are likely to grow, and will not result in shrinkage in teacher ranks. The impact of electronics will probably be much more modest than is predicted by the ardent advocates of distance learning. For example, there will be more stability than predicted by Noam. There will be competition from new providers of training and education, but it will probably be limited. The challenge for established institutions will be to decide how to position themselves in the marketplace so as not to be left behind in meeting new demands in areas such as continuing education. Rapid change in society will demand responses from schools, but stress on tradition and human teaching is likely to continue.

References

• [FrankC] R. H. Frank and P. J. Cook, The Winner-Take-All Society, Free Press, 1995
• [Goldberg] C. Goldberg, "Cyberspace Still No Substitute For Face-to-Face Meetings," New York Times, Feb. 25, 1997
• [Gould] S. J. Gould, Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, Harmony Books, 1996
• [Miller] L. Miller, "Pace of Business Travel Abroad is Beyond Breakneck," Wall Street Journal, May 31, 1996
• [Noam] E. M. Noam, "Electronics and the Dim Future of the University", Science 270 (Oct. 13, 1995), 247-249
• [Sager] I. Sager, "How IBM became a growth company again," Business Week, Dec. 9, 1996.
• [SAUS] Statistical Abstract of the United States, U. S. Dept. Commerce, various annual editions.