customize the use of technology so as to accommodate the individual student.
This would require student service professionals to move from the role of information provider toward that of information facilitator. In other words, it would require them to provide students with the know-how to search for information and be more self-sufficient through the use of technology, a model that is being explored in the student-faculty relationship as well. Furthermore, to be fully effective in the new technological paradigm student affairs profes- sionals must assume the roles of systems architects, educators, learners, and policy makers while forming collaborative links to academic affairs and information technology industries (Ausiello & Wells, 1997). However, it may be that the goals of student affairs are not being incorporated into the information systems as student services professionals are not being fully included in the design process (Barratt, 2001).
Students have become “more informed consumers, demanding a level of university service comparable to that which they receive from other entities in society” (Karns, 1993, p. 27). Students are paying more for their education and there is a greater influx of adult students who are demanding greater service and accountability for the expenses to higher education. Hoover (1997) stated that the student affairs profession faces increasing pressure from administration to provide empirical evidence of the value of face-to-face services and programs versus the value of those same services and programs provided at a distance.
Although technologically-delivered student services also entail high costs, it is interesting that it is the efficiency of personal interactions that must be justified rather than the technological expenditures. In an academic climate prone to technocratic decision making, technology often trumps the personal (and the personnel).
with respect to administrative costs in higher education. Rhoades noted that administrative costs are frequently hidden because they are distributed throughout departments and centers. The costs of implementing and maintaining the new technology in higher education may be similarly hidden throughout institutional budgets. Newly created positions such as chief information officer (CIO) and vice president for information technology (VP for IT) and the staff formally associated with IT units are readily identifiable. However, these are by no means the only staffing positions associated with supporting the implementation and maintenance of computing and computer-mediated communication. De- partmental network administrators and support staff may be overlooked in a simple enumeration of formal IT personnel. Rhoades recommended vertical and horizontal disaggregation as a means to understand the nature and extent of administrative costs, and applying the model to studying the diffusion of costs related to technology in higher education would be useful.
Like other aspects of higher education, technology is labor intensive. Barley (1996a) has described the emergence of technicians as a new class of workers who span the boundaries between emerging technology and older and more established professions. It may well be the case that as colleges and universities increasingly rely on computers and computing networks for administrative and academic purposes that there will be an accretion of technicians throughout their campuses (Bates, 2000).
Conclusion
This chapter uses current higher education literature as well as economic, labor, and organizational theories to suggest that the forces of academic capitalism and technocracy may be in part responsible for the increased use of computing and computer-mediated communication in higher education. Given this per- spective, in the course of implementing and maintaining technological innova- tions, it may be the case that the organizational structure of professional bureaucracy (Mintzberg, 1979) is giving way in higher education to that of academic technocracy in which the competing and overlapping interests of the academy and technocracy shape structures, processes, and decisions in higher education.
Further research would be informative in determining whether or not the posited processes and changes are in play in higher education. Possible areas
of inquiry and analysis include: complete accounting of expenses for new technology; socio-technical construction of labor as a result of the new technology; explication of the changing definitions of efficiency and quality in light of the new technology; and exploration of the impact of technology on organizational structure and decision-making.
Academicians and practitioners alike must begin to pay closer attention to the significant changes that are at hand in higher education as a result of the increasing role of computing and computer-mediated communication. We agree with Heller (2001) when he stated, “technological innovation and adoption for its own sake will not serve the public interest” (p. 255). Rather, we support evidence- and discovery-based approaches to understanding how information technology can be best utilized to meet the expanding missions of higher education institutions.
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