(3 of 7)
Higher education in the U.S. is big business -- a $100 billion business, to be precise, representing 2.7% of gross national product. No other nation can boast of so many and such different institutions: 156 universities, 1,953 four-year colleges, 1,378 two-year colleges and technical schools. More than half these are defined as private schools (although nearly all get some form of state or federal funding). Collectively, they employ 793,000 faculty members -- not to mention a supernumerary army of deans and other administrative personnel -- and accommodate 14 million students. One sign of the astonishing increase in part-time students: only about 20% of these knowledge seekers annually receive one or more certificates of graduation, from A.A. (Associate of Arts) to Ph.D.
In contrast to most other industrialized nations, the U.S. has no central government ministry imposing lockstep conditions on an untidy educational conglomerate. That is why so many schools are attempting to seize the future in strikingly independent ways. Take computers, for instance. At the University of California, Los Angeles, Egyptian-born senior professor Maha Ashour-Abdalla is using the smart machines to teach physics to 140 students. The computers can simulate experiments, from sound waves being measured in a pool of water to a 3-D, multicolored representation of molecules colliding.
Abdalla's course is part of a broader effort by UCLA administrators to perk up flagging student interest in the sciences. "We cannot afford to train everyone as a scientist," says Clarence Hall, dean of physical sciences. "But there are hardly any students to teach. Science and engineering are the engine of economic progress, and without some changes, we are bound to lose the fuel for that engine."
Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., has found a broader use for computers. Some 200 classrooms and laboratories have been wired with a fiber- optics video information system, complete with color monitors, that allows professors to tap into the school's library of films, videos and laser discs. Tony Edmonds, chairman of the history department, uses the system to teach a course on the Vietnam War. "Now I can discuss the My Lai massacre, press a button and show a two-minute segment on it," he says. "I discuss the antiwar movement and pull up a segment on Abbie Hoffman." His undergraduates, children of the sound-bite era, take to the course like, well, MTV. "Of 105 students only 10 got below a B," Edmonds says. "That's never happened before."
Next year Edmonds' Vietnam course will be transmitted to 20 off-campus sites around the state. And what about the guest lecturer who was grounded in Chicago by a snowstorm? No problem: out-of-town speakers can visit an interactive TV studio and get beamed directly into a Ball State classroom.