| While the NCAHE report failed to elaborate a role for IT in improving accountability, it cited the possibility of “reducing costs and increasing quality by using technology in high-enrollment courses where economies of scale justify development costs,” and may have intended a role for technology in its recommendation for “re-engineering support and administrative services for greater efficiency, including centralization, decentralization, outsourcing, collaborative purchasing, and resource sharing.” We flesh out these two actionable suggestions in this paper as the common course redesign strategy and the flex program and service redesign strategy. These strategies use IT innovatively to improve accountability whenever measurably improved academic results and reduced unit costs are simultaneous goals—which they almost always must be in order to achieve the increased academic productivity called for in the NCAHE report. Applied systematically, the common course redesign strategy alone could decrease institutional expenses by up to ten percent—a figure we derive in this paper, based on the proven methodologies and results pioneered by the National Center for Academic Transformation.[5]
Deployed on an initiative by initiative basis, mission-appropriate variations on the common course redesign and flex program and service redesign strategies can support a strategy of simultaneity for systematically improving strategic academic results while also reducing their unit costs—thereby holding the line on tuition increases in the interest of affordable access. As suggested in the above quote from the NII report, there are parallels in the national service (and production) economy to the strategy of simultaneity in higher education that we advocate.
Indeed, as a key national economic performance indicator, productivity increased at an annual average rate of 3.55 percent from 2000 to 2003, a full percentage point higher than the average from 1948 to 2000 and also greater than the average for any decade in the past 50 years.[6] This remarkable increase in productivity derived from innovations that used technology to redesign service and production processes for simultaneous improvements in efficiency, quality, and competitiveness in a globally connected economy. Downsizing sometimes resulted, not because of productivity increases, but because productivity increases occurred in the absence of revenue growth—and because some services and production were shifted to cheaper labor sources as technology-driven globalization and its inherently competitive forces increased “offshoring.”
[6] Reprogrammed: Blazing gain in productivity means some jobs are no longer needed, Vikas Bajaj, Dallas Morning News, Oct. 10, 2004, 1D
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