Higher Education in an Era of Digital Competition: Choices and Challenges

This book is being published at the dawn of a new millennium. The symbolic passage from one era to another invites speculation about the future and reflection about the past and its meaning for the future. "Higher Education in an Era of Digital Competition: Choices and Challenges" focuses upon critical knowledge and perspectives that will guide us in building a new system of higher education.

The authors begin with a fundamental belief that higher education can use new technologies as a positive shaping force in creating a responsiveness to all people and their increasing need for education and learning throughout a lifetime. Yet this is not, per se, a book about technology. Rather, the book provides a framework for viewing technology, expecially the new digital technologies, as an agent of positive change within universities. The authors' goal is to assist the reader in developing a more complete understanding of how teaching and learning, knowledge generation and preservation, organizational design and evaluation, and leadership can all function together within a changing and increasingly competitive external environment to produce a new responsiveness and diversity within higher education.

New digital technologies signal the beginning of a new, more dynamic and interactive world, with many different risks and new challenges... .