Rod, can you explain the forces driving the use of information technology tools in education today?
Rodney Everhart (RE): There has never before been a period during which more forces have had an impact on higher education at one time. The biggest forces driving educational change today are changing demographics, the demand for unlimited access, spiraling costs, the issue of competencies versus degrees, the knowledge explosion, and the increasing need for lifelong learning. I would like to comment on each one of these if I may. Changing demographics. The typical student of the past (a full-time student between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two who lived in a campus dorm) accounts for about 25 percent of the student population today; adult and nontraditional learners make up the rest. In fact, the adult learning segment is approaching 50 percent of the student population. That is a significant change from the past. Unlimited access. Today’s student population expects access to information twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. In the past, we used batch processing: computers we
