IN ITS 2000 rankings of the 50 most "wired" universities in the country, now-defunct magazine Yahoo! Internet Life ranked the University at the lofty position of eighth, just two spots below MIT (sixth), above Georgia Tech (fifteenth), and, of course, Virginia Tech (twenty-fifth).
The ranking in 2000 was, and is, earned. The University is technologically equipped to a remarkable degree. Perhaps its greatest success at maintaining its place as the preeminent public institution is this fact that the University has so successfully integrated deep-rooted history and traditions with advancing technology.
Yet now in 2003, the University could find itself behind the times technologically. Many comparable institutions are requiring the purchase of laptops by incoming students, citing the numerous advantages the technology offers both students and instructors. Facing this trend, the University should follow step and require the purchase of wireless laptops of first-year students.
Such an action would not be unprecedented. In 2000, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill began their Carolina Computing Initiative, which requires incoming students to purchase a laptop either through the program (which offers financial aid) or individually. Because the University of North Carolina contracts with IBM to order the laptops in bulk, students are able to get a better price for their laptop when things like warrantees and service are considered.
The benefits of such a move are numerous for students, faculty and the administration. For students, having a wireless laptop translates into having instant access to the information they need either on their hard drive or via the Web, whether that information be an Acrobat file they are trying to access in class or just their e-mail. Because students would have instant access to information, they would be less reliant on printing, thus saving money. Students would also not have to wait in a computer lab any longer, as the number of students needing to use them would be simply those that did not have laptops with them.
What's more, graduating students are being called on more and more by employers and graduate schools to be technologically literate, and there is no better way to accomplish this than by requiring students to own their own computers and integrate those computers into their learning experience.
The faculty already do an admirable job of incorporating technology into the curriculum through the use of Toolkit to post materials and facilitate electronic submission of assignments. But knowing that all of their students have full access to their own wireless laptop, professors would be able to capitalize on more of the benefits of the technology, such as establishing discussion boards on class Web sites where students would be able to interact with their classmates on the material at any time and place.
On the administration's part, requiring wireless laptops would have the triple effect of bringing the University's technological capabilities to the cutting edge (thereby increasing the prestige of the University), lessening the impact of the pay-to-print policy and facilitating cost-cutting in computer labs.
Cultivating a relationship with a single contractor to supply the laptops and other technology part of such a plan might have other fringe benefits, such as, in UNC's case, a $6.3 million grant for technology research.
Of course, as a requirement of enrollment, the University would have to provide financial aid for students who could not afford the extra cost of laptop purchase. The University should make it a priority to make sure that the necessary funds are available to meet this demonstrated need. If the University can build costly, non-academic things such a footbridge across Emmett Street, they can help fund a program that would have material benefits to students' educations.
In addition, the University has made a significant investment in making central Grounds wireless virtually anywhere someone might want to work or play, from the Lawn to the library (each access point runs about $1,000). Yet the wireless network is dismally underused by students. With wireless laptops at everyone's fingertips, the University could realize the full potential of its hefty investment.
Finally, requiring and helping fund the purchase of wireless laptop computers will help level the playing field between the technological have and have-nots. As noted above, technological literacy has become just as essential as textual literacy in the job market as well as academia. Students deserve a University that will prepare them not only with the intellectual tools of knowledge and reason, but also with practical tools like those derived from day-to-day computer integration into our learning process. On the bottom line, requiring laptops makes sense.
(Jim Prosser is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.)
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