Getting wired happens well before freshman year. High-school seniors–many already armed with cell phones, iPods and computers–take virtual college tours, apply online and get accepted or rejected through e-mail. After enrollment, the electronic adventure continues. On today’s college campuses, information technology is as ubiquitous as the backpack. PCs can be used for just about everything from class registration to joint research with a student in Tokyo. And with a growing number of institutions investing in Wi-Fi, students can use their laptops while relaxing in the cof-feehouse. “Universities are absolutely the most wired communities in the nation,” says Lev Gonick, vice president of information-technology services at Case Western Reserve. The benefits are profound; the risks are not quite so readily obvious.
There’s a wide range of what constitutes state-of-the-art. Students have a new set of tools that go well beyond such routine uses of technology as PowerPoint presentations and online syllabi. First-year students in biology at the College of William & Mary use a supercomputer to sequence their own DNA. The University of Virginia is launching a program to test notebook-size PCs that allow students to write on the screen. In 2003, Morrisville State College in upstate New York pulled land lines from dorms, and students get free cell phones.
For now, PCs are at the heart of the tech revolution. According to several surveys, roughly 85 percent of college students own one. At many schools, laptops are covered by tuition; others sell computers at heavy discounts. The cost of a computer can also be bundled into a financial-aid package. Even those who don’t have a PC get access to the Net from loaners or at computer labs. Still, not every school is on technology’s cutting edge. Poorer students at poorer schools are left out. And because computer literacy has become nearly as basic as the three R’s, the quality of their education takes a hit, as do their employment prospects.
But the networked campus comes at a price: what you do online may not be entirely your business. Even if Big Brother isn’t watching, the administration may be. So, for example, the illegal downloading of music is something schools may monitor. Many universities are already implementing technical controls to limit file-sharing technol-ogy on their networks. Others, in theory, could choose to track the online habits of the whole student body.
Institutions are capable of amassing enormous amounts of data on those in their midst, and negligence in protecting information is always possible. Universities do have privacy policies and network security systems to protect data from hackers, yet identity theft is a danger. In early 2004 at New York University, 1,800 students learned that their names and university ID numbers were accidentally posted online. The digital age has surely made academe a richer place–but, it seems, also a more vulnerable one.
