Where the Elite Meet — Electronically

Although the high price of joining the Internet2 is keeping membership down,
many institutions are coming to realize they can't afford not to join the club

By Jamilah Evelyn

AUSTIN, Texas — Two years ago, a handful of big-name universities put up some big bucks and announced their collaboration in the development of an advanced computer networking system — Internet2 — sure to revolutionize higher education. That is, for the institutions that can afford it.
Designers of Internet2 — an advanced networking system able to support high-tech and research-intensive applications (see sidebar, pg. 44) — expect it to be 100 times faster than the current Internet. But hook-up will cost millions of dollars for institutions to upgrade their infrastructure, to hire sophisticated IT (information technology) personnel, and to research and develop state-of-the-art applications for the Internet's newest incarnation.
With just 141 members on board to date, though, Internet2 institutions comprise a small, elite chunk of higher education. And the multibillion-dollar project's evolution has unfolded so far like a classic tale of the haves and the have-nots.
The Goliaths of higher education — Harvard, Georgetown, and Stanford universities —  will enjoy a network so much faster and more sophisticated than today's commercial Internet, it would be like comparing a Model T to a TransAm. They will use it for technologies once thought to be the stuff of science fiction — digital libraries, virtual laboratories, and tele-immersion.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of colleges and universities — small- and medium-sized institutions that remain community-based and cost-conscious — will be left behind, unable to afford the ticket price to the technological show of the century.
The trouble with that scenario, as some higher education observers are now beginning to acknowledge, is the gross and, some might argue, needless inequities it will create between institutions. After all, many of the instructional applications and asynchronous learning devices Internet2 will make possible are just as applicable to classroom and laboratory environments at places like Fisk University as they are to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Indeed several minority-serving institutions could benefit from the research-intensive enterprises the Internet2 will bring. Currently, Florida A&M University is the only HBCU participating in the Internet2 consortium.
In recent months, folks at smaller colleges and universities, higher education association officials, telecommunications industry executives, and even the schools that first embarked on the project, have attempted to uncover a role for smaller institutions in the making of Internet2. As a result, they've discovered that there are collaborations smaller colleges can participate in, applications instructors of every sort can benefit from, and other high-speed networks to which institutions can connect.