The  New Academic Year

The short answer to any query about trends in higher education for the upcoming academic year: Ask after the presidential election. The upcoming election may well be the wild card that trumps all others in the deck being dealt to college administrators, faculty and students —  not just for 2000-2001, but for the next decade. Will the education community get "four more years" of relative peace under a sympathetic Democratic administration? Or will the next secretary of education receive a mandate to shake up the status quo from Republican George W. Bush and his all-but-certain adviser on such matters, the former National Endowment for the Humanities chair, Lynne Cheney?
One thing is certain: there are issues facing the higher education community that transcend politics. Nevertheless, the political party that occupies the White House will largely decide the outcome of several issues on the table. Black Issues recently talked to a few of higher education's biggest spokespersons about trends to watch out for as institutions of higher learning plot their course into the 21st century.

The Impact of Technology
"Retooling for technology is an issue that goes way beyond higher education," says Dr. William Harvey, the new vice president and director of the Office of Minorities in Higher Education at the American Council on Education, formerly the dean of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's education school. "This is something that will affect every aspect of our lives."
Dr. Yolanda Moses, president of the American Association for Higher Education, agrees. "How we interface with it [technology], how it's learned, the ways in which students will have different critical skills, the role of faculty — we're going to have to take a close look at the impact of technology on ‘the university' writ large," Moses says. "Right now, we really don't know how technology is going to affect us."
The stakes of not knowing are very high, Harvey adds, and not just for those at risk of being left behind for economic reasons.
"Does the lack of human interaction inherent in the new technologies make it more or less difficult to deal with race?" Harvey wonders. "And let's not forget the potential impact on particular research disciplines — for example, biological and biomedical engineering. What you have here is the potential to completely reorder the biological systems of human beings. What does that mean for our cultural notions of race and ethnic identity?"
Harvey's worst-case scenario is a chilling prospect: a return to the systematized eugenics that fueled Germany's gas chambers. While such a prospect seems distant, Harvey argues that scholars have an obligation to be ahead of the curve in this area.
"This is something that needs to be put on the table — we need to be theorizing about it, talking about it in class. And this is an endeavor that could be of value even at the undergraduate level," he notes. "They don't have the answers, but, at this point, neither do we."