In an effort to execute its ambitious plans to upgrade on-campus technology, GW may be forced to rethink its priorities by re-evaluating individual programs and projects.
The findings of a reaccreditation team that visited campus in October report that GW’s planned initiatives for improving information technology are positive steps toward a more connected campus, but that funding to support the proposals is insufficient.
The University’s Board of Trustees passed a 6.9 percent tuition hike in April, and GW President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg highlighted campus technology as one of three “big-ticket items” to be emphasized under the increase. Trachtenberg said his goal was to bring the University’s technology resources up to speed, putting GW back in step with other schools around the country.
But finding funds to wire residence halls and faculty offices to the Internet, enhance and expand computing facilities on campus and connect the University’s Foggy Bottom campus to its outlying locations could present a challenge as GW faces pressure from students to keep tuition down next academic year.
The Board of Trustees approved a $25 million initiative last spring to be spent solely on funding campus technology during the next five years.
The Trustees’ initiative to finance technology improvements, which administrators say will take five or six years, is funded through a payout from the University’s $500 million endowment, the additional tuition and fees from last spring’s increase and revenue from next fall’s tuition, according to GW Vice President for Administrative and Information Services Walter Bortz.
That funding has gone into several projects already, including the upgrade of faculty computers earlier this fall.
Bortz said administrators presented their progress to the Board of Trustees at its meeting Friday, and that the Board “seemed happy that we’re moving ahead.”
GW Vice President and Treasurer Louis Katz said he told the Board of Trustees in the spring that the projected $25 million allocated for technology improvements might be too conservative – he gave an estimate of closer to $50 million, a figure he says he still stands by.
“When we put forward the original plan, we realized that it would require more than the $25 million,” Katz said. “We didn’t have a specific plan at that time, so we had to go by `rules of thumb.’ We knew that if it required additional resources, we’d need to find those resources.”
Katz said the University is fully committed to spending the $5 million allocated for this year, and he guessed that $2 or $3 million has been spent already this year.
As administrators sit down to plan next year’s budget with the team’s findings in front of them, Trachtenberg says they face a “dynamic tension.”
On one hand, officials say they remain committed to technology improvements. But on the other hand, they say they aim to keep this year’s tuition hike as low as possible.
“Obviously, technology is an issue we take very seriously . as we plan our budget for next fall,” Trachtenberg said. “How do we honor both our commitments?”
Trachtenberg said the University will review its other expenditures as well, and will work to ensure that its priorities are consistent with GW’s educational mission.
“The educational purpose of the University is teaching and research,” Trachtenberg said. “We have to take each item and determine how it figures into that goal.”
A Commencement ceremony on the Ellipse, for example, is one thing Trachtenberg suggests needs re-evaluation, leading him to appoint a committee last week to review Commencement activities and the expense that surrounds them.
He said events and programs that require large amounts of revenue payout may have to be reprioritized to allow the University to focus its efforts on technology enhancements and other educational objectives.
“Commencement just isn’t a big enough item standing by itself,” Trachtenberg said.
He said a national re-evaluation of university expenditures is the current trend, pointing to Boston University’s recent decision to cut its football program as an example.
“It just got too expensive,” Trachtenberg said.
Katz agreed that reallocation of funds might be necessary, but said that University administrators seem willing to examine their priorities.
“I think everybody understands the importance of technology, and everyone is conceptually in favor of it,” Katz said.
Regarding this spring’s tuition increase, Trachtenberg repeatedly has stressed his desire to keep the increase well below last year’s 6.9 percent.
“I always assume that you have to look at inflation first,” Trachtenberg said. “Then you have to look at this vast menu if items that you want and need. You have to develop some kind of a pecking order. We’re going to go back and say maybe some of these things are going to have to wait.”
In preparation for the reaccreditation team’s visit, the University prepared Beyond Boundaries, a focused self-study that the team used as a yardstick to measure GW’s progress since 1987. Information technology was one of the four areas emphasized in Beyond Boundaries.
Hinrich Martens, associate vice president for communication and technology at the State University of New York at Buffalo and a member of the reaccreditation team, said the team concentrated on the aspects of technology that GW stressed in the self-study: access to technology, training and support opportunities, and academic computing.
Martens said the team was satisfied with GW’s plans to improve access to educational technology and with the financial strategy in place to back it up.
But he said the team, a group of administrators from other universities, was concerned that GW does not have adequate funding to support its plans to finance campus networking – connecting student and faculty computers to the Internet and wiring GW’s main campus to its remote locations in the surrounding suburbs.
“We’d like to move the projects along,” Bortz said. “But right now we’re looking for an interim solution.”
“The plans for campus networking are sound,” Martens said. “The goals are consistent with putting GW in the mainstream – where other universities are going. But the funding is insufficient.
“To have a major research university without faculty Ethernet connections is just not good enough anymore. Perhaps priorities ought to be revisited,” Martens said.
Trachtenberg said the team suggested that GW complete in three or four years what it has planned for five or six, but he said he is concerned that the nature of the projects will make that impossible.
For example, Trachtenberg said that a project like wiring Thurston Hall for Ethernet connections cannot be completed during the school year while students are living in the residence hall.
But by completing the work in the summer, the University would be forced to turn away the interns, travel groups and other people who live in the halls during the summer.
Either way, Trachtenberg said, the University will lose money, both in the out-of-pocket expenses necessary to pay for the technology upgrade, and in the revenue lost by turning away summer residents.
“We need to work smart as well as work hard,” he said.
Assistant Vice President for Information Systems and Services Doug Gale said the team did not discover anything University administrators do not already know.
“Basically, the team is holding up a mirror, and we’re looking in it . There were no surprises. They pointed at areas we were already looking at, but they also said, `You’re doing a good job.’ “
