Q + A with Tracy Mitrano on Building a Global University
In preparation for tomorrow's luncheon on "Building a Global University", Berkman intern Yvette Wohn sat down with Tracy Mitrano for a Q + A where they discussed collaboration on the internet, digital libraries, and models of university administration.
Q. In a nutshell, (for our readers) what exactly is a global university?
Global university is a concept not an entity. It is distinguishable from current higher education usage of that term on this point: it does not represent brick and mortar institutions in countries outside the United States but rather the extension of the Internet (physical, logical and application layers) in service of higher education from an international perspective.
Q. Who do you think should be the "head" of this global university? Who gets to decide which questions should be asked?
Genuine collaboration created the Internet, and I think that same dynamic could serve the notion of a global university well. Higher education might well consider how technology offers options that might address global economic, social and political needs by extending our concepts and means of developing information, knowledge and culture beyond our current national boundaries. Of course, technology historically is disruptive to established social and political institutions and so there are some foundational policy issues at stake in this concept.
In the article I wrote about a notion of a global university, grounded in a speculative interpretation of the potential uses of a federated authentication bridging middleware called Shibboleth and overseen by a steering committee called InCommon, I posed some questions as a way to illustrate the concept. Those questions were not intended to represent a definitive set. Were such a notion of a global university ever to take shape, the people involved might establish a process by which the substantive questions would emerge, but more important, change over time contoured by people in different parts of the world and in different situations. The fundamental criteria might be that the questions be geared towards serving the needs of least fortunate people, need interpreted in terms of access and control over material goods and services, political process and culture on a global scale.
Q. Do you think the politics involved in university administration would apply to "faculty" of this global university?
Heaven forbid! To be honest, I imagine that the notion of faculty would take on a very different, and perhaps even radical, concept in a global university by comparison to existing models of university administration. That shift would be an effect, not the goal, of transforming institutional structures established largely on nineteenth century German constructs and developed over time by the American industrial-military-university complex :-)
Q. Will credit be given for global university projects? If not, what kind of incentive or attracting factor would this university have for students to participate?
Great question. Either this notion, if realized, becomes the pet favorite of a few special "scholars," both students and faculty, of participating institutions or it fundamentally transforms what it means to be a student, a member of a faculty, undergraduate curriculum or even the contours of an academic administration. In service of full disclosure, I favor the potential of the latter option.
Q. How important do you think synchronous content will be?
Rather than gauge a response to that particular question, which is a good one, I would prefer to emphasize that technology increasingly makes both synchronous and asynchronous content an interchangeable available option. The content and dynamic of the exchange should drive the answer to this question, not the technology, nor even the "concept" of a global university. Overall this concept is more of an inductive than deductive approach to higher education from an international perspective guided by a notion of praxis (informed, but not determined, by Gramsci).
A couple questions on the development of digital libraries:
Q. Cornell has one of the best libraries in the world. How optimistic do you feel about digitizing library content? Is there any possibility that the content will be distorted by those who digitize it?
Great question! Thank you for the compliment, and congratulations to our new university librarian, Anne Kenney, whose expertise is precisely in this area of digital libraries.
Yes, of course there is the possibility that content will or can be distorted by those who digitize it or, if I might expand on your question, by some unintended consequence of the technological process of digitization. This challenge is a great illustration of Lessig's model of the Internet. Technology is not all, in fact it is, as the Bard would say, neither good nor bad only thinking makes it so. So we must also focus on the thinking: the law and policy surrounding the creation of digital libraries (and the appropriate enforcement mechanisms), the market models influencing what is preserved, how and to whom and at what cost it is made available, and the actual ways in which people use it.
There is another association I have to this question: how might libraries, including digital assets, be affected by a notion of a global university? The main change might come in recognizing that not every institution has to maximize their holdings in every area. Rather, with electronic availability of materials libraries could begin to work collaboratively and plan strategically on collections in such a way as to make the whole availability greater than the sum of any part (read: institution). Of course, trust is the essential fabric necessary to make this cloth, and, not coincidentally, trust is also the fabric of federated network of authentication systems. So we already have models established in the physical and logical, i.e. middleware, level upon which more content layer relationships might be established. It is upon this foundation of trust that rests a notion of a global university.
Q. Do you think middleware platforms such as InCommon will still be required if schools go open-source?
Yes, more for the purpose of protecting users' privacy and to secure their data than for the reason of protecting the assets associated with institutional information and knowledge if one assumed a utopian view that the latter set was entirely unimpeded by law and policy and therefore completely available to the public. Perhaps with this next comment I reveal the limits of imagination but I must add that it is difficult for me to imagine a completely free distribution of institutional assets and services, notwithstanding admirable positions taken by such institutions as MIT or recently Harvard regarding open access to course materials. Moreover, very significant constraints exist over the information that colleges and university lease, borrow or use in the service of their missions, and unless business models or laws change in profound ways institutions still face the challenge of protecting that material as headlines today about Georgia State University illustrate. So perhaps one way to think about this question is to suggest that so long as there is a need to authenticate, as well as an interest in federating authentication, then there will be a need for middleware platforms that serve those purposes.