HBCUs and the Digital Divide 
The Digital Learning Lab's Unconventional Vision
Last updated: Thursday 02-Nov-2006 8:22 AM

A. Technology Is About People

Conventional discussions of the so-called "digital divide" tend to focus on differences between minorities and mainstream with regard to information technology (IT) infrastructures, i.e., to differences in their ownership and/or access to computer hardware, software applications, local networks, and the Internet. Accordingly, remedial programs based on this framework strive to increase minority ownership and/or access. By contrast, the DLL believes that these considerations are significant, but secondary:

  • The DLL applauds HBCUs for their impressive efforts to upgrade their IT infrastructures in recent years.  However, programs that focused on IT-infrastructures have had predictably disappointing results. 
  • The DLL remains convinced that the most significant component of the Digital Divide is the gap in "computer know-how" between minorities and mainstream. In other words, faculty and staff at HBCUs don't know how to use their IT infrastructures as effectively as faculty and staff at mainstream institutions. This gap is especially significant with regard to Internet/Web technologies because the evolution of these technologies is accelerating and their impact is increasingly pervasive.
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  • The DLL believes that the "best computer in the world" is the one you already have, but probably aren't using to its full capacity. Today's desktop computers are so powerful, they make the supercomputers of the 1970's look like toys. However, most faculty and staff still use them primarily for email and word processing -- activities that only require a fraction of their power. Hence the greatest emphasis should be placed on enhancing the capacity of the faculty and staff at HBCUs to make more effective use of the Internet/Web technologies accessible via the computers the HBCUs already have.
     
  • Finally, the DLL believes that a critical mass of IT expertise already exists within the extended family of HBCUs. Unfortunately, the impact of this expertise is greatly weakened by the fact that knowledgeable faculty and staff are distributed across the campuses of 104 HBCUs.


B. Faculty/Staff Training, Collaboration, and Distance Learning

Fortunately, the same Internet/Web technologies that digitally divide HBCUs from the mainstream also provide powerful tools for closing this division.

  • Collaboration among the IT experts dispersed across the 104 HBCUs can be implemented via a wide variety of inexpensive communications technologies, e.g., email, threaded discussion boards, instant messaging, blogs, video conferencing, and podcasts.

  • Faculty and staff can upgrade their IT skills using self-paced training programs.

  • Students at HBCUs can be given access to a far wider range of courses offered via distance learning by other colleges in a distance learning consortium.

C. Some Current Practitioners

Fortunately a number of HBCUs have already taken steps to provide enhanced training opportunities for their faculty and staff, to encourage collaboration with other HBCUs, and to provide provide expanded course offerings for their students via participation in distance learning consortia. A few examples of HBCUs that are currently implementing these "best practices" are noted below:

 

D. Making Progress in the Context of a Larger Divide

Unfortunately, the recent emergence of a more fundamental "mega-divide" has ominous implications. Back in 2000, the DLL regarded the growing evidence of declining interests in science and technology among majority students at majority colleges as "good news" because -- all other things being equal -- "we" could move into the higher paying jobs and more exciting research opportunities that "they" were walking away from. Unfortunately, "we" didn't move fast enough ==> so the jobs and research opportunities began to leave the country.

In one of history's bitter ironies, American IT professionals led the development of the Internet technologies that made rapid, large-scale, global outsourcing a practical possibility; then their jobs were among the first to be outsourced. At the beginning of this decade, American companies were out-sourcing jobs to India, China, and elsewhere because labor costs were much lower "over there" than back here. Recently, however, American managers have also been claiming that they are outsourcing jobs because they can't find the technical skills they need here at home.

Of course such claims must not be taken at face value. All decisions to move American jobs overseas must be examined at the micro level on a case-by-case basis. Nevertheless this new impetus is consistent with the macro data concerning the "mega-divide" -- the growing gap between the numbers/percentages of Americans going into science and technology (IT in particular) and the increasing numbers/percentages of Chinese, Indians, and others entering these fields.  

The emergence of the "mega-divide" is disheartening, but not unexpected given the inadequate performance of American schools at the K-12 level in recent years. The reader is referred to the National Academy's comprehensive report "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" (2005). It is difficult to see how the U.S. can retain its position as the world's technology leader given this widespread erosion of its academic base.

E. "Disappearing" Black Males

A more immediate and far more lethal challenge is posed by the widening gaps between the achievement levels attained by Black males and the levels attained by the rest of American society on a range of important measures -- education, employment, income, etc. How can Black America close the Digital Divide if half of us are left behind because we fail to achieve our highest potential or, far worse, we drop out? But if, for whatever reasons, we do drop out, how do we get back in? (to be continued)