The Managerial Revolution in Higher Education

During the student riots on the Berkeley campus in 1964, it was reported, some of the demonstrating students were marching around the campus with signs which bore the legend, "I am a student. Please do not fold, spindle, or mutilate." In the Midwest a determined group of faculty members attempted to sabotage a newly installed computer system for recording grades by punching random holes in the cards used to report grades to the IBM machine. At yet another university an embattled registrar fought a proposal to introduce a streamlined computer registration system, arguing that his office could do the job more efficiently with traditional hand methods. Whether these reactions are justified or not, they serve as a reminder that institutions of higher education have begun to convert important segments of their administrative procedure to electronic computers and that the effects of this conversion are being felt in all quarters of the academic community.

Three key findings have emerged from our own survey of computer use in university administration.¹ First, the potential of computers in this area is still largely unrealized; a new world of computer management and control lies ahead in higher education. Up to this point, at least, computers are still being used mainly to increase the speed, accuracy, and general effectiveness of many routine administrative operations in state universities. But the modern electronic computer has a capacity for highly sophisticated varieties of administrative analysis which go far beyond such routine clerical concerns.² As mentioned earlier, computer science has reached a point at which mathematical models of universities can be programed on computers so that complex policy decisions can be tested

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