Computers Across Campus

Abstract

In 1994, when Educom President Robert Heterick chided American colleges and universities with the observation that "The shoemaker's children have no shoes!" his metaphor hit home. The shoemaker he was referring to was the nation's system of higher education which, from ENIAC to the Internet, had been instrumental in the development of today's computers and global networks. The shoes, of course, were the computers themselves, glaringly absent from too many classrooms and dorms across the country. Heterick's admonition was clear and unequivocal: "It is time our institutions give up the industrial age model of personal computers in laboratories and move aggressively to the expectation that every student will come to school prepared with at least a minimally configured personal computer [3].".