IT for the Liberal Arts College: A Window of Opportunity

39 he quantity of printer’s ink sacrificed daily in the name of information technology and the new economy makes it difficult to separate fact from euphoria. The forceful reassertion of the business cycle and our current national trauma1 provide an appropriate opportunity for careful reflection about IT and about the future of IT in higher education. The measurable indicators — such as productivity, employment, and the inflation rate — clearly show that some important structural changes are taking place in the national and the international economies, although the rate of these changes will undoubtedly be slowed temporarily by the business cycle. Further, evidence continues to accumulate that IT is directly responsible for Exploiting information technology applications can increase the competitiveness of liberal arts colleges f o r t h e L i b e r a l A r t s C o l l e g e :