Michael O. Leavitt has been governor of Utah since January 1993. He is currently serving as lead governor, along with Democratic Colorado Governor Roy Romer, for the Western Virtual University. He is the immediate past chair of the Republican Governors Association and the Western Governors Association. He is president of the Council of State Governments, and is on the executive committee of the National Governors Association and the Republican Governors Association.

The interview was conducted by Joni E. Finney, Associate Director of the California Higher Education Policy Center.

Joni E. Finney: What problems do we have in higher education for which technology is the solution?

Michael O. Leavitt: Well I think there are three trends that this responds to. The first are economic trends. In the next decade or more, there will be significant pressures on all higher education institutions. Our citizens, on average, change jobs seven times during their careers and they might be involved in retraining in a number of those jobs. We have to find a way to provide high-quality low-cost opportunities to do that.

The second trend falls into the category of fiduciary responsibility. I believe that our public institutions will ultimately come under some competitive pressure. Eventually, people will have the choice of receiving low-cost high-quality information virtually anywhere in the world anytime they would like to have it. Those institutions that do not respond to that will find themselves at a disadvantage.

The third trend would be a need to include as part of a student's education an intimate understanding of how technology works. In short, this is the way it's going to work in the future, whether it's now or ten or twenty years from now. Part of every student's education will include technology, practical lessons on how to use technology and information. The world will require, I think, a more exacting level of training, and not every institution will be able to provide it. So we are now talking more about forming alliances to provide greater combinations of that kind of training.

JF: I want to probe something related to the cost issue. As you know, higher education is an enterprise that has, to a certain degree, equated high quality with high cost. And the public, to a certain degree, supports that. If one of the major goals of technology is to save money, will the public have confidence in the product?

ML: I don't see this as a replacement for traditional higher education. I think it is a new element. Those who don't add it will find themselves at a disadvantage. Everyone is adding it in some way.

Three or four years ago there was substantial resistance to this, and that is quickly breaking down on campuses all over America. For the most part, this is being driven by the market, by the providers, and also by the students and consumers of higher education.

JF: California faces a situation very similar to Utah in that we expect enormous growth over the next ten years, at least in terms of high school students and probably adults who want some type of retraining. Why can't we expand the infrastructure we currently have to accommodate this growth?

ML: We'll have to continue to expand. The demands simply require that, but it will be a function of proportion. The truth is we can't expand the infrastructure of the past at the same rate as we have and build the infrastructure of the future. Will we build dorms? I think we will. Will we build classrooms? Yes. Will we build student support facilities? Yes. But will we be able to do it at the same rate? Let me just illustrate with our own situation in Utah. We have about 75,000 students now. When my six-year-old son enters college, we'll have twice that--150,000. We're a relatively small system by comparison to the California system, but those are real numbers and it's very expensive for us to expand our campus facilities.

But even if you put every dime that we have for capital expansion toward higher education, you couldn't keep up with that demand. We have to find an alternative that will better utilize what we have. There are higher education systems all over America with similar problems. This is a major change in our view and it won't come easily, it won't come quickly and it won't come completely.

JF: I understand that you have served on the Utah Board of Regents. You're in a pretty good position to assess the willingness and readiness of the higher education community for this agenda.

ML: I am finding higher education, at least in our state and the 13 other states that I am working with, to be quite accepting of the reality that they have to find a way to integrate this into their education systems.

There is a major change that's occurring that drives all of this. For the last 2,500 years you had to go on the campuses in order to access knowledge that's stored there, refined there and passed on there. In this new information era, information and knowledge goes where people are. Technology generally, but especially in education, has been used to conduct or speed up the same process. We're getting to the point where it will change the process.

I don't think the Board of Regents in any state will drive this. It won't be any state legislature or any governor. It will be the marketplace. Ultimately people are going to find that they really like the idea of being able to have interactive education with someone at Oxford as part of their curriculum. It won't be a complete replacement; they'll still want a campus experience.

JF: Why have you proposed a regional Virtual University? How many other states are cooperating in the project?

ML: There are 13 other states right now. I challenged our system of higher education in July of 1993 to meet two objectives by the end of 1996. One was to create an electronic high school--Centennial High School--and the second goal was to deliver the equipment to every community college and every high school so that we could utilize the community colleges' courses for all our high school students. I think we will likely meet both of those goals.

I think we are the only state in the country that now has all of its high schools linked to the Internet system. As band width becomes available, we see the interactive part of that increasing dramatically. So we are planning for those technologies to be on track soon.

You've asked about other states. It became clear to me as we started appropriating money to develop the coursework and other areas, that we couldn't do it alone. I was at a Western Governors Conference in June of last year and told the governors where we were going and asked if the rest of the governors were thinking about this. Earlier I had a conversation with Clara Lovett, president at Northern Arizona University. I asked her, "Clara, we both have good programs. Are there any barriers that keep us from connecting your system with ours?" She said yes, there were three: bureaucracy, regulation and tradition.

It occurred to me how governors could be helpful in all this. They are not the experts in higher education, but they do have the political firepower, especially if they work together to break down bureaucracy, regulation, and hopefully challenge tradition. So my colleagues informed me that this was a subject that was not just important or interesting, and we completely rearranged our next meeting. We committed ourselves to moving forward with the Virtual University.

JF: A lot of people would express skepticism, and maybe some offense, that this initiative is being led by a group of governors. Who are the other important actors in this work? What's it going to take to make the Virtual University a reality?

ML: We have to include higher education.

JF: But you haven't turned it over to them, in your advisory structure or design plans.

ML: No, we haven't, because our job is to break down bureaucracy, regulation and tradition. There is an interest to be served by those outside of the system, because we are the "customers."

Higher education is a well-crafted system to maintain control. They set themselves up as the only mechanism for judging quality. They need, like any other monopoly, to be prodded in some way. This is not a hostile relationship; it is one of mutual interest.

JF: How will you ensure that the Virtual University has the same level of quality as traditional higher education?

ML: I think it's important to remember that in the Virtual University we are not proposing to teach any class. We're basically facilitating the delivery between systems. And every class that's offered, at least at this point, will be offered by a campus that presumably has been accredited by people who know quality when they see it. We intend to involve accreditation agencies and deal only with reputable institutions of higher education.

There will be a day when we start involving industry. Let me give you an example. We have a micro chip manufacturer that's new to the state. They have indicated a desire to work with us in designing programs and certificates and degrees that would best prepare a person for working in the micro electronics industry. It may be awhile before some people will recognize their program as a quality program. But I'll tell you who will recognize it: the micro electronics industry.

If you are a student, maybe you'd like to have a better-than-average job. You've got the choice between going through the programs at a traditional campus, then fighting for a job offer and demonstrating that your degree is a good one, or, you could do this at a time that is convenient, less expensive, related directly to what you are doing, and there is a job at better-than-average pay at the end. You tell me which they'll choose. Will that replace higher education? Of course not.

JF: I want to make sure that I have a clear understanding of the various phases of the Virtual University.

ML: Let me illustrate. In the first phase, let's assume that I had a student at the University of Utah who was accepted in the College of Business. I know there are students in our system who get accepted but can't finish in four years, because the classes fill up, so they have to wait another year until that section is taught again. What if they could take a technology-delivered course from the University of California at Berkeley from a world class, world renowned professor? They might be able to take that course as a substitute for the course they can't get.

We do it today with distance learning. But the day will come very shortly, I believe, when students will be able to do that through their dorm room, their home or their library. It will be far more sophisticated. I see the virtual catalogue as something as simple as a home page on the Internet where people can go and see the list of courses that are part of the Virtual University catalogue.

JF: So institutions will have to decide which of the Virtual University courses they accept to fulfill a degree requirement in order for a student to put together a program.

ML: Yes. That's just the first step. The second step might be the creation of an independent degree. It could be offered from a stand-alone institution. Let's say a student wanted to take all their basic requirements from the University of Utah to earn a degree in hotel management. We don't have a degree in hotel management. But at the University of Nevada, they do. So that person could work with an academically able counselor to help them design a program.

JF: One of the things that higher education has been criticized for is that they don't assess or certify learning very well. How will the Virtual University certify learning, particularly when you talk about having more than one kind of provider?

ML: This is not a problem that's unique to the Virtual University. This is a problem that is unique to learning in generalÉThere is no guarantee that the person who is paying the most is getting the finest education. If that were the case, the only people who would get good jobs are at the elite schools, and that's not the case. So these new kinds of learning will have different ways of being certified, as they do today. Clearly, as industry gets more involved, in phase three of the Virtual University, they'll say, "These are the things I want a person to be able to do. If they can do that, I judge them competent."

We'll be working more closely with industry to learn how to measure competencies on the basis of performance. Our current system does nothing to acknowledge the years and years of experience that a person gains doing the job, for example.

We never want the Virtual University to become a diploma mill. That would be terrible. It would be a disservice. On the other hand, if a person has learned by doing, the system ought to recognize that learning.

JF: The Virtual University expands the boundaries of higher education in ways that we haven't seen before and introduces an element of competition that higher education hasn't known. It's conceivable, don't you agree, that it could replace a portion of higher education that we currently have if we introduce new providers into this enterprise.

ML: Well, that's going to happen. I bump into people once in awhile who will likely resist it, but far more people can see that it is one of the most exciting horizons in higher education. They are anxious to grasp it. I think the vast majority of the faculty senates, presidents and systems of education will ultimately not just gravitate to this, but sprint.

JF: What are your thoughts about how the Virtual University should be financed and governed?

ML: I think ultimately we'll end up with a system that takes advantage of the resources that now exist on the state level and the courses that now exist on the campuses. For the most part we'll be facilitating courses that are already offered.

I don't think, in the near future, we'll reach the third phase where private businesses are offering courses. So there will be a tuition that's paid, state appropriations will go to the institutions participating. Students now pay to take classes.

JF: One of the things that has concerned us at the California Higher Education Policy Center is the lack of attention paid to higher education issues by the states--by the governors and legislators. We can count the number of governors on one hand who have really taken an interest in higher education issues. Do you think that this is a high enough priority so that the governors participating in this project will sustain it over time? Is there going to be staying power?

ML: Time will tell. There's more driving this than higher education. It's the marketplace. Governors have lots to worry about and not all of them are as interested in this subject. I think the fact that the Western Governors Association has taken this on as their primary effort speaks about the level of priority it is given by the governors, and perhaps its staying power.

There's no guarantee that anything new will work, or that it will work the way it was initially conceived, but I do think good things will come of this.