The internet will force universities to abandon entrenched procedures and assumptions as its cost-cutting potential escalates, according to one educational technology expert.
Diana Oblinger, of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill's business school, will tell a London forum next week that e-commerce concepts are making American institutions rethink procedures, from the way bills and purchase orders are issued to how career advice is offered to students.
She is one of the speakers at the Joint Information Systems Committee's Technology Watch conference on Wednesday, which aims to help higher and further education plan for the future.
Issues to be discussed include the developments in e-education, changes in funding regimes, the increasing emphasis on lifelong learning and the effect of students as "paying customers".
Ms Oblinger said the internet was having a significant effect on institutions whether or not they embraced it. Many USuniversities are seeing a big drop in revenue from on-campus book sales because large numbers of students are buying online.
However, institutions investing in "e-tools" are discovering that costs can be slashed. Generating a paper bill is estimated to cost about $1; doing the same online slices a third off. Processing a conventional purchase order adds up to around $150. It costs $10-15 to do the same online.
While there are upfront costs, the savings soon mount up and can be ploughed back into academic operations.
Student services such as career advice can also be taken online. The technology exists, though implementing it requires working across many traditional barriers.
"It can be much trickier on the human side of the equation than it is on the technology side," said Ms Oblinger.
Similarly, evidence is mounting that online learning structures can benefit on-campus students.
Some sections of higher education have tried to ignore the rise of e-learning companies and the value of "distributed" learning. Ms Oblinger said that was foolish: "The world has irrevocably changed and there is a place, both in the traditional university business as well as non-traditional institutions, for many of these internet-like companies."
It is even possible that the internet can overturn fundamental assumptions about education systems, she said: "We've always assumed that a not-for-profit educational institution will have higher quality than a for-profit operation and that there are barriers to entry for the for-profits, but we're finding that is not necessarily true anymore."
Other speakers at the JISC conference include Tom Bentley, director of Demos, and Simon Robinson, of Oracle UK.
Registration is free. See www.jisc.ac.uk/events for details.