The Fourth Estate Alumni in the Digital Age

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The Fourth EstateAlumni in the Digital Age

• Eustace D. Theodore
• eAdvancement.org
• April 20, 2001

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Translations Hearing the Unspoken

• Our success is measured on the bottom line
• The top line is the only way to judge us what
  we do is whats important
• Translating the top and bottom lines into an
  understanding across cultures
• Convergence the fundamental reality of the
  digital age

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The Questions

• Who will be the students?
• Who will be the faculty, what will they teach and
  what will they do outside the classroom?
• Who will support the University, where will the
  money come from?
• Who will govern the University?
• What role will the alumni have in the academy?

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The Brilliance of the AYA Structure

• From episodic intervention to continuous
  engagement
• Rejecting old metaphors and creating a new
  reality
• Embracing the whole University and all aspects of
  Advancement
• Preparing Yale for the opportunities of the
  digital age

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Who Governs?

• Faculty, students and staff each have a role in
  guiding the University. These roles evolve over
  time. Alumni, as a group, have been limited
  inside players. They will become more
  significant in the life of the University when
  they join faculty, students and staff as
  participants in ongoing campus life.

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The Past is Prologue

• Connections established by the AYA will pale in
  comparison to the reality of a digital future.
• Lifelong education will link alumni to Yale in
  far more meaningful ways.
• Communities built around class, club and graduate
  schools will develop on-going connections
  special interest groups, now under-served will be
  linked in new digital communities.

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The New Reality

• Time and space will no longer be a barrier.
• Concerns about size of affiliation will be
  replaced by power of affiliation.
• The new digital reality will redefine slow as it
  redefines proximity.
• As with the rest of the digital world, the
  difference between the haves and the have nots
  will increase.

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A Look at Faculty Futures

• The preservation, creation and transmission of
  knowledge.
• Entrepreneurs and the establishment of
  educational firms.
• Private versus State profit versus non-profit.

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A Look at Student Futures

• Education and coming of age in the digital world.
• Relationships and their impact on education.
• The power of a hidden voice within the free
  spirit of inquiry.

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A Look at Funding Futures

• Philanthropy will be replaced by enlightened
  self-interest.
• Corporate support will be based on effective
  partnerships.
• Institutional diversity will increase as funding
  differences grow.
• Tuition driven institutions will begin to
  dominate the educational landscape.

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Keeping Yale, Yale

• Define Yales core mission and values.
• Engage faculty, students, staff and most
  especially alumni in preserving this core.
• Move with the tides of change to ensure that
  Yales mission and values are achieved in new
  ways.

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A final thought...

• Faculty come and go students are supposed to
  come and go happily administrations come and go
  but the alumni go on forever! They are the only
  permanent part of an educational institution.
  
  .