IMS Global: Has the renewed importance of improving learning outcomes affected the relationship between higher education and the companies that serve it?

MB: The short answer to that is absolutely. As in any industry, when customer needs and priorities change, companies must respond with new solutions and offerings. One of the themes at EDUCAUSE last year was the emphasis on measurable improvement and outcomes. That attention has clearly increased the emphasis on assessment and research-based evidence, learning efficacy and reporting. As a technology company working with education, we really must, and we are, getting on board to help higher ed institutions implement robust data warehousing, data mining, assessment and reporting systems. And most of the requirements being put into place can only be met via a technology solution. You look at the demands and needs of higher education for interoperability between data silos and business intelligence layers, to be able to bring to life the power of that information is critical. Or, you look at the consumerization of technology, more and more CIOs in higher ed institutions are under increasing pressure because of the student demands for alternative uses of technology on campuses. Those are all trends and demands that companies like Microsoft, working in partnership with education institutions, have to be prepared to help meet those shifting needs.

IMS Global: What would you say are the most significant changes that have occurred in higher education, or education in general, during the past two decades?

MB: Allow me to not just focus on higher education in answering that question, because we believe there are some fundamental changes that are going on that are impacting higher ed downstream. The first would be the increased importance of educating the world's population. Access to participation in primary education has really come under the microscope recently. As a result of programs like the global UNESCO Education For All initiative, the number of out-of-school children dropped from 96 million in 1996 to 72 million between 1999-2005. What's really interesting is that the expansion of primary education is creating an unprecedented demand for post-primary education. At the same time, more and more employers are demanding at least a secondary education, and in this country, demanding some form of post-secondary education. We're seeing record numbers of adults becoming lifelong learners and returning to school for re-training or in pursuit of individual interests, because it's the only way they can keep their jobs. So, the increased demand for secondary and tertiary education is coming from two directions-bottom up from increased participation in primary education and increased demands from the workplace. Meeting this demand depends on an adequate supply and access to quality teachers and institutions. Our belief is that technology has a central role in helping tertiary institutions scale to address the global demand and ensure that students can continue their education and adults can update their skills throughout their lifetime.

The second point I would make, which is an extension of what we were talking about earlier, is that we believe students must be at the center of learning. It's just a fundamental change that we see going on, where, for a variety of macro-economic reasons, educators realize that there is no single best teaching practice. Students learn in many ways and teaching can and should be tailored to the individual student. This includes individual and group learning, lectures, skills and inquiry-based learning, and technology can enhance all of these strategies. Throughout the world, there's an upswell coming from a variety of areas that is forcing everybody in the business of education to get much more into it being about the individual and letting that individual be successful based on their learning styles, preferences, and needs rather than trying to create this almost industrial revolutionary way of thinking about education as a system where we can move everybody through in an assembly line process and somehow achieve improved learning outcomes.

The third point I would make, which I've also kind of touched on before, is the consumerization of the campus. When we meet with our higher education customers, they more and more frequently talk about the decisions student consumers are making that are driving the decisions that institutions have to make to meet their expectations. For example, schools traditionally have given students guidelines about the types of technology they come to school with. Now, students come to campus with myriad devices and services they are used to depending on in their day-to-day lives and expect to be able to connect to the campus services.