Computers are a driving force of change at universities nationwide, said Cornell faculty speakers, June 8, at the Cornell Reunion forum, "Universities of the Future."

Sponsored by the Cornell Class of '57, more than 250 alumni and friends filled Statler Auditorium to hear Donald Greenberg, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Graphics; Cornell President Emeritus Frank H.T. Rhodes; and Ronald Ehrenberg, the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics.

"Since a half century ago, in no documented time period of mankind has the world witnessed so much change," said Greenberg '55, B.C.E. '58, Ph.D. '68. As an example, he compared the computing power of Remington Rand's first UNIVAC (UNIVersal automatic computer) computing system, which offered 1,500 bytes of computing memory, in the early 1950s, with today's desktop computers.

Now, he said, "Each student in my laboratory has more computational power at his or her desk than the entire computing facility of the university or even the central government had in 1957." This computational power has risen exponentially since the 1950s and another doubling of computing power is expected every 1.5 years, he added.

The challenge of staying at the forefront of this revolutionary period in digital technology and information transfer, the panelists agreed, presents a huge cost to universities.

There are internal and external pressures -- by students, faculty, alumni and the public -- on universities like Cornell "to have the best," and that takes money, said Ehrenberg, also the director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute.

He presented a detailed account of Cornell's rising tuition costs that are expected to continue to climb. Tuition and fees in the 1950s were $832, Ehrenberg said, and now they are $34,600. However, the actual cost of higher education per student at Cornell -- and at many other universities -- far exceeds the price of tuition, he said.

The digital revolution, said Rhodes, has changed how universities teach and conduct research. Cornell is in need of a "new revolution," he added, with communication serving as an essential driving force. An advocate of the public-service role of universities, Rhodes emphasized the importance of increasing communication both within the university and between the university and the public.

"Education is essentially about communication," he said.

Graduate student Sandra Holley is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.