Pictures of the Future    Fall 2006

Competing for Talent

In addition to providing specialized knowledge, the university of the future will teach students how to collaborate in globally networked teams. Crucial requirements include a sound educational concept and a modern technical infrastructure. Siemens technology is helping schools to master the challenges of the 21st century.

^{At the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin, the auditorium is equipped with a full range of multimedia capabilities. Presentations and films are controlled from an LCD display (insert)}

In the foyer of the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Berlin, Ramon Giovannini pulls out his access card. An integrated radio chip on the card identifies him and permits him to enter. In the lounge, the 29-year-old engineer, who is working toward a Master in Business Administration (MBA), sinks into one of the red leather armchairs and enjoys a cup of coffee. Meanwhile, his laptop logs onto the radio network that enables wireless access to the intranet and the Internet throughout the entire building. Checking his online schedule, Giovannini downloads project work on case studies from the business sector that fit today’s agenda. "Only the members of a given team have access to the group rooms," he says as he holds his card in front of the monitor next to a door. The card shows him which of his fellow team members have already arrived. "In this high-tech environment, I sometimes have to be very disciplined," he confides with a smile. "After all, it’s very tempting to use your laptop to enter an Internet chat room during a lecture or reserve cheap flight tickets. But we’re adults and we should be able to control ourselves."

"Individual responsibility is the key to successful learning," agrees Prof. Derek Abell, who has been the president of the ESMT ever since it was founded four years ago on the initiative of 25 German companies and associations as an elite training ground for up-and-coming young managers. "The ESMT’s technical equipment is pioneering in many respects. But there’s one thing we shouldn’t forget: The best equipment is useless if the didactic concept is wrong and we can’t motivate the students."

The university auditorium is semicircular so that everyone present can engage in dialogue. Modern technology, most of it from Siemens, facilitates daily learning. The instructor can control all of the media from a central control unit—an LCD screen that can be pulled out from the podium like a drawer. These media include sound files as well as films and presentations stored on the university’s central server. Daniel Grosch from Siemens Building Technologies is especially proud of this innovation. "The impressive thing about this solution is the interplay of technical components. It’s a fully integrated system," he says. Grosch installed the building and automation technology at the ESMT and worked closely with the Siemens Communications Group to install the School’s IT and communication technology.

Academic Vision. For most of the world’s universities, it’s still impossible to follow the ESMT’s lead. But in the future they won’t be able to avoid massive investments in equipment. Dr. Wolfgang Mayr-Knoch, Corporate Account Manager for Research & Education at Siemens, estimates that in the coming decade the world’s universities will need to make investments totaling €166 billion annually. "Education is the key resource for building future prosperity," he says. His job is to work out a vision of the campus of the future—and to help universities all over the world to make this vision come true. One of these was Nova Southeastern University (NSU) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Here, Siemens has created a fully integrated digitized system for the university hospital and the campus. This system is transforming NSU’s entire academic community into a pioneering center of living and learning, with a focus on health research and biotechnology. W-LAN access everywhere, smartcard solutions for access control and safety systems, and a powerful light rail transport system will make life easier for students and teachers alike. These services, and many more, can be put in place by a single source, thanks to the Siemens One approach. Five different Siemens groups are participating in this major project, which has a volume of several hundred million dollars.

NSU is also linked via a fiber-optic network with other research locations in the United States and Europe. Dr. George Hanbury, NSU Vice Chancellor and Chief Operating Officer, is already thinking even further ahead—to the vision of a decentralized campus: "State-of-the-art high-speed networks will make decentralized research a reality and make it possible for universities to cooperate more closely with one another and with the business world." NSU will be optimally prepared for the future—and that’s a good thing, because the challenges facing universities are being irreversibly changed by global trends. These include globalization, changing demographics and the structural transformation into a society based on knowledge and services. Says Mayr-Knoch, "Educational institutions that fail to keep up with these trends will be at a disadvantage in the global competition to attract the best students."

Dynamically developing economies like those of China and India mean stronger demand worldwide for admission to higher education—and tougher competition among universities and colleges. About 33,000 engineers graduate from German universities annually; in India, the total is more than 300,000, topped by China’s 400,000. And their training is becoming increasingly advanced. In just a few years, many of today’s students will be scattered around the globe, working in networked teams. To prepare them for the challenges ahead, greater emphasis will have to be placed on teaching them important key skills that go far beyond the detailed knowledge need for specialized disciplines.

For Giovannini, who earned his engineering degree at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, this was precisely why he decided to add an MBA to his credentials. "Today’s work world demands more sophisticated skills than ever before. At the ESMT, I am refining not only my analytic abilities, but also my skills as a team player—with colleagues from all over the world," he says. While students are putting together impressive resumes, however, educational institutes are coming under more pressure. "Universities are being forced to cope with a host of challenges, especially rising costs and the need to continuously improve the quality of their programs and their competitiveness in the global educational market," says Mayr-Knoch. "And this is where technological systems and equipment have a vital role to play."

Clients Around the World. These radically changing demands are straining the financial and organizational resources of many universities. To help relieve this pressure, Siemens provides a wide spectrum of support services, ranging from planning and physical facilities to systems integration, maintenance and service. And good planning is particularly important, because colleges and universities usually devote only about one quarter of their total expenditures for IT and energy solutions to infrastructures. The largest share of what’s left is earmarked for operations and maintenance. This is why Siemens provides consulting not only for IT and telecommunications solutions, building systems and power engineering, security and e-learning, but also for concrete financing. In the last five years alone, Siemens has provided support for dozens of universities and institutes of higher learning in Australia, Canada, Egypt, Lebanon, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

"Educational institutes will focus more intensively on offering courses of study in appropriate contexts and in a manner that students can access quickly and conveniently," Mayr-Knoch says. And that could mean using e-learning, learning modules that can be loaded into PDAs, or project work. The traditional lecture won’t disappear, but it will be transformed with the help of multimedia. "And this will be speeded along by content management systems and fast and secure data transfer channels, like those we’ve installed at NSU," says Mayr-Knoch. One thing is already certain: The student will increasingly be seen as a customer—in other words, as the central factor when choosing solutions.

The Currency of Knowledge. Many experts believe that the following vision could become reality in just a few years. On the campus of the future, all key facilities are networked in an integrated system. Students use a single smart card to borrow books from the library, pay for meals and snacks in the cafeteria, and sign off on digital examinations.

Biometric information is used to control access to sensitive areas like labs. Students sit in a cafe, loading information on specific topics into their PDAs, for example a video clip showing how the human heart functions; this optional service is paid for in the school’s own "currency," for example a credit point system like those used at many American and British colleges and universities. Knowledge, education experts agree, will pay off. "Particularly for highly developed economies, education is the capital of the future, and knowledge will be their currency," says Mayr-Knoch. "This also means that courses of study at colleges and universities—their content—is becoming a commodity."

But commercial goods must be secured against theft. And that creates a paradox. In the future, universities will have to make their intellectual assets more accessible than ever before via the Internet—around the clock and in every country. At the same time, they’ll be using the latest information technology to limit access to this knowledge and put a price tag on it. For these institutions—and their students—this will be the only way to ensure prosperity in the new world of learning.

Giovannini’s tuition bill for two years of studies at the ESMT came to roughly 50,000 €, a considerable investment. In return, he got a top-quality education and the benefits of the most modern technical equipment, which functions virtually unseen behind the ESMT’s wood-paneled walls and in its server rooms. "The great thing is that we’re no longer even conscious of how the technology at the ESMT makes our work so much easier," explains Giovannini. "Everything seems to run smoothly without any effort on our part, and that’s the real added value."
                                                                                                 Andreas Kleinschmidt