In the course of a book review he wrote in 1987, Nobel economist Robert Solow made the offhand comment, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” This comment summed up what has become known as the “productivity paradox”: the seeming lack of productivity gains from information technologies. For example, widespread adoption of information technologies in service industries was supposed to allow these industries to reap big efficiency gains. Bar coding of merchandise was supposed to allow sales clerks at retailers to do their work much more efficiently. Financial electronic data interchange was supposed to provide big productivity enhancements in financial services. These productivity gains were slow to emerge—either that or the data are wrong.

Higher education is a good example of a service industry. College campuses are now full of computers. How would you propose to measure the effect of computers on productivity in higher education?