Can Colleges Reach Beyond Campus to Foster ‘Digital Equity’ in Communities?

Connect Humanity is working with the city of Orangeburg (SC) and Claflin University to extend the university’s broadband out into the surrounding community at affordable rates. And because research from McKinsey suggests that more than 80 percent of HBCUs are located in “broadband deserts,” it’s a strategy that may work elsewhere in the country, too. The Orangeburg approach is an example of the role higher education could play in helping to get millions of people of all backgrounds, income levels and parts of the country connected to high-quality internet in order to more-fully participate in the modern world—a concept that some advocates have started to call “digital equity.” This was the topic of a webinar hosted last month by the American Association of Colleges & Universities, in which Ben-Avie and other panelists urged college leaders to embrace their institutions’ identities as “anchors” in their neighborhoods and regions in order to help conquer the digital divide. Higher ed has been paying more attention to this idea since pandemic-era remote learning underscored students’ uneven access to computers and internet. Yet researchers and nonprofit and government leaders are calling on colleges to think bigger, beyond their own students, to consider how they can lend their expertise and resources to make a difference off campus, too.