Informationalism caused by substantial IT innovation has had a significant influence on higher education. The contemporary imagination has redefined educational issues from the dialogue of previous decades. This paper begins by discussing how educational conflicts of preceding decades are analyzed as curriculum, funding, or control conflicts. Curriculum conflicts are about which courses are to be included in educational programs and have often been about controversial courses that educators believed strengthened students. Funding conflicts have been about how much funds colleges receive from state and federal sources. 2006 reductions in travel funding and Pell grants exemplify funding conflicts. A series of reports about state funding of higher education have encouraged evaluating state efforts in terms of whether educational spending supports teaching and learning. Control issues in recent decades have been about instructor ethos and student participation in educational decision making. A continual series of IT developments beginning about 1980 and continuing until the present day have changed the complexities of higher education issues. An e-survey conducted by this author in 2008 ask respondents about the themes they think of when they hear about IT. Data from this e-survey reveal that e-government; computers, networks; and database; and management information systems are the most chosen items on the e-survey. It rhetoric about social causes—globalism and informatics ranks next among survey respondents. This paper disagrees with the e-survey and concludes that two difficult IT realities are causing higher education to continue to reevaluate itself. The continuing importance of innovation confronts higher education. Similarly, the rate of technological change remains a reality that appears likely to influence the future in higher education. These powerful realities have influence higher education in the direction of more opportunity. IT is useful helping colleges lobby for more funds. Issues that were not raised about social control are now more openly discussed, and Internet has removed the type of controls that formerly plagued colleges
