The congressionally-authorized National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies hasn’t received any of its promised funding, according to an article published today in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The center, the establishment of which was heavily supported by the Digital Promise Project and the Federation of American Scientists, would aim to investigate and develop the use of information technology in education. Congress hoped to endow the center with a 20 billion dollar fund from which it could draw a yearly operating budget of 1 billion dollars—yet so far no money has been set aside for the project.

A belief that advances in learning technology could help struggling schools has motivated government spending on such ventures in the past, but present budget woes are threatening the future of the project. That funding has become an issue for the project is not surprising, however, as the country currently spends a mere 280 million dollars annually on education technology research and development. While Congress’ interest in the matter is certainly beneficial, the fact that the promised funding hasn’t been allocated yet is indicative of just how unrealistic this proposal is.

While government ought to step in and fund research in areas that the free market neglects, 20 billion dollars is a massive amount of money to set aside for research that is largely already pursued by online education providers, universities, and other groups. Especially given the sizeable level of the national debt, the proposal seems like the product of a lobbying strategy engineered by education technology companies.

Readers: What do you think of the proposal? Should the government be spending 20 billion taxpayer dollars on endowing a research institution with such a narrow focus?

Tags: Learning Technologies, Online Education