April 19, 2001 | Read Time: 1 minute
By NICOLE WALLACE
A new report calls for the creation of a national trust to promote the innovative use of information technology in education.
“A Digital Gift to the Nation,” published by the Century Foundation, recommends that the federal government use the proceeds from the auction of the electromagnetic spectrum — which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will bring in $18-billion over the next several years — to create a Digital Opportunity Investment Trust.
The trust would make grants to schools, universities, libraries, museums, and other nonprofit organizations for projects that explore new ways of using information technology to provide education and job training.
The authors of the report describe the electromagnetic spectrum, which is government-owned, as “the twenty-first century equivalent of the nation’s public lands of an earlier time,” and compare their proposal to the 1862 Morrill Act, which set aside public lands to establish 105 land-grant colleges.
“Revenue from the sale of rights to use the spectrum, like revenue from the sale of public lands, can become an electronic land-grant gift to the nation — an investment in the future to support lifelong learning both inside and outside the classroom.”
The report was written by Lawrence K. Grossman, former president of NBC News, and Newton N. Minow, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and was sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York; the Century, John S. and James L. Knight, and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundations; and the Open Society Institute.
For more information: Go to http://www.digitalpromise.org.
