What responsibility do universities have in student success?

Today university professors have an expectation more and more that students will be accessing electronic information to augment textbooks or class notes. I, for one, am one of those. I'm still amazed by the number of students who walk into my classroom not knowing how to use the computer for anything other than instant messages and typing papers. Giving students the responsibility of downloading assignments, sending files via e-mail, etc. is just one way to help prepare them for the computer skills they will need upon graduating.

But there is just one problem: Not all students have personal computers. And for the students who do that live off campus, a modem connection often won't suffice anymore for today's large files, web registration for classes, and class discussion boards. In this article, a student at the University of Arizona finds himself heading off to the computer lab 4x/week for at least 3 hours each time....often very late at night in order to ensure that a computer is available.

Will there come a day when students will be required to own a computer? Will more and more campuses like this provide laptops for their students (for a fee, of course)? As students make great sacrifices to pay the ever-increasing tuition, must they also make the sacrifice of having personal computers as well? As students at the University of Arizona have found out, getting into even the 24 hour labs can sometimes be a challenge.

So exactly what is the responsibility of the university to today's students?