There is a real danger of a technology gap becoming a wedge issue between faculty members—in the same way standards of promotion and tenure, the job market, and salary compression have been divisive issues—at a time when professors need to be more united than ever in addressing the challenges of higher education.

Furthermore, a tech gap may well be increasing in an age of social-media revolution. A 2009 faculty survey at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, conducted by the university's office of information technology, found that faculty attitudes toward technology differed significantly by age group, and that those differences had grown sharper over time.

Minnesota's IT office concluded: "When compared to their younger colleagues, older faculty members perceive greater barriers to their use of technology and are, in general, less attracted to using technology to enhance their teaching. In particular, older faculty members perceive themselves to be less technically skilled than their younger colleagues. This self-perception may explain why they feel more pressured by the time needed to learn about technology, by keeping up with technological changes, and by lack of standardization. And it may explain why older faculty members enjoy working with technology less than their younger colleagues do and are less inclined to use multimedia materials."