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As public interest organizations from civil society to government strive to understand, weigh in on, and make use of new technologies, a novel area of study and research has emerged: public interest technology (PIT). While PIT serves many functions, in higher education it aims to imbue colleges and universities across the country with creative curricula, research, and career opportunities, and is advanced by numerous stakeholders in the academy.

This report analyzes the momentum generated for PIT in and by these colleges and universities in the last year. The report stems from a 2018 counterpart, Building the Future: Educating Tomorrow’s Leaders in an Era of Rapid Technological Change, which outlined needs and opportunities for students, for college and university departments, and within and across institutions.¹

The 2018 report found both real successes and significant challenges. Across student-facing, curricular, and institutionally focused needs and opportunities, a dearth of interdisciplinary pathways that help students understand and prepare for rapidly proliferating real-world opportunities was found. Thirty-three potential interventions that could advance the nascent field of PIT were also offered in that report.

To help the academy continue its forward progress, it is critical to examine where PIT currently stands. This report captures much of the progress that has been made with respect to students, departments, and institutions since the report was published in 2018. It also highlights some key challenges and potential next steps.

At the highest level, interviewees consulted for this report identified several successes to celebrate since 2018. These successes include:

• In 2019, for the first time in the history, entire schools, departments, and degree programs were established with the aim of expanding students’ access to the interdisciplinary focus that undergirds PIT. Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Schwarzman College of Computing and Arizona State University’s new master’s degree in public interest technology stand out as leading examples.²
• Twenty-one academic institutions came together to form the Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN), which facilitates collaboration in public interest technology through curriculum development, faculty research opportunities, and experiential learning opportunities.³ The network has seen considerable interest, including in a New York Times article, helping to create a positive feedback loop of attention for the field.⁴
• Seven funders seeded the first annual PIT University Network Challenge with $3.1 million, culminating in 27 grants to academic leaders within the PIT-UN. Awards struck at the heart of challenges facing the field, with winning projects focused on developing experiential curricula at the University of California, Berkeley that exposes students to ethical, political, and societal implications of technology;⁵ building open education resources for PIT-related materials at the City University of New York;⁶ and identifying constraints and potential solutions or interventions for people of color in PIT at the University of Michigan;⁷ among 24 others.

These successes and others are leading the field to new territory and deserve to be celebrated. At the same time, interviews conducted for this research illustrated the importance of advancing this progress with awareness of the challenges and obstacles ahead. A summary of these successes and obstacles discussed by interviewees is below, and further details are discussed throughout this report.

This landscape of recent successes and challenges in PIT led interviewees to identify several near-term opportunities for the field, illustrated below.

The examples discussed in this report show the promising future of public interest technology—while still nascent, the field has seen important growth in the last year. Though obstacles remain in the academy, with concerted effort and continued investment, the infrastructure, support, and community of practice being built will enable the field to learn and break through existing barriers.

As Louis Nelson from the University of Virginia said, “I want to make sure we’re paying attention to the public interest—and equip technologists with evidence-based learning and best practices developed in other disciplines.” With cultivation of and attention to these best practices, the field will undoubtedly flourish in the coming year.