What I would do if I ran a private university

If the world were to be turned upside down, and I was somehow made president of a prestigious private university (think Dartmouth), my first order of business [aside from several blatantly sexist practices first suggested by Bill Simmons (Ctrl+F, "university"), including the admissions requirement whereby "female applicants just send pictures"] would be to issue every sophomore and incoming freshman an iPad, Apple's latest uber-gadget.

I'm nowhere near convinced that e-readers and physical keyboard-less tablet PCs are going to take over the world anytime soon.  Perhaps it's just that I love holding physical books in my hand, and don't feel the need to take my entire literary library everywhere i go (unlike my feelings about music libraries), but I have no desire to purchase a Kindle.  The iPad can clearly do much more than a Kindle--and I wouldn't mind owning one--but I'm not going to rush out and drop a minimum of $499 on one.

That said, I do think iPads have the ability to take over the education world.  With the help of several thousand $499 devices, universities like Dartmouth, Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount, etc.--armed with their massive endowments--could go paperless almost overnight.  Students would spend less on textbooks, receive course readers and assignments via e-mail, write and submit papers and exams directly from their tablets, avoid the annoyance of selling textbooks back to bookstores at the end of the semester, and save thousands of trees in the process.  The entire college student-centric reprographics industry would be put out of business overnight (don't feel sorry for them, they'd undoubtedly reinvent themselves as creators of iPad apps).

Imagine downloading a physics textbook onto your iPad.  One could read a chapter, highlight sections (with the swipe of a finger) and equations, and rapidly generate a custom chapter summary--no physical highlighter or notepad required.  Lab books?  Thing of the past.  All the work would be done on the iPad an e-mailed to a professor [and cc'd to the applicable grad student(s)].  Entire lectures could be wirelessly downloaded as the lecture is taking place.  No need to take notes (though one certainly still could)--instead provide the professor with 100 percent focus (yeah right).¹ I'm getting fired up just talking about this, and I haven't even gotten to the audio/video/multimedia embedding opportunities.  I can't even imagine how iPads could/will change things like foreign language courses.  Could one have an entire educational "conversation" with their iPad?  I don't doubt it.

You can't tell me this wouldn't work?  Even if the cost proved too steep for the university, I don't see any problem charging incoming freshman $300 for an iPad. What's $300 when one is paying a $47,000 tuition? Heck, Apple might even donate them, considering all the apps they would stand to sell--both educational and non-educational. The opportunities are endless.

Note - this is all predicated on the iPad not straining the eyes when used as an eBook for extended periods of time (similar to what the Kindle has accomplished).  If it's painful to use for more than an hour or two of reading this entire scheme is semi-moot.

¹ I'm sure playing games, browsing Facebook, and Gchatting would be a concern, but Apple could easily devise a workaround (perhaps "modes" the device could automatically be placed in, via a "Professor's Edition" iPad.  For example, "test mode" and "lecture mode" seem easily attainable).