Bonum Certa Men Certa

GAFAM Against Higher Education: University Centralised IT Has Failed. What Now?

Guest post by Dr. Andy Farnell

In this mini-series:

  1. YOU ARE HEREGAFAM Against Higher Education: University Centralised IT Has Failed. What Now?
  2. GAFAM Against Higher Education: Toxic Tech
  3. GAFAM Against Higher Education: Fixing the Broken Academy
  4. GAFAM Against Higher Education: Digital Crash Diet

Andy FarnellSummary: Today we commence a 4-part series about what has happened to British universities (probably not only universities and not just in Britain either), based on an insider, a visiting professor at several European Universities

An article I wrote for the Times HE on "Eliminating harmful digital technologies in education" generated some attention and comments. I've been asked "What can we do?" That is to say, I failed to properly address the implied call to arms and merely enumerated the technological problems in education. Smart people want to hear about solutions, not problems.

First I wanted to move the conversation beyond the self-evident and visible, like invasive CCTV cameras, card access systems (and soon phone tracking, fingerprint and face scanners) that give our places of learning all the warmth of a Category-A high-security facility for child sex offenders.

"Smart people want to hear about solutions, not problems."This isn't necessary. Visiting London I sometimes wander into the Gower Street quad to enjoy a coffee with my Alma Mater. In University College London, it's possible and pleasant to wander the halls to reminisce. There are not too many cameras to spoil the architecture and security is still handled by the famous maroon jacketed Beadles. UCL seems to blend seamlessly into the leafy squares of Bloomsbury accommodating many buildings with open doors and welcoming receptionists. By contrast, other universities have degenerated into carceral gulags, accessible only by appointment, through turnstiles and scanners and patrolled by black-clad goonies.

Certainly we must keep reminding the world that a digital dystopia is inappropriate in the context of teaching and learning. Offensive technology must not be allowed to fade into the background, to become normalised, quiescent and acceptable.

But these are only the visible manifestations of a deeper malaise. Drifting from a public good into the waters of brutal corporate values, the academy - lured by the siren song of a security industry - has marked its own students as pirates and brigands.

One backwater university began blocking students from forwarding mail from their institutional Microsoft accounts to their personal inboxes, on the grounds that they might "exfiltrate teaching materials". In a world where MIT and Stanford put their best courses online for free it beggars belief what goes through the minds of ICT staff so cloistered and divorced from core functions.

"Drifting from a public good into the waters of brutal corporate values, the academy - lured by the siren song of a security industry - has marked its own students as pirates and brigands."Of course, in the name of fairness the same implied criminality and untrustworthiness is extended to staff. Anyone trying to run labs or prepare teaching materials for microelectronics, IoT, web technology, or cybersecurity, must face stiff resistance to any non-Microsoft activity that cannot be brought under boot of centralised surveillance.

I wonder, other than digital rights researchers like myself; who else is watching this death spiral in the academy? College unions like the UCU and NUS (student union) seem to have little or no awareness of the digital rights abuses perpetrated against staff and students in our universities under the banners of "security" and "efficiency".

"It serves everyone but the key stakeholders in education; lecturers and students."Offensive technology serves the chancellors, trustees, landlords, governments, industries, advertisers, sponsors, technology corporations, suppliers and publishers. It serves administrators who believe technology will deliver fast, efficient, uniform, accountable, secure, and most of all cheap education. It serves everyone but the key stakeholders in education; lecturers and students. The cost of draconian over-monitoring is that it corrodes our ability to teach and learn as fully human beings.

But again, monitoring and obstruction are only two aspects of the technological menace facing teaching. I was asked to look at all forms of harmful technology, and these cannot be located in specific systems or policies, Instead I enumerated broad categories of harm, namely technologies that;

On reflection I would add a few less general harms to the original Times HE list, being technologies that;

Recent Techrights' Posts

New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
 
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025
Links 21/09/2025: "Hey Hi" (Hype) Under Fire, Fakes Identified; Tesla Burns Family
Links for the day
Google's Software is Malware and Malware in Mobile Devices
Originally posted by Rob Musial
Links 20/09/2025: Hegemony Coming to a Close, Luigi Mangione Ruled Not Terrorist
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/09/2025: "Charlie Kirk Was a Hateful Piece of Shit" and Slop Code Attempted by Microsofter
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 20, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, September 20, 2025