Universities in the 1990s were sovereign and self-sufficient. Nothing notable was outsourced (just food). It was possible to do research without unnecessary dependencies on shitty corps like Microsoft. Students and non-students could walk into a campus library and use UNIX PCs. Email and usenet was hosted in-house. Universities were independent, which served to demonstrate both competence and leadership.
Universities today:
- Email outsourced to Gmail or MS
- Library e-books have (US-based) Cloudflare as an exclusive gatekeeper. Conform to Cloudflare Inc’s oversight and access demands or lose access to books.
- 99.9% of students on Facebook, tiktok, snapchat (they track each others’ realtime location this way), instagram, twitter, etc
- Facebook officially used by the university, thus excluding the small minority of non-FB students from being informed of campus events/parties, one-off seminars, class schedule changes, info from some departments like foreign exchange, etc
- MatLAB used instead of GNU Octave, b/c “MATLAB” is the keyword headhunters/recruiters (both robotic and human) want to see on CVs
- Students collaborate using Google Docs (will not touch anything more sophisticated than WYSIWYG, like emacs, LaTeX, or git)
- Internal university webpage titled “Free Software” has no FOSS, just proprietary tools that are gratis for students (like MS Office)
- Campus PC labs no longer exist b/c all students have their own laptops, and the students only run Windows or MacOS (yes, in a college of science & engineering I shit you not)
- University assumes every student has mobile phone svc & the will to share their number, so the rest are excluded from school resources that require 2FA by SMS
- Students search the enshitified/paywalled web to do research. Lexis/Nexis subscriptions apparently unheard of -- which in the 90s gave ad-free full-text access to decent/reputable sources coupled with a quite powerful search syntax. Although it must be said that the Lexis Nexis company has become a privacy adversary as they snoop on individuals these days.
Students must choose between education and privacy w/autonomy. Cannot have all human rights at the same time. But apparently they don’t care. Surveys show that ~50 yrs ago ~80+% students prioritized developing a meaningful philosophy of life above making money. College freshmen have been surveyed every year since then. Gradually, those numbers have completely inverted. I see a connection between universities becoming dependent corporate boot lickers and students becoming money-centric.
AI chatbots for research
To get to my subject line, I hear friends talk about all the great use they get out of chatGPT. I won’t touch the fuckin’ thing. Not out of some AI phobia or distrust, but because I simply boycott MACFANG (will not feed the oppressive surveillance advertising tech giants). So I am losing touch and likely developing some ignorance because of my principles.
In my view of how the world should work, I should be able to experience a decent AI chatbot like chatGPT at a university. The university should be technologically independent. They should have their own in-house research tools built by profs and students for profs and students. Research tools should not be dependent on clicked-ads resulting purchases of phones and selfie sticks or whatever stupid shit they need to sell. And without the underlying corporate greed, an edu chatbot would be designed for transparency (thus sources cited).
Universities have become followers. They are no longer ahead of industry. They serve as HR factories to produce workers for corps, as opposed to teaching students what corps are doing wrong and how to do better. Profs choose tools that corps want on CVs instead of the best tool for the job for teaching brand-independent concepts. Students are happy w/this (see ¶3 - they just want a good CV).
We need a “Make Universities Leaders Again” (MULA) movement. Well, shit, that’s pronounced as “moolah”.. not good for PR, but you get the idea.
I think this neglects one of the bigger causes here: funding. Almost all universities no longer receive a significant share of their income directly from the government or donors. They instead are funded though tuition (which are often paid by guaranteed loans).
This swaps the incentives quite a bit. The customer is the student, rather than the elite or the government. In particular, if you provide a less useful CV item for the student, then they go elsewhere. Lots of your examples of leading would likely degrade a CV.
It's hard to get funding to start a college. Especially with the NSF dysfunctional. If you've got a government with substantial surplus, do consider trying a new uni (or changing what they give to universities and capping tuition).
(Separately, much of the tools and software have been centralized because it really has become cheaper at an organization level. No need for much support staff and liability coverage.)
You’re probably right w/a lot of that. I’m not real in tune with the funding. But indeed lack of funding has consequences. In the very least we can examine whether the funding they get is being wisely spent. For example:
Students need jobs.
Students are also cheap labor. Campus jobs are ideal for a number of reasons. I’m not sure why 4 years of system admin experience on a campus mail server and Lemmy or Mastodon server would not be good to have on a CV -- as opposed to a student who was paid for flipping burgers or bartending before seeking a tech gig. In-sourcing should be viewed as an opportunity to give students relevant experience that employers value. Having MS run the email server squanders that opportunity.Ditch proprietary s/w to save money
I’m probably not well informed about the funding issues, but certainly one way to save money is to nix all the software licensing costs and run FOSS. Then have students improve the FOSS (for pay or to work a class assignment) as needed by the university, which in turn gives students hands-on experience for the CV. Enriching the commons like that also means the university brings value to the public that further justifies public funding.I would sooner welcome my tax spent on schools that give back to the commons through FOSS use and improvement, than I would a school that then feeds the giant corps.
Gratis hardware is fine for FOSS
University hardware can be had for free to a large extent. Windows boot lickers are forced to upgrade their hardware chronically. They throw away hardware that still has 15 years of useful life if only it had linux installed on it.I know a little more, but am not an expert.
Major costs are buildings (maintenance, construction, and property tax) and labor. I'll note that while construction looks like a bloated mistake, universities have a much easier time getting donations for a new building than for paying lecturers. Software, licensing, hardware, databases matter, but on the ~5% scale.
Brown University and presumably a few others have students working in offices en mass. My understanding is that if your not highly selective, the separate training and making sure students show up/do good work are prohibitive. With college the default, not all attendees are responsible workers as freshman (or seniors...). So average school may lose a lot of money, credibility, and functionality.