Professors Say Massive Open Online Courses Threaten Academic Freedom 284
McGruber writes "The Chronicle of Higher Education has the news that American Association of University Professors (AAUP) believes that faculty members' copyrights and academic freedom are being threatened by colleges claiming ownership of the massive open online courses their instructors have developed. The AAUP plans this year to undertake a campaign to urge professors to get protections of their intellectual-property rights included in their contracts and faculty handbooks. According to former AAUP President Cory Nelson, 'If we lose the battle over intellectual property, it's over. Being a professor will no longer be a professional career or a professional identity,' and faculty members will instead essentially find themselves working in 'a service industry.' [Just like their graduate students?]"
It's the SCO effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First defense of oppressors, (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure you can, you just have to go to a right wing indoctrination institute. Lots of those around too.
How about instead we just focus on facts, not ideology in education.
copyrights and academic freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
I love how professors can claim copyrights on research done with my tax dollars.
ftfy (Score:4, Insightful)
Professors Say Massive Open Online Courses Threaten Academic Freedom
threaten their monopoly on information... it's RIAA and MPAA whining of a different flavor.
No, graduate students still even lower (Score:5, Insightful)
[Just like their graduate students?]
In the U.S., graduate/research assistants generally aren't even considered employees under the law. Universities use the "they're students, not employees" thing to skirt even the most basic worker protections for grad assistants (similar to the way interns are exploited). They're so low that they can't even file for unemployment or count their work towards their Social Security (since they were never even "employed" in the first place, according to the law).
Re:Good article on MOOCs here (Score:5, Insightful)
governments can no longer afford to provide college education
It's more that they no longer want to pay for it, not that they can't afford it. California spends far less money on the UC system today than it did in 1985, for example, and it's not because the overall California budget has shrunk: they've just decided to spend the money on other things.
Fredrick Douglass (Score:5, Insightful)
How many university professors will now change their mind about imaginary property and how many will still claim, "but if only we can tweak it thusly, for my benefit, it'll be all better?"
Re:First defense of oppressors, (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting, but, you do realize that "left wing indoctrination" is what people in other countries call "education" right? Just because the facts don't back a conservative agenda does not make schools "left wing indoctrination institutes" it means that you're delusional.
Unless of course, serviscope, is right and the courses are titled like that.
Re:fucking lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)
and the for-profit college model in general. schools need to stop hiring MBA flunkies as their deans, and start focusing on academics again
Re:First defense of oppressors, (Score:5, Insightful)
My employer owns the copyright on work I produce on their time. What's different about universities.
Contracts, I suppose. So these professors should check their contracts before signing them.
Re:copyrights and academic freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because they work for a government funded school, does not give you the right to demand access to things that the teacher does to prepare for class. The school just pays for the contact hours and the assessment, not the creation of the materials. Typically if the school wants to own that, they have to pay for the materials to be developed.
The research OTOH, is a different matter, and it really depends where the funding comes from.
Re:First defense of oppressors, (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, because ideology directly affects what you consider to be 'facts'.
If people actually looked at facts, they might have to be faced with the idea that their ideologies are wrong. And people have no interest whatsoever in doing that, because their ideologies are Clearly Right, and those facts are Clearly Partisan spin.
...and not academic freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a simple question about owning the intellectual property rights on material produced. Frankly the way I think this should be is that I own the copyright but the university has a permanent license to use any material I generate for education of its own students. Since academic careers are built on reputation it's my moral rights - to be associated as the author of the material - that I care more about. I put all my material under a CC NC-BY-SA license. If 100k people found it useful enough to study from it and learn some particle physics I'd consider myself to be doing really well at the education part of my job!
Hint: you are a service industry (Score:4, Insightful)
The only people who think professors are some entitled class are ... professors. You provide a service, for pay, just like a doctor, or lawyer or barista.
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake just because you have a PhD. I know that's what all the other PhDs told you when you joined the club, but reality is knocking on your door.
Re:ftfy (Score:5, Insightful)
Professors Say Massive Open Online Courses Threaten Academic Freedom
threaten their monopoly on information... it's RIAA and MPAA whining of a different flavor.
I'm inclined to disagree: If anything, the universities (who are attempting to seize the copyrights on course material, because the new 'MOOC' format now makes course material valuable in absence of the person who developed it) are the ones in the position of the RIAA (a trade group that represents the owners of copyrighted music, not musicians.)
Professors have never(at least since printing became remotely cheap; maybe back in the early medieval university where technical constraints imposed a nearly oral-history model of knowledge transmission you could make a case) had a 'monopoly on information', you can get courses in established subjects just about anywhere, and new-hotness research will be encumbered by Reed-Elsevier, not Dr. Somebody. What they object to is universities(or online courseware companies) obtaining a monopoly on their specific teaching of a course. This hardly seems shocking, given that they could end up having to license back their own coursework if they change employers...
Really rather similar to the position of a musician or band whose entire back-catalog is encumbered by that EMI contract they signed when they were small.
Re:First defense of oppressors, (Score:4, Insightful)
You can be arrogant and correct at the same time.
Re:First defense of oppressors, (Score:4, Insightful)
"Facts" are rarely the *whole* truth, on either side of any debate.
In other words, everyone cherry picks for their own benefit.
Re:It's the SCO effect (Score:5, Insightful)
"Professors Say Massive Open Online Courses Threaten Academic Freedom" : LOL , more like threaten future royalties.
Re:...and not academic freedom (Score:2, Insightful)
I put all my material under a CC NC-BY-SA license.
Sounds like from the article, the University might claim that you don't have that right.
I know that when I produce copyrighted material at work, it is considered 'work for hire' and thus I am giving my employer the copyright, but in that case the material is code added to a code-base that I (for the most part) did not write, so in this case it makes considerable sense. I think it is less clear when you create a textbook for your class that the employer should gain the copyright, but I suppose it is all in the employment contract.
Re:First defense of oppressors, (Score:4, Insightful)
Facts do have a liberal bias.
Not the modern definition of liberal, but the classical free thought version. The modern common use definition of liberal is all about indoctrination.
Re:First defense of oppressors, (Score:3, Insightful)
everyone cherry picks for their own benefit
So much this. This is a major contributing factor to the left/right war we have going on that is dividing and conquering the people.
"Both" sides use their cherry-picked facts to justify government action to back them not realizing every government action is actually a loss for both sides.
Re:First defense of oppressors, (Score:4, Insightful)
And you use your cherry-picked facts to justify your ideology despite that it is trivially easy to point to a positive action by a government.