Slashdot Mirror
UK Students Protest Biometric Scanner Move
Presto Vivace writes that the UK's Newcastle University is instituting a finger-print based attendance system. From the linked article: "University students may have to scan their fingerprints in future — to prove they are not bunking off lectures. ... Newcastle Free Education Network has organised protests against the plans, claiming the scanners would 'turn universities into border checkpoints' and 'reduce university to the attendance of lectures alone.'"
The system is supposed to bring the university "in line with the UK Border Agency (UKBA) and clamp down on illegal immigrants."
Gotta have people coming over to do the jobs you don't want to at wages you won't work for. But we can't have them getting an education.
I spent my first two years of calculus lectures sleeping in. I scored near perfect in both classes. WHY do people have to be at lectures they don't need, again? It's the university's stupid rules that don't allow me to just test out of the classes: they've got to have their money. But why would they want me sitting in a lecture distracting other people while I surf youtube?
> claiming the scanners would 'turn universities into border checkpoints'
Bit late for that.
Seriously though; universities have to prove overseas students are actually attending the university. How would other suggest we do this?
This always bothered me. Tell me what the homework is and when the tests are. Let me decide if your lectures are worth attending.
When I was a student I noticed the only professors who cared about attendance were the ones who couldn't teach worth a damn.
The UK is concerned that some of their international students are illegally working. Their reasoning is that school and work are mutually exclusive so if you are in school you are not working and vise versa. This is flawed reasoning.
why have a college GED as well or at least split off the gen edu stuff.
And they you have also have REAL tech / trades schools with none of the gen edus in them.
A new unofficial Student service to sell you latex gloves with 'someone else's' fingerpints embedded in the fingers.
Available in any of the Pubs that sell Newcastle Brown around the University.
being serious for a moment,
If it is the UKBA demanding this then I guess that if you are a British citizen you can stick two finger(prints) up at them. IMHO, demanding this sort of thing from UK Citizens is the sort of thing that would get them sued pretty quickly. There is no legal requirement to have any form of ID in the UK.
the old college system needs change going on line for lectures classes is a good start and can work to cut costs and let people take there time in more the core classes.
The UK is concerned that some of their international students are illegally working.
If international student visa abuse is the problem . . . then why are they proposing to monitor the attendance of ALL students . . . ? Methinks they are planning to use this for something else in the future . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
can't expect them all to know how to sign their names.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
Disney World has been quietly requiring fingerprint scans for certain parts of the park: http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_columnist_mikethomas/2007/05/finger_scanners.html
While it seems new for school attendance, non-financial biometric scans are not new...
If international student visa abuse is the problem . . . then why are they proposing to monitor the attendance of ALL students . . . ? Methinks they are planning to use this for something else in the future . . .
Quite correct. They are following the same logic as has been used in the past to justify the introduction of identity cards. If they get away with this one, we'll see ID cards return to the agenda.
Because in the UK, a lot of the bill isn't funded by the student, it's funded by the taxpayers.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Although I abhor the practice of compulsory biometric tracking, in the case of employees I can at least see some small justification for it, because employees receive paycheques in exchange for adhering to their employers' rules.
But when an institution to which I am paying money for a service wants my fingerprints so they can track me, they can just fuck right off. And the government too, for that matter. Brits ought to be calling loudly for the heads of the decision makers on this one.
Although I believe it often goes too far, I'll admit the need for some kind of immigration monitoring and enforcement. But when that monitoring turns ordinary innocent citizens into the subjects of invasive surveillance, it's time to draw the line. This is 'death by a thousand cuts' stuff, and what's being cut and killed is our very freedom. This shit has to stop.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
What the hell is wrong with a university when it is so rudderless that it feels that one ounce of effort should be directed toward immigration control? If illegal immigration is causing some sort of problem for the university that is interfering with their core mandate of teaching students then yes get all over that. But if this is a paper pusher problem where some people are signing up for a third rate university to get a visa and then booking it then who cares. The university could just provide transcripts to the border people for their foreign students and let the government deal with it.
But even for their domestic students who gives a crap if a student attends a lecture; this is the 21st century and any modern educational institution should be providing a video or audio lecture for students anyway. I recently was watching a Stanford lecture series on iTunes where the classroom had around 20 regular attendees with well over 200 students signed up. The professor made frequent references to those students in their bunny slippers. So if a university is taking the opposite approach than Stanford University they would need pretty extraordinary evidence to prove to me that they are heading in the correct direction and not in the exact wrong direction.
If, as a parent, this joke of an institution were on my children's list of candidate universities I would explain to my kids that this was a really bad sign and that they should not consider the place. Luckily for my kids we live far away and have far better choices.
Says who? You?
If anything, the lecturers and academics should be the ones who have to sign in and prove they are doing the work the students are paying them for.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
If international student visa abuse is the problem . . . then why are they proposing to monitor the attendance of ALL students . . . ?
Because anything else could be seen as racist.
I worked once, as a checkout chump in Australia's biggest supermarket chain.
They were having a hell of a time with people bunking off work and having their mates sign them in. So they implemented a biometric signin system, where you signed on and off by typing in your number and scanning your fingerprint.
Problem solved. I think our union went apeshit for a while, until they realized that it cut both ways -- that rock solid evidence of hours worked meant managers couldn't unfairly dock peoples' pay, and then it was a non-issue.
Given the advantages I've seen of biometric systems to prevent dishonesty, and the limited scope for abuse (my fingerprint hashes are currently useless to a crook wanting to make easy money), I need to be convinced that this is somehow a problem privacy-wise.
Newcastle University almost certainly DOESN'T have them. It's not typical in the UK.
Because in the UK, a lot of the bill isn't funded by the student, it's funded by the taxpayers.
Not for overseas students they pay the whole whack.
And what they really want to do is to take that finger print and look up everything you've ever done and like. Then they will capture all the data and well you sleep install tracking id tags into your bodies. As you then walk around the university they will target advertising at you. This will then expand to installing cameras at the desks so you can be watched at all times, you'll be required to be tapped non stop. This isn't far enough yet, the government will come in and start using you like cattle, you'll be turned in a feed for other other humans, placed in a pen and eat grass well you are branded and brain washed to become nothing more then a piece of meat!!!! HOW CAN THEY DO THIS!!!!
Or..... they just want to make it easier to tell when students are there.
How so?
I mean, the British people attending the university will be from multiple race and the International students will be from multiple races too. There will be a strong (potentially 100%) overlap in the races from each group.
So checking the International students wouldn't even be racism by circumstance, let alone intentional racism.
while I am waiting in line for the finger print scanner the person in front of me is spending a vigorous amount of time picking their nose . They scan with boogers. Now my turn no work or press boogers wonderfull
I suspect the real reason for this might be the introduction of £9,000 ($14,000) pa tuition fees plus the rise of the "helicopter parent" and a US-style litigation culture in the UK. By using a system such as the one proposed they'll be able to keep a record of who attends and if they are sued for breach of contract (or something similar) when little Jimmy doesn't pass his exams they can turn around and say (with confidence) that he never turned up to lectures. Government visa controls are probably being used as a scapegoat.
Just a bit of background to set the context for this.
English* Universities depend very heavily on the income from overseas students as the total funding from English students (fees + government grants) does not, allegedly, meet the costs of the education provided. It's also now the only growth area for student recruitment (applications from English students were down around 10% this year as fees have risen steeply). The last I heard, Newcastle University was building on its campus a college for overseas students of 16+ to improve recruitment rates to the University itself for those same students when they reached 18.
The current government, on the other hand, is committed to substantially reducing immigration levels which it is finding very hard to do - the Eurozone financial situation means that immigration from Europe is increasing (and EU treaties require the free movement of people) and clamping down on overseas students is seen as an easy short-term win. There's been a big argument between Universities and the government about whether students should count in the immigration figures at all (since most of them leave at the end of their courses) which was resolved only in September (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9541141/Foreign-students-to-be-marked-out-in-immigration-figures.html) with a compromise which keeps student numbers under very close review.
Universities fear increasingly tight controls on studying in the UK might dissuade students from enrolling and are increasingly starting to open overseas campuses (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=415018) which have the potential additional benefit of tapping the market for those who don't have the resources to relocate for their education. There is talk in some institutions that serving UK students may become an incidental consequence of their academic activities rather than an institutional goal.
It's in the midst of this ongoing policy shift - withdrawing government money from universities then encouraging them to make it up overseas and then tightening up on student visas - that Universities find themselves trapped. They need the money, so they need the visas, so they have to do what the governnment requires to get them. And while government funding for undergraduates may no longer be significant, Univeristies still depend heavily on government funding for their postgraduate programmes, which is where they get their reputations from. So don't expect any crusades from the moral high ground.
*Somewhat different situation in Scotland and Wales
How does a system that tracks student attendance help keep illegal aliens out of classes? Answer - it doesn't, an admittance system does.
This system is really designed to admit ONLY registered students into lectures, the attendance taking part is a by-product.
The school doesn't care if paying students attend classes, they care about those that aren't paying filling up the classroom.
Ken
a human touches a machine interface and is known by their fingerprint. how would a robot be uniquely indentified by humans?
In NSA America social networks join you!
I can see it now, student with a ring of rubber fingers signing in a mess of students to a video lecture.
End MGM. Get prospective parents of boys to Google: Men do complain
I used to work for one of the top departments in the university if question (Newcastle University). This was five years ago and even then registers at the start of all lectures, practicals and tutorials. Miss a handful and you would be asked to visit the head of school to explain your absence. If you where sick you where expected to hand in sick notes. The school was one of only a couple doing that.
The school in question had the lowest drop out and the lowest failure rate in the University. It therefore comes as no surprise to me that they have decided to widen the scope to the whole University.
Right, so you took 5 years to pay back for an education that will benefit you for some 50 years of life. seems like a no brainer.
Besides, you don't seriously think it only costs 9k/student to run a university, do you? Think of how many people you interact with, teachers and staff, grounds, facilities. I ran across this infographic on Univ of Alaska. Presumably their heating bills (and maybe staff retention) are higher than most but I would expect this to be indicative of any institution. http://www.uafsunstar.com/archives/10184. Given roughly 35k students at that institution, that comes to about 24k / student / year.
another good article along the same lines is here; http://www.topuniversities.com/studying-abroad/advice/how-much-does-it-really-cost-study-us
Truthfully, i don't understand what the griping about the 9k/year rates is about. this is taken in the form of a loan from teh government which doesn't need to be paid back until you have a good job. Basically, the society is making a bet that each student will be successful. If the student is successful, they have to pay back that loan. If the student isn't successful, they don't pay it back and the state eats the cost. this seems completely reasonable for the state to take the risk and for the student to pay back if it works.