Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

UK Students Protest Biometric Scanner Move

Posted by timothy on from the why-not-just-use-the-cctvs-already-in-place dept.

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."

37 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by Puls4r · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by Xugumad · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you're at the university on a visa, there's an expectation you're attending the university. Don't laugh, it happens.

      If the UKBA feels the university isn't doing enough, this happens: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19425718

    2. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by spire3661 · · Score: 2

      Cant you jsut sit there without having to watch TV? Some asshole in the front of my last IT class would watch fucking live basketball until i told him to knock it off.

      --
      Good-bye
    3. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why don't you mind your own business? Unless the guy was part of your group and lagging behind in his share of the work, what he does during class is none of your fucking business, you little brown-nosed snitch.

      The least anyone who wants to watch TV on their laptop can do is sit in the back of the class. Motion is distracting. If it wasn't you'd have been hit by a bus already.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by spire3661 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem was not that he was watching TV, but rather watch such a high motion source that it was impossible to not be distracted by it. I told him and he complied, end of story. If you wanted to escalate it to physical violence i would have had you arrested by campus security. I have every right to speak to another human being about his behavior, you have no right to assault another human.

      --
      Good-bye
    5. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by spire3661 · · Score: 2

      Posting this as AC is like an army of kettles calling the pot black........

      --
      Good-bye
    6. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by 1s44c · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you're at the university on a visa, there's an expectation you're attending the university. Don't laugh, it happens.

      If the UKBA feels the university isn't doing enough, this happens: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19425718

      And there are countless other colleges running fake courses or dumbass courses just to get people student visas. Or at least there were, the government is trying real hard to clean it up.

      There used to be posters all over London advertisting that if you enroll in some basic class at some Indian run dodgy college you get the right to stay in the country. It was all one big visa scam.

    7. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by 1s44c · · Score: 2

      I know, right? The live sports playing on the laptop screen in front of you must have distracted the hell out of you while you were posting to Slashdot during the lecture.

      Don't fucking pretend you weren't.

      Am I the last one left that actually tries to pay attention to things?

      Sometimes I sit in meetings and half the people who turn up are on a phone or typing on a laptop. Only a few bright and/or stubborn people are mentally in the room.

    8. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by 1s44c · · Score: 2

      If I had an A-grade-level understanding of the material and was watching Football with my earbuds in, and some snot-nosed punk told me to turn it off, I'd do nothing...then kick his ass the second he stepped foot off the school grounds.

      -- Ethanol-fueled

      The guy doing the asking isn't doing so to prevent your supposed sporting enjoyment, but because your screen is distracting him from the lecture. If you are not mentally there you should not be physically there.

      And you have an anger issue, either that you you are having a really bad day.

    9. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by xelah · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You prove it by passing the exams at the end of your course. If you fail because you didn't go to the lectures you should have gone to....well, hard luck, and get saving for your next attempt. It's a university, not a school, and you shouldn't expect to get nannied like a child.

    10. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 2

      "The university's are in a special position where they can able to apply for student visa's for their students."

      That's all great (if we ignore mis-spellings) but the fact is that fingerprint scanning is a terrible way to enforce anything. They don't work worth a damn. They are easy to spoof. If you haven't read the reports, the watch the MythBusters segment that was dedicated to this. The technology has not advanced significantly since then.

    11. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      If you're at the university on a visa, there's an expectation you're attending the university.

      You can easily prove that by passing exams (or by failing to pass them in any other way than being absent). Anyway, it is ridiculous to make double standards for students. Stuff like this makes my backwater home country look extraordinarily enlightened. UK looks more and more like a police state in comparison.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    12. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by leathered · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I worked in a UK university CS department for four years in the mid 00s. Foreign students turning up for a couple of lectures then disappearing was a huge problem. Not for the university of course, who didn't give a shit as long as the fees were paid. Even if the fees weren't paid they were simply kicked off the course but this was never communicated to the UK Borders Agency.

      Since then I've been told that the universities have had a royal boot up the arse from the government and are to inform immediately if a foreign student has poor or no attendance. What we're seeing here is probably an overreaction to this.

      --
      For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
    13. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Funny

      Are you the real ethanol fueled though? Or a troll?

      No. Not or, and.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    14. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by beelsebob · · Score: 2

      Indeed, at least when I was a student, the idea was (in nearly the words of Sir Terry Pratchett) to put students and books in the same place, and hope that something in one found its way into the other (of course students positioned themselves in the pub for roughly the same reason).

      University isn't meant to be about enforcing how, or when you learn. It's meant to be about you expanding your knowledge of a subject, and it just happens that they check at the end that your knowledge is sufficiently expanded to be called a {Bachelor | Master | Doctor}

    15. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by wild_quinine · · Score: 2

      What part of the summary did you fail to comprehend?

      Thats right, the part about the need to prove attendance of *foreign students on a student visa*. READ THE FUCKING SUMMARY, YOU MORON !!

      If they're passing the courses, who cares if they're attending the lectures? What are the chances that someone who can pass degree level courses through disciplined self-study is likely to be *less* of an asset to their country?

      The University is treating the students like criminals because the UK Border Agency encourages this. But the UK Border Agency know fuck all about Universities, so why should we take their opinion on Universities over that of the instituions themselves? Hell, the UKBA can barely manage their own house, let alone our centuries old and rapidly losing its edge (but once world class) Higher Education system.

    16. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by MysteriousPreacher · · Score: 2

      Nothing wrong with taking notes, if that's all you're doing. My experience of meetings is that most people are doing anything but taking notes. I prefer to nominate a scribe and have everyone else close their lids unless they're

      --
      -- Using the preview button since 2005
    17. Re:Why do I have to BE at a lecture? by RockDoctor · · Score: 2

      If you're at the university on a visa, there's an expectation you're attending the university.

      You can easily prove that by passing exams (or by failing to pass them in any other way than being absent).

      The point is not about passing or failing courses. It's about people who get a visa to ENTER the country on the basis that they will be FULL TIME students supporting themselves out of their own funds and doing NO WORK in the country because the DO NOT HAVE A WORK PERMIT. (FYI : being a student is not considered "work" in this country.)

      What has long been a significant problem has been people FALSELY applying for a student visa, granted on the conditions above, then violating the visa conditions by WORKING WITHOUT A WORK PERMIT, then frequently stopping attending their courses, then continuing to WORK WITHOUT A WORK PERMIT, then overstaying their visa after it has been rescinded because of the failure to abide by the CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH THE VISA WAS ISSUED.

      An analogy : I allow you to rent a room in my lodging house under the contractual conditions that you pay your rent and don't shit in the hallway. Soon, I start seeing turds in the hallway (non-attendance at the course), and then you stop paying your rent (disappear into the illegal immigrants underworld). I then want to take action to evict you from my house. Under this analogy, checking attendance at courses (on a lecture by lecture basis) is comparable to checking the hallway for turds several times a day.

      There is a complicating factor that anti-discrimination legislation means that either everyone has their attendance checked, or no-one does. In the analogy, I'd need to patrol all the hallways looking for turds, not just those hallways where I'd rented rooms to people with green skin.

      There are other ways this could be done, but they'd probably require more time and effort on the behalf of administrative staff.

      Yes, this sort of thing does make life more difficult for legal immigrants, and legal foreign students too. Which with the common petty racism of British people and officialdom (I speak as a Briton, with a non-British wife), makes life significantly more difficult than it needs to be. And it is a right pain in the arse. But in this case, both sides of the argument have got reasonable cases to make.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  2. Border checkpoints by Xugumad · · Score: 2

    > 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?

    1. Re:Border checkpoints by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      WHY do universities have to prove that overseas students are actually attending the university? Why is this so critical?

      Sure, I understand that you don't want the students getting jobs illegally. But what does that have to do with the university? Employers need to make sure that their workers have proper immigration status. It shouldn't be the university's responsibility. And beyond that, who cares?

    2. Re:Border checkpoints by russotto · · Score: 2

      Seriously though; universities have to prove overseas students are actually attending the university. How would other suggest we do this?

      I'd suggest GPS anklets for all overseas students. If that doesn't work, shock collars. Seriously, do you think a mandate justifies any means necessary to fulfill it?

    3. Re:Border checkpoints by Xugumad · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's fair, but I did want people to think about this.

      My suggestion was that we do wifi-pinging from student mobiles to cover most cases (as in you download an app and it checks you're in-range of our wifi), and use attendance at tutorials and 2-3 annual full checks (as in turn up with your passport so we can double check everything) to cover the requirement for more in-depth checks. Having tried ID card based lecture attendance, we've found mostly it's a huge pain; even when it works correctly it creates long queues at the start of lectures, and it's more hardware we have to manage. I don't imagine Newcastle will be doing fingerprint checks for long, personally...

    4. Re:Border checkpoints by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Informative

      Seriously though; universities have to prove overseas students are actually attending the university. How would other suggest we do this?

      By requiring that the student present a transcript each year at visa-renewal time in order showing that he or she has taken exams and gained a certain amount of credits toward a degree. This is how it is done in Finland, at least. This has the advantage of not hassling students who feel that their time is better spent in the library instead of at lectures.

    5. Re:Border checkpoints by 1s44c · · Score: 4, Informative

      WHY do universities have to prove that overseas students are actually attending the university? Why is this so critical?

      Anyone signed onto a course gets a student visa. After staying for 5 years they can apply for permanent residency. Because of this there are plenty of people with a very basic, or no, education who sign up to courses they never attend as a way to get permanent residency in the UK and the benefits that go with it.

      Now if someone genuinely spends 5 years in education they are an asset to the country and should be allowed to stay. If they know nothing and just want free stuff from the state that's not OK.

    6. Re:Border checkpoints by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "So we're forcing everyone to do this because of a few people who abuse the system?"

      Sadly, its not a "few" - its an organised traffic in illegal immigrants.

      Another way to remove the need for such draconian control systems would be to corral all would be overseas students in a reception centre and make them take entry exams at the appropriate level, in their own pedagogical language (ie the language used for teaching in their homeland), and a test in basic english. Fail either, and back they go at their own expense. I'd actually rate understanding English higher, after all the courses will be taught in English...

  3. Who cares if I attend lectures? by Snotnose · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:Who cares if I attend lectures? by Xugumad · · Score: 5, Interesting

      From my point of view (as a non-academic who works on improving university administration), it matters for a few key reasons:

      1. Students who don't turn up to lectures are more likely to drop out of university. This particularly goes for students whose attendance was good and tails off, so we want to spot them early on and ask if they need any help (academic or personal).

      2. If a student turns up mid-way through semester with problems, we're inclined to be a lot more sympathetic (and devote more staff time to helping) if you've attended class. If you didn't attend class and then don't know the material, it could be argued that's rather your own fault.

  4. Summary, summarized by feedayeen · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  5. Coming soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  6. Re:Summary, summarized, analyzed by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!
  7. DISNEY WORLD by Bananatree3 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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...

  8. Who is paying whom? by jenningsthecat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  9. Re:Smart but not too smart by 1s44c · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    This isn't to keep people out of education, it's to ensure those that signed on for a course as I requirement of getting a visa do turn up.

    Student visas are currently the easiest type of visa's to get for the UK. Once students (over)stay for 5 years they can apply for a permanent visa and in many cases claim benefits.

  10. Remember: the students are the EMPLOYERS by petes_PoV · · Score: 2
    The students pay the fees that keep the staff in jobs. It seems bizarre that they should be the ones who should be tracked.

    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
  11. Re:Why do they need finger print scanning? by realxmp · · Score: 2

    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.

  12. Re:Smart but not too smart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Once students (over)stay for 5 years they can apply for a permanent visa and in many cases claim benefits.

    As a student in UK on Tier-4 visa, please let me assure you that this is pure bullshit! You won't get any permanent residency status here just based on study visas, even if you stay for 8-9 years. You need to get a work visa and only then your presence here will be counted toward those 5 years (to get 'leave to remain'). Getting a work visa is not easy and it has get harder since the recent changes in regulations.

  13. Background by cardpuncher · · Score: 2

    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