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Professors Say Massive Open Online Courses Threaten Academic Freedom
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?]"
They'll get over it when enough people ignore them :)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
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.
I love how professors can claim copyrights on research done with my tax dollars.
Professors Say Massive Open Online Courses Threaten Academic Freedom
threaten their monopoly on information... it's RIAA and MPAA whining of a different flavor.
[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).
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
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.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
How many university professors will now change their mind about imaginary property and how many will still claim, "but if only we can tweak it thusly, for my benefit, it'll be all better?"
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
and the for-profit college model in general. schools need to stop hiring MBA flunkies as their deans, and start focusing on academics again
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.
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.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Yes, but speaking as a professor, this is not a case of academic freedom and I get _really_ fed up with academic unions claiming "academic freedom" for everything regardless of whether or not it is. Violation of academic freedom would the a university telling me that I had to use material X for teaching or that I could not do research on Y.
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!
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.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
You can be arrogant and correct at the same time.
"Facts" are rarely the *whole* truth, on either side of any debate.
In other words, everyone cherry picks for their own benefit.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
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.
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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.
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"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.
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.