Last semester, colleges got an A+ in student surveillance Dozens of colleges and universities across the country use sophisticated surveillance systems to track their students’ locations, according to a recent report fromThe Washington Post. So, how did alma maters turn into Big Brothers? Nominally, schools started surveilling their students to encourage them not to skip class. Classes at Syracuse University, for example, use systems of bluetooth sensors hidden around auditoriums to detect when a student -- or, rather, a student’s cell phone -- attends class, and awarding the student “attendance points” for doing so. Some systems go even further than simply monitoring attendance by calculating individualized “risk scores” based on the amount of time students are spending in libraries. Critics worry that constant surveillance isn’t good for learning According to the Post, one student surveillance system that “uses school WiFi networks to monitor movements says it gathers 6,000 location data points per student every day.” Opponents of this type of system argue students should be encouraged to learn because they want to, not forced to learn because they’re fearful of being penalized.
I'm not really sure about the value of this level of surveillance. I'm against all forms of surveillance, but at least most of these draconian systems have a kernel of utility in them. In this case, a college student pays for their class but is now monitored for risk? Attendance policies were enforced in some of my classes (for reasons unknown) but I'm not sure what value the university is deriving from a more granular approach to this. I am wholly unsurprised campus wifi is a dragnet for surveillance. I had suspicions the second my campus rolled out free wifi. Not only is the data great for vendors, it's also extremely useful to track student movement if you can triangulate via multiple APs. Crazy world we live in.