The University of Connecticut has sent e-mail messages to thousands of students, faculty members, and staff members who might have had their Social Security numbers exposed in yet another college hacking incident. About 72,000 names and other private data were accessible to a hacker who broke into a computer server two years ago, Connecticut officials said. They discovered the incident only last week but said they believe that none of the information was stolen. Nonetheless, as a precaution they are notifying anyone with a university account. (Associated Press)
For more information on what colleges are doing to protect data stored on their computers, see an article from The Chronicle by Dan Carnevale.
5 Responses to Once More Unto the Computer Breach
Guest - November 9, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Hey, you got me all interested in this post and left me hanging! lol
This sounds like a fascinating post and I can’t wait to see where it goes. I think the whole university system has become incorrigible elitist and higher education, not banks, is the nucleus of all the inequality we hear so much about. The only sector of society where I advocate for collective government planning (even socialism!) is in higher education. I say — change the universities by breaking up the elitist monopoly they represent! Stop sending federally backed student loans to any schools that charge more tuition than $15,000 a year–that would force schools to scale back their profligate spending and not foster class segregation between working-class colleges and elite private ones. Then allow the federal government to seize all the university endowments over $100 million in one authorized seizure based on the emergency in the United States. Maybe that means a constitutional amendment to override some of the protections in the Bill of Rights; we need smart lawyers to do it. Put all the money into a general expense fund available to all schools. And force universities to switch to locally based open admission.
None of what I wrote above seem possible. But why not ask for the impossible, as Claire Potter has said?
arrive2__net - November 11, 2011 at 12:21 am
It’s somewhat of a myth that there is a single, uniform university model out there that the author could talk about and reform. There are perhaps far greater differences between today’s Harvard, St. Mary’s, Liberty, Northcentral, University of the Ozarks, Haskell Indian Nations, Purdue, Western Governors, etc than there were between the English and Scottish universities. Did the 18th century include community and career colleges…although they may not be named ‘university’ they do perform the function of educating undergraduates that is nominally part of the university’s charter. And then, of course, today there’s a huge variety of free-standing colleges. Obviously the function and form of ‘the university’ has been dynamic and protean enough to allow at least these variations. It will be interesting to see if and how the article discussion addresses these types of ’change’, and I am looking forward to reading more of it.
Bart Schuster
OnlineGraduateSchool.tripod.com
Twitter.com/arrive2_net
judithcbrown - November 11, 2011 at 2:11 pm
You are right to point out that there are many models in higher education. Trying to be brief I left the impression of greater uniformity than there is. Some of the differences will come up in part 2 and even more in part 3. Thanks for making your point and for your patience.
Judith C. Brown
realtyannie - November 12, 2011 at 8:39 am
Of course we are at a major turning point. On the horizon:
4 year colleges and universities will be required to award associate degrees upon completion of 60 hours of credit earned.
Online, webinar, mobile, informal, life-experience, and other ways to earn college credit continue to steamroll traditional classroom methods.
Vouchers and cooperative agreements between interstate public colleges to provide in-state tuition, enabling streamlined degree programs and consolidation of resources.
Workplace badge systems become the standard for vocational education. The workplaces might as well start with high school grads and train them for their needs rather than paying slightly more for a degree without any relevant experience.
How about homeschool college credit? Plenty of qualified, highly educated parents out there are up to the job.
Not sure you were going down any of these roads in the next installment, but I hope so. :)
druce - November 12, 2011 at 9:37 am
Relax!
…As for Cambridge, in the Pension Rolls of 1602 we find two men
stood up to refuse their Friday meal in protest of the Saints’ day that the food commemorated. They were William Claiborne and Oliver Cromwell.
One went on to settle the New World; the other overturned the
old!