October 13, 2010 · 7:41 am

The brave new world of a free market university system in the UK

The Browne review places the final nail in the coffin for the belief that universities are about anything other than economic interest.  From henceforth, university education in the UK has become a commodity to be bought and sold in a free market for individual benefit. Overthrown are beliefs that university education is about intellectual curiosity, about moral judgement, and about communal interest.

The short-sighted stupidity and naïvety of the recommendation that universities should be able to charge market prices for their offerings must, be challenged.  Even for those who see the world purely through an economic lens, the arguments against Browne’s recommendations should be convincing. Imagine a world where:

  • British students increasingly live at home and turn to high quality distance-based courses provided more cheaply by excellent universities, often in other countries;
  • Many students go overseas to study in countries where education is free, thus making a huge cost-saving in gaining a degree and contributing to the local economies of the countries where they study (rather than the UK);
  • Many UK universities shut down, because students realise that the courses they offer are a complete waste of time and do not give them any additional lifetime earning expectations; and
  • Employers, realising even more than they do at present that UK universities do not provide the skills for which they are looking, increasingly employ people without degrees, and give them tailored training courses (often collaboratively with other employers) to ensure that they have the expertise required.

These are just some of the likely economic impacts of the recommendations that are now before government.  The net outcome will be a dramatic reduction in the UK higher education sector, a shift overseas in the amount spent on fees and maintenance by UK born students, an increase in unemployment of former university staff who are unable to gain any other form of employment, and a decline in the wider contribution of the higher education sector to the UK economy.

Even on economic grounds, a decision to let universities charge whatever fees they think the market will stand is fundamentally flawed.  So, even for those who do not care about the social divisiveness, the intellectual sterility, and the communally destructive effects of such policies, these arguments should at least carry some weight!

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October 9, 2010 · 10:14 pm

The Browne Review of Higher Education

Can anyone tell me why Lord Mandelson (the former Business Secretary) chose John Browne (Baron Browne of Madingley) to chair the review of higher education in the UK that is due to report on 12th October?  Given his background, and the wider political agenda of which the review is a part, the report’s conclusions can never really have been in question:

  • Browne spent almost his entire career at BP, beginning as an apprentice in 1966 and rising to Group Chief Executive of the combined BP Amoco group in 2007
  • He was one of the most highly paid executives in the UK, with a reported £5.7 million salary in 2004
  • According to some, he was the person most responsible for cost cutting at BP that many attribute to having led to the Texas City refinery explosion in 2005 and most recently the Deepwater Horizon Explosion in 2010.

In short, he is a businessman, who was paid a salary that most people can only dream of, and built his ‘success’ on cuts.  Although he is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (amongst others), he has shown that he has little real understanding of the purpose of universities, the issues and challenges facing academic and students, and the crucial role that high quality research and teaching must play in Britain’s future.

Surely even he is intelligent enough to understand that increasing fees twofold or threefold will mean that many students will no longer be able to afford to go to university, or will choose instead to go to universities elsewhere in countries  that still believe in the provision of free, high quality university education. A free market in higher education cannot serve the interests of students, of the country, or of university excellence.

Just because Browne was able to earn such a large salary having gained a Physics degree from Cambridge and a Business Master’s degree from Stanford, does not mean that every graduate will be able to do likewise.  Only a few are able to earn the grossly inflated salaries that now seem to be so prevalent amongst senior executives in major corporations and the bankers who brought our financial systems to the point of crisis that has been so damaging to our economy.

A more intelligent and sympathetic Chair might just have led to a more creative and viable future for our once great universities.

Links to my reflections on:

Together, we might just be able to salvage a small number of high quality universities from the impending bonfire of the vanities.

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October 5, 2010 · 10:04 am

Religious faith in the UK

A recent report in The Times highlights that almost 80% of people in Britain describe themselves as having a religious faith:

“More than seven out of ten people in Britain describe themselves as Christian, according to government research. Nearly eight in ten have a religious faith. The number of trainee clergy in the Roman Catholic and Church of England is also approaching record levels, according to figures released yesterday. The first Office for National Statistics household survey recorded Christianity at 71.4 per cent, Judaism at 0.6 per cent, Islam at 4.2 per cent and Hinduism at 1.5 per cent. Sikhism was 0.7 per cent and Buddhism 0.4 per cent. Slough is the most religious town in England, where 93 per cent profess a religious belief, while Brighton is the least, with 58 per cent”.

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October 1, 2010 · 6:06 pm

Many popular Android apps share location and unique identifiers with advertisers

A recent report on the BBC website notes a study by researchers from Intel Labs, Penn State and Duke University which shows that “Some of the most popular apps written for Google’s Android phones do not tell users what is done with data they gather… . Half of 30 applications studied share location information and unique identifiers with advertisers”. Two-thirds of these popular third-party apps showed suspicious handling of personal data.

Information from the ‘phones was sent to advertisers without the users being told that data was being shared with them.  As the BBC report goes on to note,  “Some apps gathered and despatched location information even when an application was not running and some sent updates every 30 seconds.”

Whilst users should always be wary of downloading any apps that they do not necessarily trust, this seems to be yet another example of Google not being the fully trustworthy company that it would like people to believe it is.  It would be a relatively simple matter to ensure that all users are automatically warned about this when software is downloaded. As the researchers conclude, “Android’s coarse-grained access control provides insufficient protection against third-party applications seeking to collect sensitive data”.

This is definitely a powerful reason why Android ‘phones should be avoided, and once again raises serious concerns about Google’s lack of ethical probity.

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September 29, 2010 · 12:23 pm

Scholarships for ICTD2010

Thanks to the generous support of the conference sponsors, the ICTD2010 conference organisers have recently been able to announce a further call for scholarships.  All applications must be on the appropriate form, and need to satisfy at least one of the following criteria:

  1. Have had a paper accepted, or be a speaker in an accepted session (including posters, workshops and demos) at the conference.
  2. Be from a country ranked below 100th on the latest Human Development Index (as at 1st June 2010)
  3. Be studying for a postgraduate degree
  4. Be on a low income (if applying on these grounds, the most recent payslip must be attached as proof of income)

Those who submitted unsuccessful applications in the first round will automatically be reconsidered, and must not submit new applications (otherwise they will be excluded).

More than 60 scholarships were awarded in the first round (from more than 170 applications), and it is hoped that a further 20 scholarships may be offered, covering some or all of the following: registration fee, accommodation and travel.

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September 22, 2010 · 9:15 pm

Rats in Virginia Water

Walking home from the station today, I have to admit to being a little surprised by seeing a rat on the path!  A rat in leafy Virginia Water! A rat not so far from the Wentworth golf club.  The irony was striking.

It was amazing – just sitting there, oblivious to the trains passing by a few yards away, and the car park just nearby. Sadly it scuttled off into the undergrowth before I could get close enough for a better photograph.

I have to say I prefer the deer amongst our local wildlife – even if they do eat the roses and vegetables.  Should rats be seen as pests?  If only hedgehogs were as common as rats perhaps we would have fewer slugs!

It’s amusing to see other mentions of rats in Virginia Water and Wentworth:

  • The Sun recently referred to Peter Crouch (the footballer) in the following terms “Abbey Clancy will forgive love rat fiancé Peter Crouch”, noting on 12th August 2010 that “Crouch looked teed off yesterday during a round of golf at the posh Wentworth course in Virginia Water, Surrey”

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September 17, 2010 · 9:50 pm

Reflections on e-mails

I remember the days when as a young academic I looked forward to receiving perhaps 10 letters a day; now, I receive well over 100 e-mails a day, and there is an expectation that I should respond to them all as soon as possible. How am I expected to be creative and innovative?  E-mails have been one of the most damaging things to productive and innovative work.  I hugely admire colleagues who have resisted the onset of e-mails, and simply invite those who want to contact them to write to them in ‘hard copy’. A colleague in a global organisation recently told me that he had a backlog of more than 6000 unanswered e-mails.  This is completely unacceptable.  We need to take more control over our lives – and our e-mails!

Some of the greatest abuses of e-mail (over and above Spam) include the following:

  • Organisations that send all of the paperwork for meetings as attachments, and then expect attendees to print them off before they attend the meeting.  This is completely unacceptable.  If hard-copy is required, then it is much more efficient and cheaper for the central organisation to print multiple copies and then disseminate these to attendees.  It is of course far easier for organisations simply to send out e-mails, but this passes on the work load of printing out to the attendees!
  • The above is even worse when the convener of a meeting sends the papers out electronically a couple of hours before the meeting starts and still expects recipients to read them beforehand!
  • People who set their preferences to reply to all, and thereby send vast numbers of e-mails to people who really do not want to receive them!
  • People who expect e-mails to be answered almost immediately!  Why should this have become so widely accepted?
  • Excessive use of copy e-mails.  Anyone who has worked in certain kinds of organisation (such as the Civil Service) will be only too familiar with this syndrome! People who are unwilling or unable to take responsibility for their actions always copy their bosses in to an e-mail!  Likewise certain control-freak bosses always want to micro-manage their staff and demand to be copied in!
  • People who send an e-mail to someone in the same room asking them a question, rather than getting up and actually talking with them!  It’s OK if the e-mail is to send an attached document, but otherwise it is much more efficient simply to go and discuss the matter with them.

So, here are some tips on what I think is good e-mail usage that might help reduce such abuses and enable us to retain some sense of our humanity:

  • When on leave, set a rule that files all incoming e-mails in a separate folder, and have an out of office message that tells everyone that their e-mail has been archived and if they want you to read it they should send it again when you return.  Rest assured that this will infuriate people, but just think about it.  If you have only 100 e-mails a day, and go on leave for 10 days that will mean that you will have 1000 e-mails awaiting you on return.  Even if you only spend a minute on each e-mail it would take just under 17 hours to respond to these on return.  You have better things to do.
  • Set a rule that sends all of your copy correspondence to a separate folder, and have an automated response that says something to the effect that you try to read copy correspondence once a week, and if the sender really wants you to read it more urgently than this they should send it to you as a direct respondent.  Again, this can infuriate abusers of copy correspondence, but it certainly cuts down on the number of unwanted e-mails you will receive!
  • A friend told me of a colleague who only responds to 38 e-mails a day – and lets everyone know this.  If you don’t get into the top 38, then tough luck!  I have not yet quite got round to doing this.
  • A variant on this is simply to set an amount of time each day to respond to e-mails – perhaps an hour –  and then just delete all those that have not been answered.
  • Colour code your e-mails into certain categories, and then sort them automatically according to priority.  Just so you know, my list in descending order of priority is as follows: family (red), friends (blue), my postgraduate students (green), Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (orange), ICT4D  colleagues (pale blue), Institute of Masters of Wine (Burgundy), and then others (black).  I don’t always get through all of my high priority e-mails, but it does mean that people know where they stand.
  • Set a rule that automatically deletes all incoming out of office messages before you ever even see them!
  • Always switch off your e-mail software if you are trying to do anything productive – and keep it off for as long as possible.  Never leave it running in the background.
  • Try to read your e-mails at set times of day – such as first thing in the morning – and then simply do as much as you can before switching your e-mail software off and  then start again the next morning.
  • If people are pushy and ask why you have not responded immediately to their e-mails, simply put them lower down in your list of priorities! They will soon learn.
  • Have a standard attempted response rate to important e-mails of 48 hours – and let people know this.  No-one should expect an e-mail to be read or responded to immediately.
  • Never respond to work related e-mails at the weekend.
  • I’m thinking of creating an automated response to all of my e-mails letting people know what my e-mail strategy is and apologising if they don’t receive an answer!

Enough for now….

Oh yes, and I am developing an automated e-mail answering system that learns how I usually respond to certain kinds of e-mail and then does this automatically for me.  It is great fun, but does mean that people don’t always get the messages that they expect to receive….

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September 10, 2010 · 3:50 pm

ICT4D extracts on Amazon.com

ICT4D BookFor those who cannot afford the (low) price of my edited ICT4D book (published by CUP in 2009), the first chapter as well as the contents page and index can be accessed from Amazon.com!

A summary of the contents is as follows:

  1. Introduction
  2. Development agendas and the place of ICTs
  3. Information and communication in development practices
  4. The technologies: identifying appropriate solutions for development needs
  5. ICT4D implementation: policies and partnerships
  6. ICTs, enterprise and development (Michael Best and Charles Kenny)
  7. ICTs in education: catalyst for development (Michelle Selinger)
  8. e-Health: information and communication technologies for health (Yunkap Kwankam, Ariel Pablos-Mendez and Misha Kay)
  9. e-Government and e-governance (James Guida and Martin Crow)
  10. Information and communication technologies for rural development (Bob Day and Peter Greenwood)
  11. Conclusions

The book itself can readily be ordered directly from Cambridge University Press.

Reviews include:

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September 9, 2010 · 10:43 am

IPID Annual Conference at UPC Barcelona

The International Network for Postgraduate Students working in ICT4D (IPID) is currently (9th-10th September 2010) holding its 5th annual conference at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona. A wealth of current postgraduate research in ICT4D is being presented around the following themes:

  • gender
  • e-agriculture
  • rural communities
  • online communities
  • e-government
  • technology
  • ICT in education
  • e-health
  • entrepreneurship
  • networks

The conference is being broadcast live at http://www.canalupc.tv/media/simposium-upc-uoc .

Ismael Peña Lopez’s comprehensive blog on the conference.

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September 2, 2010 · 12:34 pm

Reflections on the Internet and Development

Just finished writing a chapter about the Internet and Development, and am surprised at the vehemence of my own conclusions:

“In conclusion…

Three important and inter-related conclusions can be drawn from this short overview of research on the Internet and development.  First, it must be remembered that the Internet is but one of a number of new digital ICTs.  Whilst many have given it predominance, “Internet use has spread much less rapidly in low-income countries than other ICTs – notably broadcast radio … and television and, more recently, mobile telephony” (Souter 2007: 33).  As Souter (2007: 33) goes on to emphasise, ultimately “the potential of the Internet can only be achieved if effective access is available”, and this requires the availability of the ICT infrastructure and reliable electricity at an affordable price for the poor, and that it provides relevant information that is not available more cheaply through other means.  If the world’s poor are truly to benefit from the Internet, then far more attention needs to be paid explicitly to ways in which they can indeed use it to their real advantage, thereby enabling them to benefit at the expense of the world’s rich. Only then will relative poverty be reduced.

Second, the success of the Internet in delivering development objectives depends very much on how such objectives are defined.  Much research and practice has focused on the hegemonic notion that development is about economic growth, and there are convincing arguments that the Internet can indeed contribute to such an objective.  However, even here, it is evident that the presence of the Internet alone will not in most instances contribute to the economic well-being of the poorest and most marginalised. From a relativist perspective, focusing particularly on social equality, the evidence is far more uncertain.  Numerous studies (Huyer and Hafkin 2007), for example, show how women in patriarchal societies are increasingly marginalised by their exclusion from access to the Internet.  Likewise, if development is seen as being concerned with freedoms, then the ambivalent character of the technology of the Internet is once more revealed.

A final important characteristic of the Internet in the context of development has been its dehumanising and alienating effects.  Just as factory production in the 19th century made humans appendages of machines (Lukács 1923), so too in the 21st century has the Internet made people ever more the appendages of computers.  In so doing, users are becoming further alienated from the physical world of nature and creativity, and ever more constrained by those who design the virtual realities of which we are now part.  What is remarkable about this is that in the name of progress, such virtual worlds are accepted and applauded as being ‘good’ and where the future lies (Carr 2008). Such arguments need to be strongly countered if we are to retain the very essence of what makes us human.  By enabling people to work away from their offices, by dramatically reducing the constraints of time and space on production, consumption and exchange, the Internet has enabled owners of capital to exploit their workforces far more efficiently and effectively than ever before, whilst at the same time making them think that they are enjoying it.  Imagine a world where one was not expected to answer the hundred or so e-mails that arrive every day, and where one actually had time to think, be creative and enjoy the physical experience of being human!  Paradoxically, the poor and marginalised, those without access to the Internet, may ultimately actually be very much richer than the bankers, traders and business executives who have become the new proletariat of the digital age, quite simply because the poor without access to the Internet are not bound by its dehumanising, unspoken and constraining rules.”

I guess it is now time for me to take a digital break!

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