Tim Unwin's Blog

May 2, 2010 · 10:56 am

University fee rises: the time for protest is now!

The Sunday Times today reports that the review panel on university funding chaired by Lord Browne is likely to recommend that “universities would be allowed to increase fees well above the inflation rate each year – possibly by as much as £1,000 – as they move towards a free market”. The report also suggests that “Leading research universities could charge students an estimated £7,000 a year while fees for science undergraduates could rise to £14,000”.

Those who value scholarship, scientific excellence, and equality of opportunity in higher education must now take all forms of peaceful political action to oppose this proposal that would be catastrophic for universities in the UK.

It is scarcely surprising that the review panel is recommending such a free market approach to universities:

Responsibility for higher education currently rests with a government department called “The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills”, presided over by Lord Mandelson. The priorities of this Department are on the role of universities in supporting UK PLC and on developing business solutions, rather than on the value of universities in their own right.
The review is led by Lord Browne, former Chief Executive of BP. Why, oh why, was someone who took his company to near disaster (look at the current crises facing BP), and who was one of the most highly paid executives in the UK, asked to lead such an important review? Surely there were scholars or scientists who understood the true value of universities, who could have done this better?
Most UK university Vice Chancellors are so concerned with maintaining funding for their institutions that they have forgotten their most important role which is to provide scholarly vision and leadership. They have become co-conspirators in this move to a free market in higher education, where only the richest (or most corrupt) will be able to survive.

These factors combine to provide a recipe for disaster – all that the key actors in policy making can see is the need to generate more income to fund existing levels of student education at universities, and the only solution they can come up with is to raise fees, based on the ludicrous logic that higher education is a private good for which individuals should be willing to pay. I have previously commented at length on the flawed logic of this, and so will not repeat myself here.

However, three arguments seem to me to be unassailable:

Universities are facing a funding crisis because of the mistaken belief that we need to have 50% of our young people gaining a university education. There is no proof that providing a university education (which is in any case becoming increasingly second-rate) for this number of people is good, either for them or for society at large. The easiest way to reduce costs is simply to reduce the number of places on offer at universities.
Many students (although by no means all) waste their time at university. It is a lifestyle choice which is preferable to being unemployed. One of the reasons there are currently so many applications for university places is quite simply that it is tough to find a job during the economic downturn. Instead, let’s make gaining a university place more competitive, so that only those who are really committed to scholarship and scientific excellence gain a place.
Rather than imposing sweeping cuts across all universities, it would make much more sense to close those that do not provide learning or research opportunities of a high enough standard. Why are we so unwilling to close entire universities? Businesses go bust and people are made unemployed. The same should happen to the least successful universities.

The Browne review is focusing on the wrong questions. It is trying to find ways to fund an over-bloated, self congratulatory, but in reality increasingly mediocre higher education sector. Instead, let’s take a knife to the sector, and cut out the rot before it infects us all. Let’s have a more streamlined, outstanding and successful university sector, where there is real competition amongst students to gain places that will give them a truly excellent education, rather than a dumbed-down, penny pinching, higher education environment where all that matters is getting large numbers of students through the door to make financial ends meet.

For those who believe that it is inevitable that students should pay fees to attend university, it is worth remembering that there are some enlightened countries, such as Finland, where people value universities so much that attendance remains free – even for students from overseas!

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Tagged as UK, universities

April 30, 2010 · 9:56 am

Ash aftermath – Finnair and Vodafone charge exorbitant rates when trying to rebook flights

I’m sure that other people caught up in the air traffic chaos must be finding out now just how much their ‘phone bills have been charged when trying to rebook their flights!

I’m appalled to discover that it has cost me more than £600 in ‘phone charges – as a direct result of Finnair’s policies. To rebook or try to rearrange flights, Finnair gave a number that people in Finland had to call – +358 600 140 140 . What they did not say was that users were going to be charged even when their automatic statement that the lines were too busy and so could not even be answered was playing (in multiple languages)! Yes, the Finnair site did say that there was a small charge per “answered call” – but not even getting in the queue to have a human answer does not seem to me to count as an “answer”. So, every time I placed a call and I could not even get into the queue, it cost me £5.50 – even for 6 seconds! Then, when one passed that hurdle, and actually got into the queue to be answered, they kept charging. Every time I waited to be able to book a flight home, the call was being charged. And they were so busy, that callers had to wait a very long time. Eventually, waiting for 39 minutes before being answered, and then having a 6 minute and 6 second call cost me £246.53. At least I did get a flight home….

This is absolutely outrageous. Vodafone, my ‘phone provider refuse to do anything about it, and likewise Finnair. Let’s hope my insurers are feeling sympathetic. Under such unusual conditions, Finnair should have provided a freephone number, or at the very least have informed people that they were being charged even when waiting to receive a human answer. But what else were passengers expected to do? People who wanted to get rebooked onto another flight had to call that number. This is unquestionably profiteering at the expense of stranded customers! Guess I will therefore change my ‘phone supplier and never fly Finnair again. What have other people been charged by their ‘phone providers and airlines?

…….

Now I am really angry – I wrote to Finnair about this, and this is the e-mail reply I have just received “We have had a lot of customer contacts in recent days, so we regret any delay in responding to your feedback. We will reply to you as soon as possible.The estimated answering time is 2-3 months. All the contacts will be handled in order of arrival. Thank you for your patience”.

Am definitely never flying Finnair again if I can possibly help it!!!!

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April 29, 2010 · 5:14 pm

OLPC and the East African Community

A report today by the BBC highlights that a new partnership has been established between One Laptop per Child (OLPC) and the East African Community (EAC) to deliver 30 million laptops in the region by 2015. As the report goes on to say, the EAC first needs to raise cash for the laptops! It also comments that “OLPC has had difficulty selling its computers and its alternative vision of education around the world”.

I find such announcements hugely worrying. There have been sufficient critiques published on the OLPC model for governments, donors, and all those involved in education to be aware of the fundamental difficulties associated with its roll out (see for example Bob Kozma‘s comments in 2007, David Hollow‘s 2009 account of their introduction in Ethiopia, Scott Kipp‘s comments in 2009, and Ivan Krstic’s devastating critique of the concept and its implementation at the UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning Fifth International Seminar in 2008).

Let me here highlight what I see as being some of the most important issues:

Cost – 30 million laptops at $200 each amounts to $6,000 million. Might this money not be more effectively spent in other ways, such as providing teachers in East Africa with better training, or even simply remunerating them better so that they do not have to do several jobs at once in order to support their families?
Pedagogic model – is there one? OLPC has claimed to be an educational initiative, but a fundamental problem with most OLPC roll outs has been that they have not been integrated into the existing educational structures. In the worst instances, the laptops have been given to children but not to their teachers. The tensions that this causes are immense.
Lack of Content – the OLPC vision is “To create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning”. The problem is that there is very little available learning content suitably designed and integrated with the curricula in the countries where the laptops are being introduced. Simply expecting young people to be able to learn by connecting to the internet is like throwing someone into the sea and expecting them to swim.
Monitoring and Evaluation – there have been too few rigorous monitoring and evaluation studies to be able to say with any certainty what the impact of these computers might be in Africa. Surely, we should undertake high quality studies of the educational impact before spending such huge amounts of money on rolling them out?
Who gets them? This is a real issue. In many instances, the choice about where the computers are given reflects social, economic and political interests. The sampling strategy for the roll outs needs to be thought through extremely carefully, and not just left to some enthusiastic youth volunteers (as in the OLPCorps programme – the selection of participants for which is itself highly problematic and controversial). If XO computers do have a beneficial effect, then why should only some young people (in most cases those who are already privileged in some way) benefit from them? Will they go to the poorest and most marginalised, those who most need help in isolated rural areas? Ethiopia alone has an estimated 9 million children out of school. Will they receive laptops?
External technology-led initiatives – most of the evidence suggests that top-down, externally-driven and technology-led initiatives are much less successful than initiatives that are explicitly designed and tailored to the needs and aspirations of the people for whom they are intended. It is crucial that we begin with the educational needs of people in East Africa, and then identify the most cost-effective way of delivering on them. As Bob Kozma says, “Is this an education project or merely a laptop project?”.
Sustainability – what happens when the first batch of computers breaks down, or becomes outdated? Let’s be generous, and estimate that each might last five years. Can East Africa afford another $6,000 million in five years time? What will happen to the debris of the old computers? How will their materials be recycled, or will they just be dumped?
The technology? There are some great things about the technical achievements in creating the OLPC XO laptops – but anecdotal evidence suggests that actually it is not quite as good and effective as is often claimed. In particular, there have been numerous issues with the mesh networking and connectivity when actually rolled out into the rural village conditions of Africa.

So, I ask again, why does there remain such euphoria about the OLPC initiative? Surely, the East African Community has better things to spend its money on? If only it could find the funds to support good education effectively, that would be a start! Nicholas Negroponte is a charismatic and enthusiastic champion of OLPC, but is it not time that he recognises that his vision is fundamentally flawed? African governments have better things to do than to be beguiled into spending their limited resources on such a delusional concept.

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Filed under Africa, Entrepreneurship, ICT4D general

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April 26, 2010 · 8:13 pm

Go and ogle in Southampton and beyond…

Having just posted my last reflection on “Go, ogle”, I was in Southampton on Sunday and there it was – “Ogle Road”! This must be where the Google camera van/car/snowmobile/tricycles hang out when it’s dark and they cannot take the photos that their ‘masters’ want.

It did, though, also make me reflect further on the ethical issues surrounding Google’s Street View ‘technology’. Much has already been written about this, but with the advent of Google’s 4th generation cameras that take near-HD quality images, and continuing debate in the EU about privacy issues associated with Street View, for which we should all be grateful, it is worth once again highlighting some of the issues that this raises.

A recent report by Claudia Rach for Bloomberg Businessweek has some interesting comments from Michael Jones, Google’s chief technology advocate and founder of Google Earth:

“I think we would consider whether we want to drive through Europe again, because it would make the expense so draining”
“I think that privacy is more important than technology but for privacy people it is only about privacy but for us it is also about technology”

The first of these was partly in response to the suggestion that Google should only keep unblurred images for 6 months instead of a year. Again, quoting from Rach’s report, Peter Fleischer, a Google lawyer in charge of privacy issues, said “The need to retain the unblurred images is legitimate and justified — to ensure the quality and accuracy of our maps, to improve our ability to rectify mistakes in blurring, as well as to use the data we have collected to build better maps products for our users”. This means that Google keep all this information unblurred on their servers – which, of course, means that Google and its relevant employees have access to it. What happens when someone hacks into this information, or a government asks for it in connection with some important state ‘need’?

Jones’ second comment above is indeed surprising. There is little evidence that Google has ever put privacy above technology. Its technological prowess has been at the forefront of raising new ethical questions – one of which is indeed about privacy.

So, just to add to the debate, I thought I would come up with a list of ten interesting uses for Street View:

for car thieves wanting to plan where to steal particular brands of car to order – just look on people’s drives
for double glazing companies (or for that matter firms offering to redo your drive) to target individual houses that might be ripe for marketing – individualised targeted mailings
for revolutionaries (or what governments in capitalist countries call ‘terrorists’) to decide where best to plant explosive devices to cause maximum damage
for people wanting to reconstruct buildings on streets that have been destroyed by earthquakes (or other such disasters) – you can see how it looked a year ago
for burglars wanting to find the quickest getaway having robbed a property (see Phil Muncaster’s summary on v3.co.uk)
for recognising what your friends were doing when the Google car passed – yes, of course you can recognise people even with their faces blurred
for checking out those naked sunbathers
for finding exactly what that pub that your friends took you to last night looks like in the daylight when you can’t remember where it is
for checking out what the holiday villa you are thinking of booking really looks like
and as findaproperty says, “With the panoramic street level photographs you can get a feel for the property, its location and neighbourhood, before visiting it – which saves you a lot of time and means you don’t have to decided whether you want to view a property based solely on the description of the area as provided by the estate agents” – ah, isn’t that nice…

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Tagged as Ethics, Google, ICT4D

April 23, 2010 · 2:25 pm

Google tracking

Why have I never noticed before that Google is really “Go, Ogle” – meaning “Go, stare at impertinently”?

In this context, the following report by Andrew Orlowski in yesterday’s The Register makes interesting reading:

“Google’s roving Street View spycam may blur your face, but it’s got your number. The Street View service is under fire in Germany for scanning private WLAN networks, and recording users’ unique Mac (Media Access Control) addresses, as the car trundles along. Germany’s Federal Commissioner for Data Protection Peter Schaar says he’s “horrified” by the discovery. “I am appalled… I call upon Google to delete previously unlawfully collected personal data on the wireless network immediately and stop the rides for Street View,” according to German broadcaster ARD. Spooks have long desired the ability to cross reference the Mac address of a user’s connection with their real identity and virtual identity, such as their Gmail or Facebook account. Other companies have logged broadcasting WLAN networks and published the information. By contrast Google has not published the WLAN map, or Street View in Germany; Google hopes to launch the service by the end of the year. But Google’s uniquely cavalier approach to privacy, and its potential ability to cross reference the information raises additional concerns. Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said internet users shouldn’t worry about privacy unless they have something to hide. And when there’s nowhere left to hide…?”.

I have cautioned elsewhere about the implications of Google’s approach to digital information, and the enormous power that this gives the company. This is yet another example of the lack of transparency, and the secrecy underlying Google’s approach to accessing information about individuals. It may well not be illegal for Google to access Mac addresses – but if the above report is true it raises fundamental questions about Google’s approach to ethics.

I have for a long time refused to have a Gmail account – and try to ensure that they have as little of my data as possible. Perhaps the time has come for us to launch a global campaign to boycott Google? How much ogling can we all stand? The trouble is that their search engine is really quite good!

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April 23, 2010 · 9:18 am

Reflections on the effects of the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption

The transport disruption caused by ash from the erupting Eyjafjallajökull volcano has had enormous impact across the world, not only for economic activity but also for individual human lives. Having been ‘stuck’ in the North Karelian town of Joensuu in eastern Finland for the last week, I have been interested and surprised by the emotional impact that this has had on me:

I discovered that eastern Finland is really a long way from anywhere! Joensuu is four-and-a-half hours by train north-east from Helsinki, and almost at the same latitude as the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland!
Finland itself is amazingly isolated, and very much like an island. Almost everyone who wanted to leave during the cessation of flights had to get ferries – from Turku or Helsinki to Stockholm, or from Helsinki to Tallinn. According to travel agents, many of these were fully booked, and so it was difficult to ‘escape’. The prospects of the Finnair offer of a 34 hour bus journey to Berlin, with two nights and a day on board, were not particularly appealing – especially when other parts of Europe seemed to be opening up their air-space. Most people who left, and took onward trains through Sweden and Denmark, or across Europe from Berlin took three or four days to get back to England! Being in ‘mainland Europe’ would have been so much easier – a train from Prague to Madrid would, for example, have been simplicity itself compared with leaving Finland!
The most disturbing feature of the disruption for me was the uncertainty! I was surprised how much not knowing when it might be possible to leave affected me – and particularly my ability to concentrate on work. Might it be worth taking the bus to Berlin – and then the subsequent problems associated with getting a train back to the UK? Should I go to Turku and hope for the best? When might flights start again? Should I try to get a train to Helsinki in case the flights from there are going to be a better bet than risking a flight from Joensuu to Helsinki first?
It can be really lonely… Thanks to all those friends who kept in touch on Skype, Facebook and by e-mail!
But I also discovered the real value of open-handed friendship. After I had stayed a couple of extra nights in a hotel, Erkki and Päivi welcomed me into their home, and this transformed things. Their hospitality enabled me to get on with some work (despite my difficulties in concentrating on it), and provided an enormous warmth of personal support. They have been absolutely amazing, and I hope one day to be able to return the favour.
A real lesson to be learnt from this is therefore that we should all be generously open and welcoming to ‘refugees’ – from wherever they come. Whilst it is completely inappropriate for those of us caught up in the dislocation caused by the closure of air space to draw comparisons with the experiences of political refugees, I do think I have gained a whole lot more insight into some of the anguish that they must face.
One can spend an age trying to rearrange flights! Many, many calls to Finnair were ‘answered’ with a message saying that their system was overloaded – even at 05.00 in the morning! Eventually, it took almost an hour of waiting earlier in the week to reschedule my flights for tomorrow – but who knows now even if that will be leaving!
It’s therefore crucially important to take advantage of every opportunity that such chaos can afford! It was great to visit Koli, and also to spend time participating in academic discussions and teaching at the Computer Science Department at the University of Eastern Finland – thanks for the opportunity.
This disruption also, though, shows the huge value of modern ICTs – the ability to hold conference calls with people in many different parts of the world, to receive e-mails (although not necessarily my ability to answer them all), to speak with loved ones ‘dislocated’ elsewhere (providing their ‘phones are charged), to find out information about the latest delays, to give a conference presentation at a distance (not easy – but see #beyond2010) and to find communal means of resolving travel problems (such as stuckineurope.com)! When the fuel runs out for ‘traditional’ air transport, life might become very much more human!

Apologies to everyone whose e-mails I have not responded to, and for the meetings I have missed! I should have been back in the UK on the 18th – and it is now the 23rd. Finavia this morning at last announced that “Based on the current forecasts all airports in Finland have been opened for air traffic and operate normally”, although lots of flights in Finland today have still been cancelled! Hopefully tomorrow will improve, and I will indeed return home. I intend to take a few days off – just to smell the late spring flowers, to taste some fine wine and to relax!

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Tagged as ICT4D, Joensuu, volcano

April 21, 2010 · 6:02 pm

Google publishes details of requests from governments

Google has just published some fascinating data, and a map, showing the numbers of requests from government agencies around the world to remove content from its services, or to provide information about users of its services and products.

According to this, the highest numbers of requests for removals of data between July and December 2009 were from:

Brazil 291
Germany 188
India 142
USA 123

Similarly, the highest numbers of data requests were from:

Brazil 3663
United States 3580
United Kingdom 1166
India 1061

I was surprised by the high figures for Brazil, but as Google note “For Brazil and India, government requests for content removal are high relative to other countries in part because of the popularity of our social networking website, orkut. The majority of the Brazilian and Indian requests for removal of content from orkut relate to alleged impersonation or defamation”. Likewise, in commenting on the high figures for Germany, Google comment that “A substantial number of the German removals resulted from court orders that relate to defamation in search results”.

Interesting observations indeed! It is good to see Google becoming more transparent in such matters.

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April 21, 2010 · 4:47 pm

Unleashing the Potential: ICTs for Development

I had the privilege of being a keynote speaker at the SciFest symposium on ICT for development and learning held in association with a meeting of the Computer Science Days of the Finnish Computer Society held at the University of Joensuu on 15th April. Here is a summary of the key issues that I raised:

The main question I sought to address was “How can Computer Science contribute to the lives of some of the poorest and most marginalised people in the world?”
Much computer science seems to be very theoretical, and practised by people who prefer to remain in their familiar institutional surroundings
However, for those who wish to gain new experiences, insights and intellectual challenges, working in some of the poorest countries of the world offers great opportunities
Unfortunately, much so-called ICT4D research and practice tends to be top-down and led by people from Europe and north America
All too rarely does such research really address development needs
As privileged academics, we ought to listen much more to the stated needs of the poorest and most marginalised in crafting our research agendas
The private sector is likely to enable many relatively poor people to benefit from ICTs, but the very poorest – those with disabilities and street children – need interventions by governments and civil society organisations to help them use ICTs to achieve their aspirations
For those computer scientists not lured by the interests of capital, there remains the wonderful challenge of working for social agendas that can make a difference – both to their own intellectual benefit, and to the benefit of the world’s poorest people

The World Bank ‘releases’ its data

Yesterday, the World Bank announced the good news that it is making all of its statistical information available freely to anyone who has access to the Internet. As World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick commented, “I believe it’s important to make the data and knowledge of the World Bank available to everyone,” … “Statistics tell the story of people in developing and emerging countries and can play an important part in helping to overcome poverty. They are now easily accessible on the Web for all users, and can be used to create new apps for development”. The database includes some 331 of the World Development Indicators (WDI) covering 209 countries from 1960 to 2008 translated into Spanish, French and Arabic.

However, this reveals what is very much a ‘World Bank’ view of the world. The data are only partial, and should never be seen in some ways as ‘hard facts’. There is a real danger that sources such as this may be used uncritically to give misleading views of international development. Take education for example. There are only 5 indicators that show up when a search on “Find an Indicator” is done for “education” among the 331 indicators made available in this way:

public spending on education as a % of GDP
public spending on education as a % of government expenditure
ratio of female to male enrollments in tertiary education
ratio of girls to boys in primary and secondary education
trained teachers in primary education as a % of total teachers

However, using “Topics”, one can find a further 24 indicators about education, and this provides a much more balanced view of global education. On delving deeper, it is possible to access a still more detailed set of data from the databank itself. Here, there are some 1247 different time series on educational data, and they can also be downloaded for free. This is indeed a valuable resource.

Another problematic feature of the main public database is its maps. At first sight, these could be seen to be helpful visualisations of the data, but they are fundamentally misleading, because they use proportional symbols to represent % data – the higher the percentage, the larger the circle. While such symbols are fine for absolute data (such as total GNI), they are inappropriate for showing ratios such as percentages for a spatial territory (such as % enrollment in secondary education). For such data, it is much more appropriate to use choropleth maps that shade the areas in different densities.

These criticisms having been noted, we should applaud the World Bank for sharing its statistical understanding of the world in such an accessible way. It tells us as much about the Bank as it does about development.

Koli National Park, Finland

The air traffic disruption caused by the ash plume from the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption has had at least one positive benefit as far as I was concerned – an afternoon’s visit to the beautiful Koli National Park in eastern Finland, made famous in the 19th century by the music and paintings of Jean Sibelius, Juhani Aho and Eero Järnefelt. [Do click on the images below to see larger versions of the photographs]