A University of Florida professor is suing a company that sells students' lecture notes because he says the service infringes on his intellectual property rights since he has copyrighted his lectures. The company, Einstein's Notes, is much like the UT community's Paradigm Books, which has been in operation at 407 W. 24th Street since the 1970s. The companies pay students to take notes and students can, in turn, buy full class transcripts. Schoology.com, which popped up online in February, is another similar service.
The plaintiff's argument makes sense: Entities are profiting from the sale of professors' thoughts. Another complaint could be that note-selling services can feed inequality between the haves and have-nots, as students trying to make ends meet can get paid to attend class, while others can simply purchase their classroom experience. Also, selling notes just reeks of cheating.
But we must remember that institutions of higher education profit more than any other entity off of professors' thoughts, and are likewise some of the largest instigators of inequality between the haves and have-nots. Students already spend tens of thousands of dollars a year in tuition, and dropping $37.50 for a semester's notes subscription at Paradigm is a drop in the bucket (as well as a rip-off, unless they're used as a supplement to actually attending the class, as that's the only way to get our tuition's worth).
Collaborative learning is something our society has and always will benefit from, but it is discouraged in our University's Institutional Rules on Student Services and Activities and UT officials have said it is against the UT honor code. Chapter 11 of the rules states that "working together on assignments is not permitted unless the instructor specifically approves of any such collaboration."
If we're going to have rules at this University, they need to be for more than show. Student leaders and University officials hailed their 2004 implementation of UT's honor code, which is all of two sentences long. Former UT President Larry Faulkner generically called it an "important achievement" with the "purpose of improving the quality of our academic and social enterprise." He said the adoption of the code was something that had been suggested for "many years by various organizations within the university," and he thanked everyone for "making the code a reality." In honor of the honor code, the Senate of College Councils even holds the week-long, self-righteous IntegrityUT Week to promote "an understanding of the UT honor code."
If all this time and energy is spent glorifying the University's honor code, then it must at least be redefined to clarify the standards it upholds. Things get sticky when money gets factored into good ol' collaborative learning, and our closed society is quick to associate working together as cheating or stealing. But just as talking to someone in person beats talking to them on the phone, we still have to pay for telephone service, and these note-selling services popping up have a right to charge for making collaborative learning a bit easier.
Our ever-changing world of technology and information is raising new issues on the academic landscape and UT actually has a chance to take its precious honor code off of its pedestal and make use of it by clarifying what it means by "collaborative," and setting the standard for conduct. Until then, it's a good thing the University's institutional rules aren't actually enforced, or officials would have to take action on all those mass-messaging Blackboard predators.
- CH
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