
Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines - mod50ack
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/24/colleges-are-turning-students-phones-into-surveillance-machines-tracking-locations-hundreds-thousands/
======
WalterBright
> logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and
> can sink their grade.

Fortunately, I attended a college (Caltech) that as institute policy did not
take attendance and no part of the grade was based on attendance.

The result was nobody was disruptive in class, because if students didn't want
to attend, they didn't attend.

I remember sitting in class as a freshman thinking about this and enjoying
being treated as an adult for the first time in my life. Nobody was telling me
to go to class, admonishing me for not going, giving me credit for attendance
or docking me for not.

The freshman EE class professor was famous (infamous?) for scheduling his
lectures at 8AM, because he only wanted the interested students showing up at
them.

~~~
pickdenis
This sort of thing doesn't work at schools that don't have such a high bar of
entry. Caltech can afford to treat their students like adults, because they're
picked from the cream of the crop.

On the other hand, schools like the one I went to would have a horrible(r)
matriculation rate if students were not forced to attend certain classes. It
infuriurates me (and I think students who want to fail should be allowed to
fail), but ultimately it's a product of the financial incentive structure;
more graduates = more $$$.

And forcing attendance of some classes does indeed increase the likelihood of
certain borderline students graduating, nobody can deny that.

~~~
toomanybeersies
I disagree. I went to the University of Canterbury (the New Zealand one), the
bar to entry was literally to pass your high school exams.

We were treated like adults, and attendance was entirely optional for most
lectures and tutorials. If you failed a paper because you didn't go to any
lectures, that was your problem.

~~~
counterpoint1
If you fail out, it's not just your problem though. It's also the taxpayers
who paid for the school that the student wasted.

That remains true whether that's a Scandinavian model of fully-paid schools, a
US public university model of a partially taxpayer funded & partially student
funded or even a private university if it ultimately results in a taxpayer
funded loan forgiveness or other subsidy.

~~~
asdff
Rate of dropouts is probably priced in. Plenty of people in the U.S. drop out
of public education before they've completed it as we..

------
mod50ack
I'm a college student myself (my university, as far as I'm aware, has no
system such as this). As far as I'm concerned, it's both an insidious creep of
social-credit policy and a gross invasion of student privacy. It treats us as
children rather than as the adults we are, and seems to me to be a sign of the
re-infantalization of colleges. Many generations ago, when the age of majority
was for the most part higher, colleges acted in loco parentis for their minor
undergraduates. It was during the twentieth century that college students came
to be recognized as real adults. But now it seems that the coddling has in
many ways increased, and some find it fit again, as one sees here, to surveil
us like children.

Further, while there have been obvious benefits of technological advancement,
they have in large part erased informal procedures and social understanding in
favor of a rigid and unforgiving process. For example, my assignments are now
largely due at midnight, at a very particular second: submit a nanosecond late
at your own penalty. Whereas in the past the common practice of most
professors would be along the lines of "get it in my mailbox by 4 p.m.", or
something like that, but with the informal understanding that at
4:00:00.0...1, the door of the mailbox would not close and chop off your hand.
And exceptions to rules were easier to get before the arbiter of the rules
became a severe and unfeeling one.

~~~
knzhou
> For example, my assignments are now largely due at midnight, at a very
> particular second: submit a nanosecond late at your own penalty.

From the instructor's point of view, there's no winning here -- there will
always be a cutoff, and _any_ position of it will lead to complaints. Even for
an informal system, there's always a last person allowed in, and hence a
cutoff.

If you have a good reason for an extension, you can still get it. But there's
no reason anybody needs, specifically, the extra second after a formal
deadline. If the deadline were moved to a second after midnight, you would try
to submit two seconds after midnight and complain, and so on. (I mean, why do
you think deadlines are at midnight in the first place? Because in-person
collection would stop working at 5 PM, leading to complaints, so deadlines
were extended to midnight to let people work at night.)

This is pointless slippage, and the resolution from the student side is so
easy. Just pretend every deadline is 5 minutes earlier than it actually is,
and you'll never have problems.

~~~
userbinator
I've been an instructor for CS courses before so I know what you mean. I never
made deadlines anything but absolutely final, which is appropriately not
unlike a lot of other things in life --- from what I've heard from others, any
leniency just tends to cause more whining. Someone who waits until the last
second to do something is not going to do any better if given a tiny bit more
time (nevermind the question of how much more?), and in any case
procrastination is not a habit we want to encourage.

~~~
defen
How about having the student’s score decay as some function of how late they
turn it in? If they turn it in before the deadline, they get 100% of their
marked grade, if it’s an hour late 90%, a day late 50%, etc (use whatever
function you want)

~~~
knzhou
Usually, delays lead to logistical difficulties. Until every copy of an
assignment is submitted, you can't release solutions, assign grades, talk
about the problems in lectures or recitations, or really give any feedback
whatsoever. I've had excellent courses that ran on your system, but in those
cases they had it completely standardized from year to year, and even
automated grading systems.

~~~
lonelappde
This issue only comes up if you have a low caliber class where homework is
nontrivial part of the grade.

~~~
knzhou
My graduate classes were 100% homework-based almost without exception. When
you're doing hard enough physics, it doesn't make sense to demand people do
anything nontrivial in an hour, like in a typical exam. Real problems take at
least whole days of thought.

------
ryzvonusef
""Several students said they didn’t mind a system designed to keep them
honest. But one of them, a freshman athlete at Temple University who asked to
speak anonymously to avoid team punishment, said the SpotterEDU app has become
a nightmare, marking him absent when he’s sitting in class and marking him
late when he’s on time.

He said he squandered several of his early lectures trying to convince the app
he was present, toggling his settings in desperation as professors needled him
to put the phone away. He then had to defend himself to campus staff members,
who believed the data more than him.""

This is downside of tech, false positive and negatives

Also, couldn't you just buy a cheap burner phone and hand it to a friend to
take to class for you? Just because the phone is there doesn't mean the person
is.

~~~
Nasrudith
Lets not blame tech, the root cause is the administrators are douchebags.
Tracking because they can is their fault. Adding control because they can is
their fault. Not doing their testing of their unneeded system? Not being
responsive at the tech support level? All their fault. They neither need nor
deserve the excuses and allowing them that rhetorical shield has only harmful
results.

~~~
jahmed
I work in higher ed. I wouldn't say admin are douchebags, they are just under
pressure and responding with a solution. For various reasons schools are under
pressure to increase student success which is measured by retention,
persistence, graduation rates among others. These systems help "teach to the
test" if you will. They are pitched in slick presentations with complex
statistics with dubious claims to non-technical staff who are poorly versed
but like many high-level managers, smarter than their own good.

These systems are often pitched as turnkey solutions with very little input
from the people on the ground who are expected to support and triage incidents
in a system where training is thin if it even exists.

If, before you send your kids off to college, you look at college rankings
then you're just as culpable in the use of these metric boosting systems.

~~~
cbsmith
In fairness though, thinking by enforcing attendance you improve outcomes is a
misreading of the data. Sure, when students attend classes, they tend to do
better... _when the choice to attend is without consequences_. Once you make
it mandatory, there's a good chance it will cease to be an effective predictor
of outcomes, and it may even negatively harm outcomes (classrooms behave
differently when attendance is mandated).

~~~
asdff
I think this is something that is understood by a lot of people at
universities, but the overlap between these people and the people writing
checks is slim.

~~~
cbsmith
Presumably it's the people writing checks _at universities_ that are making
the decisions though.

------
ken
> “They want those points,” he said. “They know I’m watching and acting on it.
> So, behaviorally, they change.”

I can't tell if he realizes that his students find electronically-tracked
attendance points more valuable than his lectures.

That sounds like a fundamental problem. You can lead a horse to water, and all
that. Are these students paying attention in class? Are they getting better
grades? If they're showing up to lecture but playing on their phones or
reading other books, you've accomplished exactly nothing.

The only justification I can imagine is that it's an intro class for freshmen,
and so maybe they're trying to ease students into an environment (i.e., the
real world) where they have the freedom to do whatever they want, even if it's
bad for them. Do they stop requiring this system for upperclass students? They
doesn't say, but it doesn't sound like it.

------
JumpCrisscross
> _The dream of some administrators is a university where every student is a
> model student, adhering to disciplined patterns of behavior that are
> intimately quantified, surveilled and analyzed_

An appropriate dream for a college administrator. But a travesty for creators,
entrepreneurs and groundbreaking scientists.

I’d be curious. Would these same administrators object to their timeliness
being similarly measured? Quantified coffee-break time theft, for example,
could be deducted from pay cheques.

~~~
isthis1984
I've observed there are a class of people that desire to keep everyone else
under control. There seems to be no other reason than it makes them feel
better, the fact that some people are not under control makes them feel
uneasy. These people seem to be inserting themselves everywhere, IT is a
bonanza for these people. Anyone know any psychology researching this? It's
something that's been irritating me more and more since I've noticed it.

~~~
userbinator
It's called authoritarianism.

~~~
isthis1984
Thanks, @droithomme's comment put me onto that to, I didn't realise it was
classed as a personality type not just a form of government.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Authoritarian_Personalit...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Authoritarian_Personality)
this irritates me even more that its been known since the 50's and we still
put up with it.

The book is here [https://smile.amazon.com/Authoritarian-Personality-
Theodor-A...](https://smile.amazon.com/Authoritarian-Personality-Theodor-
Adorno/dp/1788731646/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+authoritarian+personality&qid=1577312193&sr=8-1)
the comments are an interesting study alone.

~~~
marcoperaza
> _this irritates me even more that its been known since the 50 's and we
> still put up with it._

Throwing a label on it doesn’t make it a bad thing. Authority can be a gift.
It helps people thrive by giving them the motivation to live up to their
potential. If everyone just let everyone else do whatever they wanted, humans
wouldn’t have gotten very far. Of course, freedom to choose does a lot of good
too. There is a balance to be had.

~~~
isthis1984
Certainly, but is that discipline you mean? Discipline is a good thing in
general, but this isn't discipline - its imposed conformance.

------
dpflan
> “We’re reinforcing this sense of powerlessness … when we could be asking
> harder questions, like: Why are we creating institutions where students
> don’t want to show up?”

This is a great rebuttal. The tracking app of focus, SpotterEDU, was made to
target student athletes and reduce truancy. But the founder has an odd history
and this just smells of a money grab under the guise of helping students. The
professors who lay laurels on the application because attendance is up need to
assess performance of their classrooms with the app and those from the past
without it to really make a statement.

~~~
joe_the_user
In the early 80s at several large universities I knew of, it wasn't uncommon
for attendance at lectures to be effectively optional. The student was
expected to do the homework, pass the midterm and final and maybe participate
in discussions in a small section with a TA or graduate student.

This varied from class to class, of course. Still, this was an incentive for a
given professor to make their lecture interesting and useful enough that
students wanted to attend.

------
sebasmurphy
Not sure if this is still the case or not but at Maryland circa. 2007-2010 it
was school policy that no class could have attendance factored into the grade.
If you wanted to skip every class and only show up for exams, that was your
choice. Privacy implications aside, I feel that this should be the case
everywhere since college is effectively a business transaction. What you
decide to do with the product after you've paid should be entirely up to you.

~~~
jdkee
I teach in political science and I require regular attendance as part of one's
grade. Miss more than a few classes absent a compelling excuse and you are
docked a half letter grade.

Why?

My classes are typically small, under 15 students, and are heavily discussion
dependent. Engendering open discussion between students, as opposed to top-
down lecturing, has resulted in keeping students engaged and actively learning
in class. If a handful of people decide to skip a class that impacts both
their learning outcome as well as it deprives their attending classmates
additional and varied perspectives of the issues under discussion. Hence the
incentive to attend.

Yes, these are all adults who are engaged in a "business" transaction with the
college to be formally educated. However, the students have the opportunity to
review the syllabus in advance and the class participation requirement is
clearly stated.

~~~
elfexec
> Miss more than a few classes absent a compelling excuse and you are docked a
> half letter grade.

Why not give a half letter grade boost to those with good attendance rather
than docking a half letter grade to someone who misses a few classes? Why not
incentivize with a reward rather than a penalty? The carrot rather than the
stick?

> However, the students have the opportunity to review the syllabus in advance
> and the class participation requirement is clearly stated.

That's fine if only you require attendance and most other professors don't and
if your class isn't one of the mandatory classes. But if every professor
requires attendance or if your class is mandatory, then students really have
no choice when it comes to attendance.

~~~
seditiousseals
If the class is easy, then the half letter grade won't matter much and nearly
everyone will get high scores, rendering attendance useless. If the class is
curved, then boosting those that attend is functionally the same as penalizing
those that do not.

~~~
SauciestGNU
Classes shouldn't be easy. I had the privilege as an American of studying at a
university abroad that used the English system of marks, where a top grade
began at 75%, and that was difficult to attain. The quality of education I
received there was exemplary, and the grades were not inflated, at least not
to the extent I've seen at American universities.

------
vector_spaces
I'm 32 years old, going back to school part time to finish up my degree. I'm
paying tuition fully out of pocket. Thankfully my school doesn't seem to be
doing this yet, but if they did, there's absolutely no way I would tolerate
them surveilling me and treating me like a child like this

I'm paying _them_ , so if I choose to skip class that's on me. And thanks but
no thanks for trying to assess my mental health -- I already pay people who
are actually qualified to do that for me.

Also, why is it that in articles like this they can always find someone
willing to say "this isn't invasive, I have nothing to hide"? Christ.

~~~
bitwize
It's not so bad:
[https://dilbert.com/strip/1994-02-27](https://dilbert.com/strip/1994-02-27)

------
hackworks
Schools and colleges should ideally be a place for creativity, free thinkers
and open by default.

Using surveillance and improving attendance through fear tactics is not going
to help. You will get their physical presence but not their involvement.

I wonder how long it will take for students to start placing check Bluetooth
devices in all places they are expected to be present and remotely switch them
at desired times. I hope this happens and defeats this unethical forced
surveillance by colleges.

Alternatively, I would encourage student counselors spend a little more time
with students and assist them to monitor themselves. Motivate the youngsters
to better regulate themselves and grow up to be independent and responsible
adults.

Note: On Android, there is an app named Tasker. You can automate your phone
with it. Schools could start maintaining shared Tasker profiles that can help
students stick to some well defined and commonly followed routines. This is
giving control back to the student and coaching them about the merits in
planning and sticking to plans.

------
mindfulhack
Due to what we know of history, universities who deploy this type of system
will clearly not be the melting pots of tomorrow's leaders, geniuses, and
world changers. Neither do I see how this helps a university's bottom line. To
me this seems only like a university-killing move, by forcing many talented
folks to non-campus ways of learning - or other institutions that respect
diversity.

~~~
DreamScatter
Yep, I am already a non-academic mathematics researcher. Pursuing the degree
and putting up with the toxic university environment is not worth it.

------
esotericn
Weird.

My university didn't care if you attended lectures. Why would they? It's not a
prison camp.

More focused tutorials with 1 on 2 or 1 on 4, sure.

Not everything needs to 'scale'.

~~~
_vertigo
In my experience it varied from professor to professor. Many professors would
notice when you don't attend lecture, which I found to be impressive given the
size of some of the classes. I found that some professors were more likely to
be lenient or accommodating if they recognized you as a frequent and engaged
attender, or if you went to office hours or asked insightful questions during
lecture.

On the other hand, there were classes I didn't attend very often at all, and I
remember a couple of times being stumped on the homework and going to office
hours to gain some traction only to be gently ribbed for not going to lecture.
You get the sense that many professors do pay attention to that kind of thing
and it does factor in, if only unconsciously.

------
Wowfunhappy
...so does this mean that if you buy a Librem 5, you'll be automatically
considered absent and will recieve a lower grade? I can't imagine the apps
these colleges are using would be compatible.

I realize this might seem like a lower concern compared to everything else,
but it strikes me as one more way that people are permanently locked into the
major platforms.

------
catchmeifyoucan
> "calculate personalized risk scores”

Seems like they're trying to predict social outcomes. Red flag.

Also seems the technology behind this is a BLE Beacon - would be hillarious if
someone dropped a rasperrby pi in the class in some corner that kept making
web requests on your behalf the entire year.

Attending class is a choice - and that decision is best left up to the
student.

------
jupp0r
Maybe Jeff Rubin should spend his time improving the quality of his lectures
instead of strong arming his students into attendance. From my own college
days I remember the really good lectures being mostly full while the bad ones
were deserted and people rather spent their time self studying textbooks
(which is also fine).

------
jccalhoun
What if a student doesn't have a smart phone (yes they do exist). If they did
this at the university I teach at, I would resist using this and there might
be some "accidents" with these beacons.

------
drewg123
I find it telling that they are afraid of letting students know what their
bluetooth receivers look like. I know that if I was in still school and being
tracked like this, I'd ether vandalize or come up with a way to jam those
receivers..

~~~
jahmed
I think you answered your own question and I'd be right there with you.

------
Khaine
It is no wonder, that young people are growing up with more authoritarian
beliefs. All through their life, into early adulthood, a greater power is
monitoring and controlling what they do. They then expect the government to
have the same power over citizens.

Treating people like babies, results in people acting like babies. Treating
people with respect and autonomy like adults, makes adults.

------
WalterBright
> the schools rely on networks of Bluetooth transmitters and wireless access
> points to piece together students’ movements from dorm to desk. One company
> that uses school WiFi networks to monitor movements says it gathers 6,000
> location data points per student every day.

I already turned off the bluetooth on my phone. I guess I should turn off the
wifi when I'm not home, too.

~~~
sansnomme
Unless they are doing deep packet inspection or analyzing your browser through
a wifi login portal, I think an iPhone's MAC randomization should be able to
defeat WiFi-based tracking (barring WiFi-as-radar, those are much more
difficult to evade, there is a ton of metadata you can collect from stuff like
breathing, gait and heart rate etc. Cross reference with CCTV to prevent false
positives.).

~~~
novok
If you are 'logged in' into a wifi network, then MAC address randomization is
turned off for that network and the iPhone gives the real MAC address of the
device. It's only used in non connected scenarios such as scanning for
available networks.

Another bad thing is how iBeacon bluetooth is something you can't turn off
specifically on an iPhone if you have bluetooth on in any capacity. And there
is no per app privacy permission to turn off ibeacon processing. It's a huge
privacy violation and I always wonder why it's not brought up that much.

~~~
sansnomme
Oh that's terrible, I also thought the randomization is constantly on. Is this
the case for Android and the desktop operating systems too? Windows, OS X,
Ubuntu etc.?

~~~
jldugger
Your connection with the AP is bound to a particular MAC. You could randomize
it per AP, but you can't like, randomize the MAC for every packet.

~~~
sansnomme
Yes but you can randomize every time you connect to the AP.

------
ineedasername
Speaking from the Devil's Advocate side, as I work in Higher Education
analytics:

First: this data is, by the vast majority of institutions, used very
respectfully in terms of privacy rights and it is ABSOLUTELY never sold. Third
part vendors that provide hosted systems are REQUIRED to affirm that they pass
nothing on to any other party whatsoever. (I should note that this is the case
in public and traditional private non-profit schools. For-profit schools are
much less scrupulous and should not be regarded as trustworthy in this
respect)

Beyond this, students are apprised of these uses of data with the ability to
opt out. This is done as upfront as we can, very "in your face", though the
tendency to click "agree" to something without reading, even very short and to
the point, is of course always an issue.

Finally, the data collected is _extremely_ useful. I cannot emphasize that
enough. It is extremely useful _in helping students be more successful_. And
it's not used in terms of surveillance. It's used pretty much exclusive in
understanding the patterns the coincide with success and those that coincide
with failure, dropout, academic struggling, and so on. In short, it is used to
proactively intervene with students at risk rather than wait for it to be too
late, e.g., final grades are in and no tutoring intervention is possible. A
recent use had me using Xgboost to examine patterns of LMS usage to determine
students at risk of early drop out. It worked, and we can now identify about
one third of early drop outs with practically no effort and almost no false
positives and work with those students to address there problems before they
go too far.

I'm sure privacy maximalists will not be satisfied with the above, but really,
within the realm of data comprehensive I idividual data collection, I'm not
aware of any business, much less an entire industry, that treats such data as
responsibly as this, and that really is concerned with using it only to
further the best interests of it's constituents. Obviously I'm biased. That
probably means things are not as rosy as I envision. But I think it is
nonetheless an important and valid synopsis of the issue.

~~~
cmcd
Just because the institution does not use the data irresponsibly doesn't mean
the service provider will not. Not to mention third parties which could
potentially gain access to this data directly or indirectly by listening for
the check in signal devices send.

Per the article, this is not being used to help the students succeed, instead
it is being used to damage their grade for a lack of attendance. I think most
reasonable people would agree attendance is not a reliable metric by which to
base a students grade. The exception being discussion based or interactive
courses like debate or public speaking.

~~~
ineedasername
We have extremely stringent security checklists for 3rd part vendors, as I
alluded to in my post. Both the vendors, and any of the vendor's vendors, must
be able to demonstrate that data is not used for any purpose but the school's.
As for attendance, automated attendance tracking has been around for decades
in the form of swipe cards, and simply automated a process professors
undertook manually. No data is captured that would not have been in the analog
world, and professors are still free to have no attendance policies at all
schools I have spoken to about it. Granted, that may only be a sample size of
100 or so.

------
quantified
Caltech and other top-tier schools (MIT, Princeton, Berkeley, Chicago, etc.)
won't have the problems this was described as addressing, namely students who
are at the school but don't care about getting the education. It makes sense
that "student-athletes" were the original targets- having a majority focus on
sports instead of scholastics has been a real problem in schools with strong
NCAA men's programs.

There's another background problem here: young adults being given the
assumption that they need to install someone else's nanny on their own phone.
In the work world, if your employer needs you to use an app on a device, they
need to pay for the device- there is no way they can force you to spend your
own money on their business requirements. (Unless your employment contract
says you need to maintain a smartphone or similar, I've never seen that
though.) I have a feeling that carrying school apps on your phone will erode
that understanding.

And this app sounds like a nice hacking target. I won't elaborate any doubts
about the app security or the backend service security, let's just see what
happens.

Very likely, the schools that are prone to having the problems will institute
this more and add more institutional conformity while the schools that aren't
won't. The students that go to these institutions will assume more background
surveillance while the students to go to better schools will be free of it.

If I were back in school I'd probably just give up the attendance points. But
I didn't go to a school that was likely to use this

------
motohagiography
Real question is, what are we educating people to be?

~~~
savolai
This, so much. I was a developer in the Moodle community once. I was several
times puzzled by how deep the interest of teachers was to just get to control
students, regardless of whether it seemed to serve any apparent learning
goal/purpose.

------
anigbrowl
Also if you don't carry your phone with you everywhere, you're going to
penalized for that. Hmm.

------
montjoy
This is so ripe for abuse. I would not want my daughter going to a school that
implemented such a program.

------
x100100
Disgusting that an IT "professor" forces students to install spyware on their
own hardware.

Students should unite and collectively uninstall the malware.

~~~
sverige
Now, now, don't get too frisky there or these same people might get the idea
to uninstall the spyware put on their phones by the manufacturer, the carrier,
the OS provider, and the app devs. Then where would we end up? [/s]

------
AlphaWeaver
Just wanted to chime in here- I'm an undergraduate student at a major state
university in the US, but I've also built a (small) start-up in edtech.

I condemn schools that are using techniques like Bluetooth beacons to track
attendance, but I can say it's definitely not the norm.

The vast majority of schools use pure software solutions (apps like Top Hat)
to track attendance (if they choose to do so.) These typically function by
having a randomly generated code that the professor writes on the board at the
start of class, and students then have to enter into their apps.

It's not the best, and I generally don't agree with tracking attendance in
college courses, but it's certainly less invasive than the system described in
the article.

~~~
mzs
What if the student does not have a cellphone?

------
janstice
The uni I work for is about to introduce this, but we're leading with
transparency - everything the system sees is on a student-facing dashboard,
and there's the opportunity to opt out. And we're targeting engagement rather
than attendance - use of the LMS, watching videos, etc rather than basic
attendance.

And we have had vendors attempting to get us to look at video-based attendance
and attention trackers. This is a privacy nightmare so we have always said no,
but as we are keen to get a handle on room usage and efficiency, we
investigated using the existing cameras used for lecture capture to count the
backs of heads - in this case how many is more interesting than who.

------
clubm8
The problem is many classes don't require attendance, especially the sort
obsessed with making sure athletes are present as mentioned.

This is about forcing compliance.

The REAL issue is people unprepared for college come, do not attend lectures,
fail out, and complain.

Conversely, students who understand that a class is rote memorization and put
in the memorization at a time of their choosing after reviewing the powerpoint
are penalized if they have physical/mental/social issues that sometimes
prevent them from being attentive at a specific time in a specific place.

If instructors want to complain about grade grubbing and cheating, they need
to focus on teaching, not measuring compliance.

------
TurkishPoptart
One way to resolve this is to pay vigilante students to remove and destroy
these unwanted tracking devices.

>The launch was so sudden that some students were alarmed to see an unknown
man enter their classroom, stick a small device near their desks, and walk
away. The student newspaper, the Daily Tar Heel, reported on “an individual”
entering class to install a “tracking device” and filed for school records
related to the SpotterEDU contract.

This can be undone.

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Accacin
So I don't even see the point in taking attendance (and as far as I remember
at my university in the UK lecturers didn't even take attendence), but if you
_do_ , what's wrong with taking a register at the beginning? It's probably
cheaper, less error prone and the teach can use their discretion if a student
is a little late to class because of ~reasons~.

~~~
saagarjha
For large classes, it’d take a while, and students would show up and leave
halfway through.

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edflsafoiewq
What happens if you don't own a smart phone?

~~~
kart23
You probably just don't get those attendance points?

~~~
drdeadringer
... and then your grades suffer because you don't have a smartphone?

Or what am I missing?

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sys_64738
What's wrong with an attendance sheet?

~~~
t34543
Why does attendance matter?

~~~
astura
That's where you learn the material?

Beyond that most of my anthropology classes (I minored in anthropology) had
class discussion as part of the grade. I even had one professor who had us
move the desks into a big circle as we entered (and put them back as we were
leaving) in order to better facilitate discussion.

Also you'd have to be there to hand in previous assignments and get new
assignments. Most of my classes (in all classes) had assignments due either
every day or at least most days.

You'd also have to be there to hear about changes in the schedule. If you only
show up for tests and the day of the test changes you'd need to know.

Plus pop quizzes. They aren't used much in college, but I think I had one or
two.

~~~
blihp
Attendance is irrelevant to most of your points:

1) Some can learn the material without attending. If they don't learn it,
their grade will reflect that.

2) If one is present but doesn't participate, how does taking attendance help
reflect that? (This is just a lazy prof/TA as they really should be noting
participation, rather than attendance, if it's relevant to grading for a
course)

3) If your assignment(s) don't get handed in, they don't get handed in and
your grade will reflect that.

4) If you don't attend and show up on the right day for tests etc, your grade
will reflect that.

5) If you're not there for a pop quiz, your grade will reflect that.

Taking attendance is a weak mechanism at best to address any of these issues.
One of the things that college _should_ be doing is preparing people for the
real world where they won't have paid babysitters. Classes are proxies for
meetings etc. where you may, or may not, show up but are responsible for the
content covered either way. Taking attendance just reinforces the view that
the students are still children.

~~~
sys_64738
How does one get the material without attending? Where I studied, the courses
were not simply following the course text as the course. Perhaps at lower tier
schools that’s all they do.

~~~
banads
Professors post slides and documents containing the lecture material online.
However, some professors would purposefully leave out key words out of the
slides to force you to come to class and fill to fill in the blanks

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TurkishPoptart
So now it seems like students are required to bring a smartphone with them on
their way to class. So, if they leave their phone at home, this ridiculous
system will mark them as "absent"? This is pure madness.

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mentos
Why are kids paying for school if they’re not going to class?

~~~
aratakareigen
I stay at home and read the lecture slides on my computer because it's easier
for me, and lets me be nocturnal. Am I really missing out on that much by not
being there?

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mjparrott
What if you don’t have a smart phone or if your phone dies? I know most people
have one ... but this makes it a requirement. Maybe it already was one?

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3xblah
What happens if the athlete gives their phone to someone else who will go to
class for them and take notes/record lectures.

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hooloovoo_zoo
How hard would it be to make a device that spoofs everyone's phone?

~~~
DailyHN
Not hard. No dedicated device required, either.

It requires reverse engineering which data in being transferred to the school.
This likely occurs using a simple HTTP request. Or series of requests. Copy
the data from that HTTP request. Then replicate those HTTP requests.

~~~
Ididntdothis
That works only if the app authors have no basic idea of security

~~~
nokya
Good news: that's very likely the case for the system described in the
article.

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sacman08
What a terrible turn to combat online schooling...

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whatsmyusername
Yeah that's incredibly creepy.

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Pete-Codes
Super creepy! Another reason to teach yourself or go to a bootcamp.

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droithomme
no paywall: [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/colleges-are-turning-
stude...](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/colleges-are-turning-students-
phones-into-surveillance-machines-tracking-the-locations-of-hundreds-of-
thousands/ar-BBYiX9M)

------
Bostonian
A large fraction of student borrowers are not repaying their loans, as
documented at [https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2019/10/who-
bo...](https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2019/10/who-borrows-for-
collegeand-who-repays.html) . In a private loan market, lenders would monitor
how students are doing in college when deciding what interest rates to charge
each semester or whether to make further loans at all. This would encourage
college students to attend class and work harder.

