Higher education institutions are leaning too much on commercial tech companies, warns The Young Academy. This puts the core values of science at risk. In a manifesto, the society calls for a radical change of direction.
Lecture at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. (Photo: Sam Rentmeester)
Technology has become an integral part of higher education: students, researchers and administrative staff are increasingly using digital platforms. But the digital infrastructure of higher education institutions is often outsourced to companies. This entails quite some risks, warns The Young Academy. This society of relatively young top scientists therefore calls for a “fundamental change in direction”.
These tech companies collect personal and other data, and it isn’t always clear where these end up exactly. Students are also regularly required to share their personal data when using education and examination software.
Losing grip
As institutions often outsource the development and management of digital systems, they risk losing grip. They have too little in-house technological knowledge and are therefore unable to intervene when something goes wrong. This makes them vulnerable for what’s known as a vendor lock-in: switching suppliers becomes almost impossible.
‘Educational institutions have a duty of care to ensure a safe digital ecosystem for their staff and students’
This goes against the core values of science, such as autonomy, responsibility, and academic freedom, The Young Academy believes. According to the society, educational institutions have a duty of care “to ensure a safe digital ecosystem for their staff and students”.
Ethical
The Young Academy therefore advises education institutions to pay less attention to cost and ease of use when choosing ICT applications, but mainly consider the ethical consequences. “Individual freedom, the right to privacy, and the long-term autonomy of academic institutions” should take centre stage. Institutions need to cooperate more and be transparent when it comes to important decisions.
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The manifesto also warns against the use and development of AI technologies. When training AI models, it’s often not clear what data is used to feed the model and how this works. The Young Academy is therefore calling for clear rules.
Open letter
The Young Academy isn’t the only one worried about the rise of AI: last week saw the publication of an open letter calling on higher education to be critical in adopting AI technologies. This has now been signed around 500 times, by teachers, researchers, professors and the like.
They are concerned about students’ critical thinking skills, but also about “the values of ecological sustainability, human dignity, pedagogical safeguarding, data privacy, scientific integrity, and democracy”.
HOP, Naomi Bergshoeff
Translation: Taalcentrum-VU
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