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Smart University

Student Surveillance in the Digital Age

Lindsay Weinberg

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How surveillance perpetuates long-standing injustices woven into the fabric of higher education.

Higher education increasingly relies on digital surveillance in the United States. Administrators, consulting firms, and education technology vendors are celebrating digital tools as a means of ushering in the age of "smart universities." By digitally monitoring and managing campus life, institutions can supposedly run their services more efficiently, strengthen the quality of higher education, and better prepare students for future roles in the digital economy. Yet in practice, these initiatives...

How surveillance perpetuates long-standing injustices woven into the fabric of higher education.

Higher education increasingly relies on digital surveillance in the United States. Administrators, consulting firms, and education technology vendors are celebrating digital tools as a means of ushering in the age of "smart universities." By digitally monitoring and managing campus life, institutions can supposedly run their services more efficiently, strengthen the quality of higher education, and better prepare students for future roles in the digital economy. Yet in practice, these initiatives often perpetuate austerity, structural racism, and privatization at public universities under the guise of solving higher education's most intractable problems.

In Smart University, Lindsay Weinberg evaluates how this latest era of tech solutions and systems in our schools impacts students' abilities to access opportunities and exercise autonomy on their campuses. Using historical and textual analysis of administrative discourses, university policies, conference proceedings, grant solicitations, news reports, tech industry marketing materials, and product demonstrations, Weinberg argues that these more recent transformations are best understood as part of a longer history of universities supporting the development of technologies that reproduce racial and economic injustice on their campuses and in their communities.

Aimed at anyone concerned with the future of surveillance on higher education, Smart University empowers readers with the knowledge, tools, and frameworks for contesting and reimagining the role of digital technology on university campuses.

Reviews

Reviews

The 'smart university' is a site of surveillance and austerity, and Weinberg's book underscores that the so-called innovations promised by new technologies have both undermined learning and accelerated inequality. An important corrective to the narratives of 'digital transformation.'

Smart University skillfully connects the history of universities to the range of technologies that exist to reinscribe and cement the discriminatory practices of these institutions. Its mix of timely examples and trenchant analysis provides a crucial account of the state of higher education, and importantly charts a path forward based in solidarity between students and professors.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
5
x
8
Pages
264
ISBN
9781421450018
Table of Contents

Acknowledgemnts
Introduction
1. The "Smart" University
2. Recruitment
3. Retention
4. Wellness
5. Security
6. (Beyond) Digital Literacy
Conclusion: Against the Smart University
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Author Bio
Lindsay Weinberg
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Lindsay Weinberg, PhD

Lindsay Weinberg (WEST LAFAYETTE, IN) is a clinical assistant professor and the Director of the Tech Justice Lab in the John Martinson Honors College at Purdue University.