by ilex

Short-range phone sensors and campuswide WiFi networks are empowering colleges across the United States to track hundreds of thousands of students more precisely than ever before. Dozens of schools now use such technology to monitor students’ academic performance, analyze their conduct or assess their mental health.

If a tracking system can make students be better, one college adviser said, isn’t that a good thing?

School and company officials call location monitoring a powerful booster for student success: If they know more about where students are going, they argue, they can intervene before problems arise. But some schools go even further, using systems that calculate personalized “risk scores” based on factors such as whether the student is going to the library enough.

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.

I honestly hate colleges' obsession with forcing students into a predefined role that doesn't work for so many people. The more I teach the more conflicted I feel about all the students I can't reach. I wish I had a good answer for how things ought to be done, but I do think that forced attendance isn't it.