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I've been rough on ASU in the past and I don't want to get ahead of the reporting, which is unfolding, but this is looking sketchy. azcentral.com/story/news/loc…
I'm sympathetic to the situation ASU finds itself in with a state legislature completely uninterested in funding public higher ed institutions. The "new American university" model is a mechanism for survival.
But the new American university model requires a monetization of everything, including the students themselves, often without their knowledge and their fully informed consent. Other institutions could easily have the kinds of agreements discussed in the article.
None of these things are predicated on superior instruction or funneling money so it will benefit students (by say shrinking classes or using fewer adjuncts). Everything is about bottom line revenue. If there is a way to use students to raise revenue, it is taken.
In a lot of ways ASU is simply the best at playing the game according to the rules (or non-rules). For this they are widely admired and sought to be imitated by other institutions. (See UMass and their goal to build a massive all-online university.)
But as they say, don't hate the player, hate the game. Every time one of these stories leaks out we have to ask what's going on that incentivizes these kinds of programs and decisions?
ASU admins aren't Snidely Whiplash villains, so when these actions are taken, I'm certain they have a rationale that seems valid. If we don't like the world in which their rationales wind up exploiting students, we need to change that world.
You know how Facebook is about to pay a $5 billion fine for violating user privacy? Who is thinking about these issues in regard to what ASU is apparently doing here? Student behavior is being gathered as data and monetized an students are paying for the privilege.
