Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education

Alexander D. Gregor is director of the Centre for Higher Education
Research and Development at the University of Manitoba and coeditor of
Postsecondary Education in Canada: The Cultural Agenda.

David Noble, an academic specialist in the social history of technology
with extensive experience in both the Canadian and the American
settings, is a vocal critic of what he regards as the
“commercialization and corporatization” of higher education as it
moves increasingly to the use of technology in the delivery of
university programs. Digital Diploma Mills is based on a series of
Noble’s articles. More journalistic than academic in tone and
substance (there are, for example, no references or footnotes), the book
makes some convincing arguments that the use of technology changes
fundamentally the nature of teaching and learning, affecting students
and faculty alike. Drawing on the examples of York University and UCLA
in particular, Noble examines the commercial possibilities of the
technological delivery of programs and the negative consequences for
education when this form of delivery is seen by administrators as a
source of needed revenue and by private concerns as a source of profit.
His book provides students, academics, administrators, corporations,
government, and the citizens with an informed and comprehensive, if
somewhat polemical, overview of the forces that are changing the
character and mandate of the university.