4 ms·

Many universities have this policy, but given that students have to pay (!) to enroll in a university it strikes me as odd that the university would then presum

• hyperbovine 12y ago
  "Control of all the work they produce" is an exaggeration. The University asserts copyright to the boilerplate code on which these assignments are based. Nobody claims to own your sophomore year English essays.
• bunderbunder 12y ago
  As a method of preventing plagiarism, it makes sense. Getting the copyright for the code into the university's possession gives them legal standing to do things like this. Ideally, of course, there'd be a process for getting exemptions - I know I would have been irate if my alma mater had claimed ownership of the year's worth of work I spent on my senior thesis project. But that's also code where the risk of plagiarism is relatively low-impact, what with it being specific to that particular project. Answers to problem sets, though? Pfft, let them have it. I never had a reason to look at any of it ever again, so the value of retaining ownership to me is virtually nil. Whereas the value of having even a slight incremental improvement in the protections universities use to help me not have to spend quite so much time worrying about whether the kids I'm looking at hiring might have cheated their way through college without ever picking up proper problem-solving skills? Priceless.
  • dalke 12y ago
    "Getting the copyright for the code into the university's possession" There is no copyright transfer agreement nor is this a work for hire. This case at UIUC appears to be a copyright issue related to school provided materials which were further modified by the students.