Jamie Swift: How does this book connect with your previous work on the history of technology and the relationship between culture and technology?

David Noble: I've spent a lot of my career studying the automation of other industries and also the impulses behind that automation. And now "Digital Diploma Mills" is an examination of the industry I work in.

JS: How does what you call the "religion of technology" -- and more specifically the automation of education and the rise of on-line learning -- affect professors and students?

DN: There is no evidence of any pedagogical value for any of this. The economic viability, to the extent that it exist at all -- and that's questionable -- demands a dramatic reduction of labour costs. So the whole edifice of so-called on-line learning rests on the rather frail backs of indentured servants, part time and adjunct faculty who are paid next to nothing. The first chapter of the book is a history of correspondence education in the twentieth century. We're now seeing a repeat of an enterprise that was based on minimizing instructor costs. All the money went into advertising and promotion.

Today the technical foundation is not the post office but fibre optic networks and so on. The investment in infrastructure is enormous. In the book I call it a "technological tapeworm" that exists in the guts of higher education. The tapeworm must be fed -- maintained, serviced, and upgraded. The costs of actually producing courses is much more expensive than had been anticipated, exactly the same as with correspondence courses.

JS: Who will pay those costs?

DN: They try to get the customers to pay. But there's a problem because there aren't many customers. Just as there was little evidence of pedagogical value with correspondence courses, there was also little demand. The impulse behind today's initiatives was that, for a while, there was the expectation of big dollars to be made. That bubble has burst. What we're left with is massive infrastructure like the Technology Enhanced Learning building at York. In addition to that infrastructure there is a cadre of careerists who have staked their careers on this boondoggle. They are doing everything they can to keep the thing afloat. The names change. Before technology enhanced learning there was on line learning. Before that there was distance learning.

The implications for students are horrendous. Tapeworms deplete the energy and health of the host. In this case, there's a real toll on the educational function of the university. At York a hundred million dollars are going into the Technology Enhanced Learning building where one floor is leased to corporations. Meanwhile a ten per cent cut is being imposed on everything else. Class sizes are increasing. Staffing is being cut. Curriculum and course offerings are being eliminated. Adjuncts are replacing full time faculty.

JS: How does this affect the tuition and the higher costs that we hear so much about?

DN: As an historian, I've found it interesting. You rarely get things to line up so neatly. In the US in 1980 the Bayh-Dole Amendment to the Patent Act gave universities automatic ownership of all patents on federally funded research. That turned the universities into patent holding companies. Peddlers of intellectual property. Universities began building commercial labs and hiring expensive researchers to the impoverishment of the rest of the university. In the US tuition began to outpace inflation in 1980.

In Canada the same thing happened in 1990 through a fiat -- like a papal bull -- from Ottawa. Patents that had reverted to the Crown became property of the university. In 1990 tuition started to outpace inflation in Canada in 1990. The moral of the story is that, through higher tuition, students have been subsidizing the commercialization of the university. They are paying more but their money is being used to underwrite the very thing that is destroying education. Students are paying more for less. Class sizes increase, teacher-student ratios go down.

JS: What is the relationship between this tendency and the increased branding of university facilities?

DN: The surface manifestation of this is advertising in washrooms and putting the name of rich men on buildings. I don't want to minimize that. But in my view a far more significant phenomenon is the fundamental restructuring of the institutions, a redefinition of the institutions and a reallocation of resources.

JS: How had this affected the fragmentation of university life?

DN: We see two universities now. The impoverished university that poor students can't afford to attend. The rich university on the same campus. At York there's $75 million for the new school of business, $50 million for a new computer science building, $100 million for the technology enhanced learning building.

JS: What about the controversy over you appointment at Simon Fraser University?

DN: Talk about branding! This is the Woodsworth chair, named after the founder of Canada's social democratic party. The chair is endowed by moneys from unions. The job description is for a person to teach in the humanities and to engage in social activism, justice, and peace in the spirit of J.S. Woodsworth. But to the extent that someone meets these requirements, they are increasingly unacceptable in academia.

JS: So you can enter the Real World. You can develop relations with private firms that might want to buy the products of your research. But if you enter another part of the Real World -- as the Woodsworth chair requires -- then it's a different thing?

DN: It's straight politics. The president at SFU was the vice-president at York during the faculty strike of 1997. Simon Fraser is one of the flagship enterprises for online learning. They do not want me there. The humanities department recruited me. I didn't apply for this job. They approached me. They voted to give me the job. And even before their nomination went forward to the dean, the vice-president emailed the president who emailed back -- and I have all these documents -- saying that he had already talked to the dean and that he would "avoid this appointment like the plague." So whose universities are these?

JS: Indeed, whose are they?

DN: They should belong to the people. They should be a reliable repository of disinterested inquiry. And to use a rather quaint word, the truth.

JS: But have they ever been that? Or is this simply part of an ongoing struggle that ebbs and flows with the political current of the time?

DN: The latter. Things have been getting pretty difficult. Because of the corporatization, it's not just who is on the board of governors. Entire institutions have been saturated with commercialization.