Stealing Ideas

My University had many lecture theatres spread across several campuses, of these only a few actually required the use of ID cards to gain entry.  In my first year of University I sat in one of these lecture theatres, surrounded by over 200 other students and listened to my lecturers speaking for hours at a time.  It occurred to me whilst sitting listening that there was no attendance taken for lectures, no roll call, no verification or validation of who you were or what course you were studying.

On more than one occasion I attended lectures for my friends' courses since it was easier than arranging to meet up later.  I live in the UK, and at the time that I studied at University, tuition fees for home students [UK and EEA nationals] were set at £3,000 a year [$6,000 at the time] and for overseas students they were £12,000 [$24,000 at the time] a year.  This did lead me to a rather bizarre conclusion, one that seemed somewhat ludicrous in my mind, that namely, you could technically steal education.

You can argue how much of the tuition fees would be attributed to the lectures themselves versus the tutorial sessions - the latter did have attendance records.  Nevertheless, those lectures formed part of the education for which we all paid.  Tuition fees in the UK have since tripled and I know my University now charges £9,250 per year for home students [$11,300] and £16,000 a year [$21,000] for overseas students.  I have visited my University since graduation and the campus that I used still does not require ID cards to access the majority of the lecture theatres except the smaller ones which was always the case.

To this day you could "steal" education quite easily from my University.  If you were there from the start of the academic year people probably wouldn't even know you were not a student by the end of the year they would be familiar with your face.

I really do find the idea that you can steal something that is immaterial to be quite bizarre.  It's one thing to steal through online piracy things which you can't see or touch etc but those all represent things which could be packaged and delivered via alternative means.  Education however is the exchange of ideas, concepts, and understanding.  To think that you can steal an idea is somewhat perplexing.  When you think of stealing ideas, the notions that abound are those of patents and copyright and other corporate and commercial procedures aimed at preventing others from copying your products.

The University could reduce the risk of this happening by putting barriers at each entrance that require the use of ID cards - which do exist elsewhere on the campus for private use buildings and for areas where valuable equipment among other things are kept.  That still wouldn't stop people from attending lectures that weren't part of their course - like I did, although to be fair I didn't follow any that I attended as you needed an understanding of the subject matter and I had none.

There is a debate to be had as to whether education should be free, for me personally I believe it should, but I also believe that most Universities need to earn money somehow and public funding alone wouldn't deliver the standard of education that is needed.  I think like the healthcare system in the UK there should be two tiers, one provided through public funding that anyone can access freely and a separate one where people can pay if they choose then everyone gets a choice and can use whichever system they want to use.  However I do also believe education in general needs radical reform not just in the UK but worldwide.  In every country that I have read about in regards to education, that which is mandatory is essentially glorified daycare mixed with varying levels of discipline that are quite prison-like at times.  Education should actually be about teaching and learning rather than holding onto something long enough to repeat it to pass an exam.  Can I remember a single thing those lectures taught that I attended?  No.  I didn't learn a thing from them, you can argue that is because they were not part of my actual course but then that leads to the same question with the lectures I was supposed to attend, how much of their content can I still remember, the answer is very little.  If I had to resit my exams today I would fail my degree entirely.