WHAT IS most college students' equivalent to the Holy Grail? No, it's not a bottomless keg. It's not edible dining hall food. It's not even knowledge. Actually, it's anything that gives them an opportunity to slack off while still getting decent grades.
Last year, students on this quest might have thought their search had ended with the advent of Versity.com. The online service paid students at colleges across the country to write up summaries of their notes for lectures, which Versity.com would then post online. The service made it easy for students to skip classes without fearing any consequences, because they could just get notes for lectures they missed online.
No longer, however: Versity.com went under recently due to lack of profits. Students who used it may be lamenting its demise, but they should realize that, in the end, Versity.com and sites like it aren't good for anyone.
For students, online notes are enticing. Knowing that they have a source for notes in case they miss a lecture or just don't feel like getting up for an early class can definitely give them peace of mind. There's a problem, however, when students get too laid back about attending class and decide that they'll just stop going altogether. They may figure they'll just get the notes online for the lectures they've missed when exams come around. This is not a bright idea. Procrastination, powerful temptress though she is, is really not anyone's friend.
If students spend the entire semester losing their daily battle with the lure of the snooze button and end up attending very few lectures, they will get very little out of the class. Instead of learning gradually, lecture by lecture, and getting the full experience of the professor's presentation, they'll try to decipher notes and cram them into their brains when exams come, ensuring that they won't really learn anything at all.
Relying on online notes and skipping lectures also means students aren't getting what they paid for - or, more accurately, what their parents paid for, with their tuition. College students are just glorified consumers, and professors' lectures are the product they pay for. Sleeping through them and getting a shoddy substitute is like sleeping through any other service you pay for, like a Beastie Boys concert, and getting a list of the songs they played instead of the experience itself.
Besides the fact that online note taking sites enable uber-slacking, there's also the fact that supporting sites likes these is wrong, because they are based on a form of stealing. When students get paid for summarizing their professors' lectures, they are profiting off work that is not their own.
Professors spend years doing research and preparing original material to present in their lectures. Professors' lectures are their intellectual property, and students redistributing it and profiting off it are stealing that property.
Online note companies make sure their services are not technically illegal. Legally, the companies are in the clear because copyright laws usually apply only to works in a fixed form, so professors' spoken lectures are not necessarily protected by copyright laws.
Ethically, however, selling notes to these companies and supporting them through visiting their sites is clearly wrong. Profiting off professors' work signals a lack of respect for them and the time they put into research and preparation. It also undermines the University's community of trust, which is standing on shaky legs in the first place.
It could also lead to longer term negative consequences. If University students get in the habit of using online notes, the school becomes a less attractive place for professors. Professors will have little incentive to put time and effort into lectures if their work is just going to be published by others. Also, they will not feel teaching at the University if a lot of students are relying on online notes and note even bothering to come to class.
A university is only as good as its professors. If the good professors leave, the quality of the institution will decline, and the quality of a University degree declines along with it.
Though Versity.com has disappeared, there still are plenty of sites like it, such as studentu.com and allstudents.com, that have notes from University classes on them.
Some other institutions have policies to deter students from selling notes to online companies. Harvard University students who sell lecture notes to online companies may be asked to withdraw. Iowa State University recently prohibited students from selling notes to companies like Versity.com without first getting permission from the professor of the class. Students caught selling notes without permission could face expulsion. The University should set up some consequences for students who sell notes to online note taking sites, so that Versity.com will not be the last one to disappear.
(Laura Sahramaa's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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