Free Internet on Campus: How Much Access Restriction is Necessary - Essay Example

Free Internet on Campus: How much access restriction is necessary? The development and technology and the discovery and invention of the internet has made the world of communication and especially information passing quite explosive in terms of capacity and ability. Nowadays, people all over the world can communicate with each other in just a single click of a button and within microseconds (Altbach, Gumport & Berdahl, 67). In the advent acquisition of knowledge by students especially in the institutions of higher learning, the role played by the internet can not be in any way overemphasized. We have seen the growth of a college generation that slowly hates visiting the hardcopy libraries while spending a lot of time dipping their time into internet resources in their line of studying. This is however faced with restriction challenges, as is within most colleges, despite it being one of the easiest way for the students to learn. Interestingly, the internet avails to the students, resources that advance their understanding of the knowledge acquired in class as to some extent, the students are able to even access instructions from global instructors who may even be more elaborate that the class lectures they have (Altbach, Gumport & Berdahl, 80). This is however curtailed to some extent by institution reinforced policies on internet usage and selective access of sites. Some colleges restrict internet access to as far as the access of resources on the institutions reservoirs and databases alone, which in a way narrows the possibilities of learning for these students. In modern colleges students are allowed access to free internet on campus only to be proxied out on which internet sites to visit. The problem is, the internet is technically supposed to be a free world and so should be the access of it. Different students will have different insights that are important for their own motivation and personal growth which makes it unfair when they are locked out of the actual sites that may motivate them. The college administration should therefore set up a bundling mechanism that allocates internet usage accounts to the students to moderate on how much bandwidth they use but not lock them out of any site. In lieu to the same ideologies, recent developments have seen quite a number of education commissions and associations come together to create and give authority to institutions to prohibit service providers in the blocking access of lawful content on the web, limiting access speeds or implementing paid prioritization within their premises. At the same time some other colleges even restrict access to their own resource repositories for students’ access or offer free and open access but at very limited speeds. The internet as a platform for higher learning, interaction and collaboration is supposed to be enormously available for access and use by all the institution community with capacities such as open learning, and generally research that requires the access to huge data, in an open access manner for the legitimate students especially while on the campus premises. As opposed to the above however, most colleges and institutions of higher learning are not willing to pay the high capacity internet connections in support of their students needs and instead limit the access to such huge content over their internet despite the students having sufficiently paid for these services. Considerate of the current digital age, the use of technology has become central to the development of economic progress which is fostered through education and hence such restrictions are only a hindrance to the fulfillment of the higher education’s mission of enlightening and provoking innovation. An open internet is therefore critical to research and teaching and as a matter of fact, restricting its access in way limits the very entities that lead to the development of the internet. In response to this concern, the institution’s central administration is supposed to devise and design approaches to ensuring the access of this internet is open for all students and free to a level considerate of their financial contribution towards the development of such. It is quite awful in some institutional cases when students are restricted to even access social networks over the internet. This greatly interferes with the liberality of the use of the internet and especially for research purposes. One of the main approaches the institutions can use to ensure this access but in a way that protects their spending is by creating student access accounts. Most institutions have applied this approach but only to offer the students a further restricted access to some sites on the internet. What is supposed to happen in this case is; the students are supposed to be given access accounts respective to each of them but with free and open access to any resource or any site they may need on the internet, but with a limited bandwidth usage common to each account. By this, the implication is, the students will be aware of how much bandwidth they have for use in a day and will make effective use of it, but the decision of which sites to visit shall rely on them and their specific needs (Campus technology, 29). If the institution sets for instance that every student is entitled a 500Mb data usage over the campus internet every day, the student will be aware and will decide how to use such bandwidth during their connection to the internet. What this approach introduces is the use of metrics in the use of internet per each student instead of generally blocking all students away from other sites to the expenses of the online behaviors of some other students. By this, each student shall take responsibility of their own use of the internet while on campus and chances are high that the connection speeds will never be affected as the connections will be in self moderation. A twist of the same could be applied in the sense that once the students logged into their accounts, they are offered a certain amount of bandwidth to connect to any site after whose exhaustion, they can only use the limited access option. These approaches are in ideal sense aimed at ensuring open and free access of these resources but in a manner that is not financially straining to the institution (Jones, 58). Or rather, if the government authorities can sponsor internet connections within these campuses of higher learning, then the connections can be made exclusively free. Important to note is that the above suggestions to addressing the internet access limitations issues at institutions of higher learning are just but a few of the demonstrated ways through which the institutions can use to promote education and research alongside innovation through the internet while at the same time operating within a considerate connection budget (Jones, 119). The idea to give the students what is worth of their contribution to the development of information technology infrastructures in the institutions. Fact is, if the above regulations are applied, there are very high chances not all students will even have time to connect to the internet to use to full capacity their daily bundles which leaves a lot of room for consideration of other mechanisms and protocols to ensure the access of such resources is even bettered. The IT administrators will however need to further look into the possibilities of the above suggested solutions within the specific institution polices and regulations on use of technology, before the mechanism can be applied. Works Cited Altbach, Philip G, Patricia J. Gumport, and Robert O. Berdahl. American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. Print. Campus Technology. Chatsworth, CA:101 Communications, 2004. Print. Jones, Barbara M. Protecting Intellectual Freedom in Your Academic Library. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2009. Internet resource. Zheng, Yushuo. Whither China's Democracy: Democratization in China Since the Tiananmen Incident. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 2011. Print. Read More