Title
Heads in the Clouds? Measuring Universities' Migration to Public Clouds: Implications for Privacy & Academic Freedom
Author
Fiebig, T. (Max Planck Institut für Informatik)
Gürses, F.S. (TU Delft Organisation & Governance) 
Hernandez Ganan, C. (TU Delft Organisation & Governance)
Kotkamp, E.
Kuipers, F.A. (TU Delft Networked Systems)
Lindorfer, Martina
Prisse, M.M.G.C. (TU Delft Technology, Policy and Management)
Sari, P.T.
Faculty
Technology, Policy and Management
Date
2023
Abstract
With the emergence of remote education and work in universi- ties due to COVID-19, the ‘zoomification’ of higher education, i.e., the migration of universities to the clouds, reached the public dis- course. Ongoing discussions reason about how this shift will take control over students’ data away from universities, and may ulti- mately harm the privacy of researchers and students alike. How- ever, there has been no comprehensive measurement of universi- ties’ use of public clouds and reliance on Software-as-a-Service of- ferings to assess how far this migration has already progressed.
We perform a longitudinal study of the migration to public clouds among universities in the U.S. and Europe, as well as institutions listed in the Times Higher Education (THE) Top100 between Jan- uary 2015 and October 2022. We find that cloud adoption differs between countries, with one cluster (Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland) showing a limited move to clouds, while the other (U.S., U.K., the Netherlands, THE Top100) frequently outsources universities’ core functions and services—starting long before the COVID-19 pandemic. We attribute this clustering to several socio- economic factors in the respective countries, including the general culture of higher education and the administrative paradigm taken towards running universities. We then analyze and interpret our results, finding that the implications reach beyond individuals’ pri- vacy towards questions of academic independence and integrity.
Subject
Platformization
Platform Capitalism
Centralization
EdTech
To reference this document use:
http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:0ec76542-e939-475a-8f04-ebb35fc73f3b
DOI
https://doi.org/10.56553/popets-2023-0044
Source
Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium
Event
23rd Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, 2023-07-10 → 2023-07-15, Lausanne, Switzerland
Part of collection
Institutional Repository
Document type
book chapter
Rights
© 2023 T. Fiebig, F.S. Gürses, C. Hernandez Ganan, E. Kotkamp, F.A. Kuipers, Martina Lindorfer, M.M.G.C. Prisse, P.T. Sari