Gusterson's premise suggests individual professor would be paid for the work. That only holds true if they are doing the work outside their university position otherwise the university (as employer) would get paid for the work.

Actually, the work of research is an expected core duty of a professorial position, but the remuneration for such work goes to the professor, not the institution; this arrangement - quite standard across most if not all research universities - reflects the traditional interconnectness and distinctions among an academic's main duties: research, teaching, and service. As a research university, AU, for example, claims copyright for any and all teaching materials I produce, like courses. But I retain copyright in and I get the payments (if any are forthcoming) for any and all research I produce, like articles or books. Academic culture recognizes that research and teaching are vitally linked and mutually constitutive, but the modern university recognizes that copyright and royalties provide strong incentives to produce excellent research and retain excellent researchers.

I understand that is the current situation. I maintain that the current relationship exists because the outside compensation professors recieved is more like a bonus that supports a positive university work environment than base compensation. if there was signficant monetary compensatiion (eg. Billable which should generate hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for each professor) as is an implied by what Gusterson's suggests then I expect the relationship between a professor and the university would change to something much more like that in a for-profit employer and employee. My personal opinion is that would be a bad thing both for the faculty and for society in that amount of money would destroy academic culture and sharing.

So sum up my perspective. I believe the answer in this case of to certain entities in a process (eg. publishers) profiteering is not to increas and distribute the profits among all entities (eg. professors, universities, publishiners) but rather to decrease the financial incentive. Which is why I believe Open Access is better. It supports a culture of sharing while not eliminating the possibility of monetary bonuses for the professors.

Agreed; billable hours are decidedly not the answer. I've edited my prior comment to play down the importance of royalties for academic authors; anarguably stronger incentive - idealistic as it may sound - is the open dissemination of knowledge as a public good in its own right. Hence Open Access, yes. This open access ideal gains new force and urgency under a government regime that is systematically undermining and destroying what Janine Brodie calls Canadians' "social literacy" in a program of "manufacturing ignorance" (30). 

See: 

Brodie, Janine. "Manufacturing ignorance: Harper, the census, social inequality." Canada Watch Spring 2011. 30-31. http://robarts.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/03/CW_Spring2011.pdf

---. "On courage, social justice, and policymaking." Rabble.ca 16 Sept. 2012. http://rabble.ca/news/2011/09/courage-social-justice-and-policy-making

Well, that's pretty darn nifty! :)

So, the contract specifies time expectations.  When assignments take longer than the contract states to be reviewed and returned to the student, what is the student to do but pay for extensions?  It seems like this contract is a one way street? 

- Susan Annau

The university has a policy on learning support like that provided by tutors for teaching activities like replying to emails and marking assignments: http://www2.athabascau.ca/students/servicestandards.php#academic

If you find that it takes your tutor or instructor longer than the time specified in this policy (which should also be considered an integral part of the learning contract), you should notify both the instructor in question and the Learning Services coordinator, whose contact info is given in this policy.

The contract is thus still a two-way street.

I doubt that as you stated the “proverbial fine point” is something many students think about.  

 A few years ago, as a college computer applications teacher, the campus manager asked that I included an overview on Plagiarism, and, throughout the semester reinforce the importance of citations.  I can only speculate as to why, but over  one third of the students did not seem bothered by not citing or including the URL’s  for their Word and Excel final exams.

 Student’s and their contract is similar to people who do not carry comprehensive insurance on the contents of their homes.  Until it becomes an issue that directly affects them, they are either unaware, do not take the time to find out the implications of breech of contract (being uninsured) or do not care.  For the latter, not much can be done; for most people a brief explanation and link will help them understand that it is a contract and comes with consequences.

I’ve seen a lot of Moodles.  I can’t resist a new Moodle link, to see the theme, the apparent activity on the front page and the various courses that are available (even though they might be closed).  Checking out a new Moodle always gives me new ideas for posts, and how to design my own Moodle sites or courses <a href="http://learningtreeconsulting.com/">Moodle Consulting</a>.

- Christian

Thanks for sharing this! The Coursera clause about pornography is especially worrying -- it would be very hard to offer feminist or queer education without eventually needing to discuss sexual representation. And of course, that cuts off particular kinds of political participation in the educational space in the process -- ones that have traditionally made visible and critiqued the boundaries between public and private which, among other things, allow corporations to operate the way they do. There is a vested economic interest in maintaining conservative social values, or supposedly "family friendly" environments, beyond just making sure the sexually squeamish will still buy what you're selling.

But then again -- Coursera explicitly bans "partisan" politics. I can't imagine that is aimed at anything besides the student movement. So it's not like it's a secret that privatization is anti-democratic. I guess that could become a marketing problem: how to further turn the university and its products into private goods, when anti-privatization activists have proved themselves such savvy users of the "quasi-public sphere" created in an environment like Coursera?

I cringe every time I read something like "Coursera, and indeed online, distance education generally, ceases to understand education as a process of learning and interprets it as one of accumulation." Being at AU, of course I know there is a difference between distance education and private universities, even if they often overlap. But there is a whiff of privatization to plenty of what I see happening at AU -- ideas for call centre teaching, the branding project, even the attitudes expressed about censorship recently. (At least AU's acceptance of the university as a brand doesn't objectify students in service of corporate employers as repulsively as some other institutions' ad campaigns.)

I'm curious about how this would go down at AU: the university has been very openly critical of copyright deals that turn public wealth into privately paid-for commodities. And the copyright-related clauses in Coursera's ToS seem to be at odds with AU's efforts to expand the creative commons (unless I am misunderstanding what AU is doing about copyright, which is possible). But would the instituion sign with Coursera or similar, as U of T did, in the name of branding? Or to support OERs? I'm really curious to know how these debates are being taken up within AU. 

I see neither a place for Coursera at AU, nor its welcome by faculty, particularly with Rory McGreal as UNESCO OER chair. I like to think (and I hope I'm right in doing so, and that others will back me up) that we're as dedicated to genuine and accessible OER, not simulated and expensive OER, as we are to balanced and responsible copyright. Coursera seems more like a product pitched to traditional universities for prefabricating ornamental, "brand"-oriented, non-accredited pseudo-curriculum that can get them placed in iTunes U, than a product that would hold any interest for an institution that has been building accredited and transferable curriculum for decades.

It was an excellent article. Did you read a little futher to the 'What's a Monkey to Do in Tampa?' story in the Sunday Magazine? It was gold.