Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education

David Noble spells out the meaning of the automation of higher education in terms of academic freedom, civic values, and the distortions of research, curriculum and tuition on campus. Noble knows more than anyone about the growing struggle by faculty and students in North America against these erosions. Digital Diploma Mills is a wake-up call to millions of teachers, students, and parents about the battle over an underpublicized but big assault on quality education and intellectual freedom.

—Ralph Nader

David Noble’s critique of technology has never been more forceful—or more usable for faculty—than in his writing on distance education. This collection of his ideas is a succinct and brilliantly pointed antidote to cyber hype. Most of all, its force derives from a passionate attachment to the notion of education as a vital human compact between individual, in-the-flesh students and teachers.

—Mary Burgan, General Secretary, American Association of University Professors

Digital Diploma Mills is essential reading for faculty union activists and others struggling to understand and combat the increasing corporatization of our universities. David Noble outlines the dismal future toward which higher education seems to be headed, but even more important, he eloquently reminds us of our obligation to forestall that future and to preserve the promise that genuine education entails.

—Susan Meisenhelder, President, California Faculty Association

David Noble has done it again. Digital Diploma Mills provides a penetrating analysis of how the marriage between new technologies and the corporate search for profits shapes what happens in the classrooms of higher learning. This is essential reading not only for those who care about the pursuit of truth in an autonomous academy, but for all who are concerned with the growing corporate encroachments in virtually every sphere of our existence.

—William E. Scheuerman, President, United University Professions

David Noble’s insightful book sounds a sobering warning. If digital education becomes just another fast-food commodity, students and teachers will lose, while higher education becomes further entrenched in corporate big business. Digital Diploma Mills should be required reading for educators and others interested in the brave new world of online education.

—Nicholas Baran, author and former technical editor, BYTE Magazine