Three-quarters of all learning data of Dutch students are stored in a cloud service from Microsoft or Amazon. This is according to research by TU Delft, the Max-Planck-Institute and the Vienna University of Technology.
Tobias Fiebig, Seda Gürses and Martina Lindorfer studied the cloud usage of universities in different countries as of 2015. The title of the study is: Heads in the Clouds: Measuring the Implications of Universities Migrating to Public Clouds (1). Dutch universities appear to be more likely to choose public cloud providers. In contrast, German and French educational institutions use proprietary solutions. In 2015, only a quarter of Dutch student data was in the cloud. This has since risen to 75 percent. This concerns study results and personal data as well as research data and digital teaching systems.
"Universities need to make informed decisions about the software companies they partner with. Technical, financial and managerial dependencies can change the way education is taught. That worries me," Gürses told TU Delft's journalism platform Delta. According to her, there is a risk that universities will pass on students' and researchers' data to the tech industry: "It also means driving our students into the arms of the technology giants. They will not become familiar with other systems."
The Universities of the Netherlands (UNL) have revealed that academic values are enshrined in contracts with tech companies. However, researcher Fiebig thinks this is naive: "The tech companies are basically saying: we promise not to take advantage of you, as long as you get into a position where you can't refuse if we do." He adds that the money Dutch universities spend on American tech giants can also be used to develop solutions of their own.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.09462.pdf
