Iowa MFA Program to GooglePrint Theses

[sleigh]

The University of Iowa, which boasts one of the best-regarded graduate Creative Writing programs, has decided that they are going to make all their theses publicly available: in essence, publishing them. "At the center of the conflict is a routine form that students and their faculty advisers sign for depositing students' theses with the Graduate College. Language added to the form this semester says that the University of Iowa Library will scan hard-copy theses and "make them open-access documents," which it defines as freely available over the Internet and retrievable "via search engines such as Google." It is not clear who authorized that clause."

This has all the departments that produce creative work as their theses -- fiction writers, creative non-fiction writers, playwrights, translators, etc. -- up in arms, since typically the students in these programs will try to market their work for publication afterward. Having their work already available to anyone via a Google search may well mean that publishers will have far less interest in publishing them.

In order to graduate, all students must sign the form permitting their theses to be placed online.

There's now an online controversy raging over this decision, and various departments at Iowa are pointing fingers at each other. It does appear that there's a lot of miscommunication in this. At the moment, it seems the university library may have driven the change, since digitizing the theses and making them available via the web allows them to free up the space reserved for holding theses.

Even more interesting in this little controversy is language that says the library will not only do this with current theses, but will go back and scan all previous theses as well -- when those students have signed nothing. According to the Huffington Post article on this, : "Despite internal pressure from students, staff and faculty to change the language, the Graduate College won't budge."

It'll be interesting to see where this goes, and to see whether other universities will try to pull the same stunt...

Comments

That's the issue

[(Anonymous)]

That is a major issue. Four current students are standing against this and refusing to sign the document. They have been told that if it isn't signed by the first week of April, they will not be allowed to graduate. It is my understanding that an agreement to begin study at a university is a contract binding the student to a predetermined number of tasks in order to receive the degree... by changing those guidelines, they would be in breach of that contract (hence the reason for the form). But they are forcing them to sign. To get the inside scoop from a current Iowa student wrapped up in this controversy, you can click below.

http://sethabramson.blogspot.com/2008/03/university-of-iowas-open-access-debacle.html

-Adam B.

Re: That's the issue

[sethb.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. Some changes in requirements are reasonable and acceptable. I don't think this one is; there's no argument that it makes the student more qualified (as would be, say, adding "basic knowledge of string theory" to the requirements for a physics Ph.D.).