An Australian University Will Use Students’ Phone Data To Track Attendance

Welcome to your latest dystopian nightmare, where an Australian university has admitted it will actually use the location data from students’ phones to track whether they are attending class.

No more sleeping through your 8ams at the University of Newcastle, I guess?

The university revealed it will be using location records as well as “any other information … including personally identifiable information” to track attendance.

Unsurprisingly students are not impressed at the thought of their university being able to track where they are — seeing as, you know, privacy breaches are super duper rare nowadays.

“We believe it’s a gross invasion of privacy on the part of the uni against the students and it points to a growing trend of the corporatisation of unis all around Australia,” the student union’s education officer Luka Harrison told the ABC.

At the University of Newcastle students must go to at least 80% of their classes to pass a course. Rather than signing a roll, students commencing in 2020 will have to check in on a mobile phone app. Geolocation services will then verify that they are actually in the classroom.

Students are able to opt-out of the program and instead manually sign in with the academic running the class.

The university’s Pro-Vice Chancellor Liz Burd said it would be used to identify students struggling academically so the university can support them.

The university will also be reviewing the program to make sure data is kept safe.

Well, if George Orwell, Black Mirror, and Silicon Valley have taught us anything it’s that privacy is dead anyway and it seems we should all get used to it.