Is sharing caring? Examining the concept of information privilege.

Kirsty Sheppard
Sep 3, 2018 · 11 min read

In my first post for OKHE1, I admitted that I hadn’t really heard of ‘openness’ in higher education before I started OKHE. It seems that I have really got into the spirit of sharing (after all, that is the theme of the course!) and have another confession for my second blog post. When I initially considered openness within higher education, I actually wondered whether it was really fair because of the huge fees which students must now pay for their degrees. Shouldn’t we get what we pay for? Does openness devalue a degree? Therefore, in this post I want to examine the concept of information privilege, which I was first introduced to through Char Booth’s blog post.

Image chosen as metaphor for information privilege — no known restrictions. “A black-and-white shot of a woman putting a finger over her lips in a gesture of silence” by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

Sarah Hare’s article defines information privilege as: ‘the affordance or opportunity to access information that others cannot’. In the majority of literature I have researched on this subject, information privilege refers to limited access to journal articles for large institutions. This is because so many journals have traditionally been hidden behind a paywall that they have not been easily accessible to the majority of people. However, I would argue that the majority of students on the majority of degree course will have access to ‘privileged’ information. As this blog post explains, ‘ students are often at their lifetime’s peak of information access [but] many of them are simply not aware of the privilege of their position’. This is mostly due to their unrestricted access to many journals and books but they are also privy to seminars and lectures from their teachers at university which, in the past, others were not able to access. Char Booth believes:

‘At their best, libraries are an institutional form of social justice that equalize information availability and provide safe public space for learning and doing. At their worst, they perpetuate inequities and apportion resources among the intellectually sanctioned.’

I would argue that in the above quote, ‘library’ could potentially be swapped for ‘university’. In my blog post I would like to examine whether universities can be equally guilty of perpetuating inequities through information privilege and whether openness can go some way to level out these inequities.

‘Climbing over’ the paywall

Firstly, I want to take a more detailed look at Char Booth’s experiences of information privilege. Her blog post describes a researcher who would not have been able to complete a fundamental piece of work if it were not for the kindness of friends/colleagues providing him with access to journal articles that he needed to assist with his efforts. As I mentioned in my own first blog post, open access for more publications would make my job much easier by lessening the number of emails that come into my inbox asking how students can access certain articles! The programme I work on (the Global MBA) is expensive even when compared to the cost of undergraduate degrees so I think that many students are quite surprised that they do not have unlimited access to the journals that they would like to use for their work. The UoM library website does explain that they provide access for students to thousands of electronic and print journals — but inevitably that does not cover every single article that a student may need to access. The journal subscriptions are also extremely expensive, which is why people such as the researcher Char Booth mentions are so often priced out. ‘Librarians and scholars frequently complain that large commercial journal publishers use their monopoly power to charge inflated subscription prices’ (Bergstrom et. al, 2014).

Journals remain ‘locked’ behind a paywall and login screens — no known restrictions. “Shallow focus photography of love lock” by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

Aside from the very high prices that journals charge to keep information as a privilege, often even those who do have access via their institution struggle to find what they may need due to frustrating series of log in screens. This is particularly the case when off campus — which for many researchers is evidently the norm as they may need to travel for their work! For example, even when researching for this very blog post, I found an article on this website entitled: Making journals accessible front & back: examining open journal systems at CSU Northridge. I thought it seemed applicable to my research, only to find that an article focussing on journal accessibility…was behind a paywall. Somewhat ironic, to say the least. I may have been able to sources the same article elsewhere, but I wasn’t willing to waste my time doing so. This article even claims that the time researchers waste trying to access articles that they need:

‘is a tax on human progress and on the development and dissemination of new scholarly knowledge. By estimating the average amount of time wasted by researchers trying to gain access to a single article, [he has] calculated that research output equivalent to around 11,500 academics is lost each year.’

Surely if this is the case, information privilege in the way that Char Booth describes could be having a much wider impact on society, never mind just for students or researchers? If information was not limited in such a way, could it be possible that we could find cures for illnesses more quickly or could those who may not be able to afford ‘traditional’ education gain knowledge? It could even be possible that important scientific breakthroughs are being hampered because publishers are keeping journals behind paywalls that some people may never be able to access! Clearly this is the huge inequity.

Student privileges

But what about higher education institutions — do they also perpetuate inequities? As I mentioned in my introduction, my first thoughts about openness were: students are paying upwards of £9000 a year for their degrees now. Surely it is therefore unfair for their tutors and lecturers to be sharing their valuable knowledge for free for anyone to be able to access? Shouldn’t £9000 provide paying students with exclusive access to those lectures, seminars and journal articles? This would certainly mean that information (for whichever degree programme each individual undertakes) remains a privilege for those few rather than making it accessible for many. When I was a student myself, I am pretty sure I would have been annoyed at the thought of others having access to materials that I believed I was paying a huge premium for and therefore felt I should have ‘privileged’ access to.

Instead, as this UNESCO report explains, many university teachers are choosing to create open access (OA) materials which are freely available to the public for reading and reviewing. For example, the University of Manchester supports the principles of OA and provides detailed information for how researchers can share their work on their website. Lecturers and researchers may also choose to share open educational resources (OERS) such as course materials, textbooks or online lectures which are also openly available with no need for royalties or licence fees. Of course, as Wiley and Hilton explain,

‘many struggle to understand why there are those who would take the time and effort to craft educational materials only to give them away without capturing any monetary value from their work.’

However, the introduction of these resources, which are accessible for all, are making a start towards information for the many (the public) rather than the few who are lucky enough to be able to afford a university education. From a purely financial point of view, according to The Guardian, the increase in fees has actually cost the taxpayer money so maybe it is fair for them to have equal access to many resources that the students can utilise. Although finances should not be a barrier to university in this day and age, the fact remains that ‘the cost of going to university is more of an obstacle than lack of ability among state school pupils likely to skip higher education’.

For the few, not the many?

Of course, my ideas about tuition fees and therefore privileged information for fee paying students would not apply in every country or even every institution. For example, in Germany there are actually no fees for universities. The author of this blog post on the Times Higher Education website believes that the most valuable commodity that Germany has are the ‘educated minds of it’s citizens’ and therefore believes that the introduction of tuition fees would be a disaster. If we do treat information as a commodity and it is therefore privileged, Germany is not proving itself to be a particularly good businessman! However, it could be seen to be doing a much better job than England at levelling out inequities by removing the financial barriers to accessing higher education. Germany are even making some progress with regards to paywall journal access — at the end of 2017, publishers Elsevier granted uninterrupted access to its paywalled journals for researchers at around 200 German universities and research institutes that had refused to renew their individual subscriptions.

There is also a move towards completely ‘mass high quality education for the world’ through the introduction of sites such as Khan Academy and more recently Udacity. Udacity in particular aims to remove the concept of information as a privilege. Their mission statement is:

‘to democratize education through the offering of world-class higher education opportunities that are accessible, flexible, and economical. Virtually anyone on the planet with an internet connection and a commitment to self-empowerment through learning can come to Udacity’.

Internet penetration by region — no known restrictions. https://wearesocial.com/us/blog/2018/01/global-digital-report-2018

Of course, one key point does remain that internet access is required in order to start levelling out the inequities of information privilege via universities. As the image illustrates, there are many regions across the world (particularly the global south) which still have limited numbers of people who have internet access. However, as this blog illustrates, even this is beginning to change:

  • Internet users in Africa are up by more than 20 percent year-on-year
  • More than two-thirds of the world’s population now has a mobile, with most people now using a smartphone

Wiley and Hilton believe:

‘Open access to teaching and learning materials significantly empowers individuals who are not affiliated with formal educational programs and levels the playing field across competing institutions. These two occurrences — the empowering and leveling — portend significant changes in the structure and practice of higher education’.

It seems to me that as open access is largely dependent upon internet access, as more and more people do gain access to the internet the level field may continue to gradually level out and information privilege as a result of universities will become less common.

Excluded communities

The UNESCO report that I previously referred to also explains that ‘higher educational institutions were traditionally built on the principles of scarcity and closure’ which I suppose is similar to my original thoughts about information as a privilege directly for paying students only. I think that even now, despite a concentrated effort from many universities (for example see the University of Manchester’s widening participation report here), many people do still hold the opinion that universities are for the few rather than the many. As well as the issue of internet access that I have already explored, Lane (2009) explains in his article about a significant educational divide that exists, especially for higher education. Certain societal groups or communities may be excluded from current educational provision for a variety of reasons. His list of potentially excluded communities is quite extensive but several stood out to me:

‘Cultural norms, with some ethnic cultures not supporting the education of women in particular circumstances, for instance (Khokhar, 2008);

Individual or household income, where the relative cost of accessing higher education by certain groups is very high;

Individual norms, where a person is constrained by social and cultural norms — attitudes and beliefs — that they are not capable or not good enough to study at this level, as may be the case with older people (Martin, 2009).’

Based on this comprehensive list, it seems that information privilege goes further than I initially thought and is not only related to an individual’s financial situation or even their ability to access the internet. There could be much more to it than just being able to afford to be able to undertake a degree. Inevitably, those who are unable to access higher education because they may be ‘too old’ or even just because they are female are unlikely to be able to access those journals behind the paywall. However, openness is contributing to these marginalised groups being able to access traditionally privileged information because it is readily available for them to find online, provided they can access an internet-enabled device.

Concluding thoughts

Image chosen as a metaphor for unclear conclusion — no known restrctions. “forest covered by fog” by Eidy Bambang-Sunaryo on Unsplash

I do not feel that I am able to offer a concrete solution to the complex issue of information privilege. To sum up my findings:

  • In order to access OA materials, which aim to stop information being a privilege for the few, internet access is usually needed. Not everyone across the world has internet access — this is unlikely to change anytime soon. Therefore true openness remains a while away and information privilege will remain a common concept.
  • Although openness can go a long way with regards to levelling the playing field for information privilege, it is likely that if publishing companies can get away with charging high prices, they will continue to do so and some journals will remain inaccessible for some. We can continue to hope that Germany’s ‘win’ against Elsevier will set a precedent for future paywall collapses. Until then those who cannot afford to access the journals hidden behind paywalls may well have to rely on the generosity of friends.

However, on a more positive note:

  • Internet access is improving quite rapidly. Traditionally marginalised groups such as older individuals or women whose families may disapprove of traditional higher education may be able to access information that, prior to openness, would not have been available to them at all.

To finalise, I would also argue that even if all of the educational resources from every university programme was available online (as, for example, MIT has done), this would still not devalue a degree. This was one of my original reservations about openness. Having researched extensively, I now believe that you could read a lecture or journal article online an infinite amount of times but still never fully grasp it in quite the same way as if you attend a lecture and have the opportunity to engage live with the teacher.

Perhaps even if universities and libraries go out of their way to remove inequities with openness, this can never be fully achieved if someone has not been able to fully immerse themselves in the university experience. If this is the case then the main issue here in the UK really remains that of university fees. Countries such as Germany are making headway to removing the inequities of information privilege by not having any fees at all — is it time for us to do the same and truly take steps to become open? However, this would still leave those marginalised communities excluded from the privileged information that universities provide as they may not be willing or able to attend traditional university. It makes me feel a little frustrated that I cannot come up with a ‘right’ answer, even hypothetically, where information would not be a privilege.

I set out to understand whether openness can alleviate some of those issues that information privilege can cause. I now believe the answer is both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Unless higher education is free, accessible and available to every person across the world, I do not think this will change.

Kirsty Sheppard

Written by

Student Support and Events Administrator for the Global MBA Programme (distance learning)

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