Felten on Penn State Server Ban

Ed Felten has posted his thoughts on the Penn State server ban I mentioned here and here. As usually, he hits the nail on the head both pedagogically and technically:

This is a wrongheaded policy that undermines the basic educational mission of the university. As educators, we're teaching our students to create, analyze, and disseminate ideas. We like nothing more than to see our students disseminating their ideas; and network servers are the greatest idea-disseminating technology ever invented. Keeping that technology away from our students is the last thing we should be doing.

The policy is especially harmful to computer science students, who would otherwise gain hands-on experience by managing their own computer systems. For example, it's much easier to teach a student about email, and email security, if she has run an email server herself. At Penn State, that can't happen.

The policy also seems to ignore some basic technical facts. Servers are a standard feature of computer systems, and most operating systems, including Windows, come with servers built in and turned on by default. Many homework assignments in computer science courses (including courses I teach) involve writing or running servers.