Why are colleges banning the iPad?
April 29, 2010 by Geneva ReidPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Tech News
It’s light, portable and can handle e-books. So why are some schools banning the iPad? Here is what’s happening:
- Princeton University: The school is blocking 20% of iPads from its networks because of malfunctions that could hurt their entire computer system.
- George Washington University: The iPad — along with the iPhone and iPod Touch — is banned here because the devices can connect to the school’s wireless network and there are worries about security issues.
- Cornell University: The university’s concerned their network can’t handle too many added devices, and they fear overload.
- Other colleges don’t believe the iPad will be able to offer enough electronic texts — and even students who own the iPads will need to buy books for classes.
Clearly, this is not music to Apple’s ears (or wallet). The company has made no bones about the fact that it’s going after the higher ed market.
And it may be small comfort that some colleges — such as Seton Hill University in PA — will offer free iPads to incoming freshmen in the fall.
And even those students may have questions about their “free” iPads, since they’ll be hit with a $500 tech fee per semester.
Do you think these are hurdles the iPad will eventually overcome? Let us know your thoughts on the future of the iPad — and what your school’s doing — in the comments section below.
Editor’s note: When this article went to press, several credible sources had recently and specifically indicated that some colleges were rejecting or banning the iPad. (Take a look at these stories from The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor) As it turns out, reports of a complete prohibition were overstated. Here are the facts:
- Princeton: The school is blocking from its network some units that aren’t working.
- George Washington University: iPads don’t currently pass the school’s network security standards. They expect to solve the problem by summer.
- Cornell University: They’re having connectivity issues with the device, but there has not been a ban.
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Tags: George Washington, iPad, iPhone, iPod, iTouch, Princeton
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April 27th, 2010 at 8:54 am
Seton Hill is offering iPads to all full-time students, not just freshmen.
In addition, the tech fee supports a program that offers students a MacBook for two years, after which they turn it in and get a new MacBook that they take with them when they graduate. Returning students can opt out of the laptop plan, but still get the iPad, bringing the tech fee down to $300/semester.
http://www.setonhill.edu/techadvantage/
April 28th, 2010 at 11:02 am
IT departments only serve to stifle personal technology and creativity. You would think schools like Cornell and Princeton would find ways to harness the great potential of the Ipad instead of hindering student creativity by banning or limiting it or any other devices use. Ipads don’t kill networks, people do!
April 28th, 2010 at 11:15 am
And the true scoop on Princeton’s approach can be seen here. No mention of blocking 20% but rather a mention of those that don’t respond to the fix that is offered as potentially being blocked.
http://helpdesk.princeton.edu/outages/view.plx?ID=3095
April 28th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
I think you got your facts from the wrong sources:
There are some Ipads not working correctly at Princeton, which may be an Ipad os bug:
http://helpdesk.princeton.edu/outages/view.plx?ID=3095
George Washington has not banned the Ipad, but the Ipad will not work on their existing wireless network until summer:
http://it.gwu.edu/tnav/stayconnected/iPadQA/
Ipads are accepted at Cornell:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/April10/iPadConnect.html
Cnet also took the time to contact Princeton, Cornell and George Washington, and all allow Ipads, but there have been challenges:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20003513-37.html?tag=mncol;posts
April 28th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Any bans of the iPad are likely to be temporary. As a younger, and more mobile-tech-oriented, generation begins to move into decision making positions the institutions will change.
I’m sure there will be challenges, but the iPad and other tablets have the ability to transform higher ed. Tablets can lighten the load in back packs, reduce the volumes of paper that are turned into texts, open the doors to current information/resources and hopefully reduce some of the costs associated with getting a degree.
I’m already working on ways our program can embrace this technology to hold the line on costs and to prepare our students to be tomorrow’s leaders.
April 28th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Why are there security concerns about students accessing wifi networks with these Apple gadgets, but no concerns with regular laptops or other smartphones accessing them? Do hackers tend to use Apple products? Someone more “techy” than me, can you help me out?
April 28th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Clemson University embraces the iphone and ipad, are integrating it into their Computer Engineering and Computer Science programs, and support them through their CCIT department.
April 28th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
These sound like ramp-up problems, the sort of thing that occurs in the early days any new technology–barely news, and certainly not cause for alarm. These days, the rising expectations of tech-savvy students (i.e., customer demand) must drive campus IT decisions, not the other way around. Over time, universities learn to accomodate and leverage the technology that students bring to campus. The real challenge is to make such technology more widely available to all students who could benefit from it, regardless of family income.
April 28th, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Maybe this kind of thing is just a “they doth protest too much” orchestrated to get some free advertising for the ipad and iphone maker, Apple. It generates a lot of heat and publicity, and kind of a rebel image, in my opinion. I’m not accusing higheredmorning of this, but rather the memes being put out there that lead to an article like this. The fact checking done above made me wonder if it’s just a tempest in a teapot.
April 28th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Libertarian educator Says: “Why are there security concerns about students accessing wifi networks with these Apple gadgets, but no concerns with regular laptops or other smartphones accessing them?”
As explained by others the Princeton problem seems to be just a bug in the iPad. When you connect to a wifi, you are assigned an address from the pool of addresses. Since these connections are usually short (an hour or so), your system is expected to forget that address and request another after a period of time. If you do not, and that address is later assigned to someone else, the address stops working for both of you.
GW did not say it was unsafe, they just say they want to test it, as they apparently do with other devices. No reason not to test new devices (especially when other schools have flag them as *potentially* buggy).
Note that *if* this is an iPad bug, it will be trivial for Apple to fix.
April 28th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
As a Mac LAN administrator, its easy to see why this is happening. Contrary to what Apple claims, they have basically spit in the face of educational IT. Dropping support for what few Mac management tools there are and not making any effort towards developing new ones.
Then there is the issue of every update that comes out breaking what is working from the IT side of things and causing the Macs we have on campus to require right at 4 times as many man hours per computer as it does a PC. So much for, “It just works”.
April 28th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Wow, are these technical people making these decisions?
Princeton University – Can you comment on the problems your expecting to have? Had my iPad, Iphone and iPod on my personal wireless system at home and at my University and has worked perfectly, without effecting anyone else on the same wireless access point. You point was…
George Washington University – what device doesn’t have potential security problems? I guess you’ll ban personal notebooks and student desktops shortly too!?! Security is everyone’s responsibility, please tell your iPad, iPhone and iPod carrying students that they are more than welcome at my University!
Cornell University – sounds like you need a large tech budget and a new VP of IT…where do I pick up an application?
As for the ebooks, who has a huge market right now that this is a vast issue? I guess we’ll also stop students from purchasing Kindles, Sony eBook reader the new Nook,…
Wake up people! These are student’s in 2010, not 1930
April 28th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
Royce has it right. Macs are great, people want them, so we get them one, then when they can’t do something on a Mac, we buy them a PC to sit next to it, it’s much cheaper and easier than spending time and money on the Mac.
April 28th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
Actions speak louder than words. If students choose to attend the University that supports 21st century technology and to not attend schools that are behind the times they will get the message.
April 29th, 2010 at 10:13 am
Royce is %100 correct. Apple has ignored (and continues to ignore) the higher ed enterprise-level market unless you are willing to pay exorbitant amounts for ‘support’ of their ‘free’ applications. The fact that these apps ship in an unusable state (for example, the ‘free’ Podcast Producer app that ships with OS X Server lacks the ability for a user to delete a video–Apple states that ‘feature’ will be coming soon) means that you have to pay for the support unless you want your brand new Apple server to be worthless. Furthermore, virtualization is almost non-existant on Apple hardware (and not supported at all–Apple basically has fought it), so the OS is neither cost-effective nor environmentally conscious (though Apple loves to claim this when selling to its consumer demographic). Apple is smart–they know that consumers will force higher-ed IT to accomodate their devices if consumers (like TheZarrr above) demand they work, confident (thanks to Apple’s marketing blitz) that Apple’s products are perfect and ‘technical people’ should do whatever it takes to make them work. But that doesn’t really endear them to those of us that are burdened with the job of troubleshooting their half-baked software while being blamed by people that should be mad at Apple for their initially crappy product.
May 1st, 2010 at 2:11 pm
I think I would like to get a new ipad. I think that the touchpad stuff looks like it will be really fun to use.
May 1st, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Actually, Royce and others are 100% wrong. There are study after study (I could add my experiences as well) that show the tech support needs for Mac machines are a fraction of those with Windows. The cost is literally the same when you take into account TCO. As for the machines not working. Sorry, the track record there is also very clear. Macs simply have a small fraction of the crashes and other OS related problems that Windows has. I wonder if Royce is simply a Windows trained IT guy who has never taken the time to learn Mac OS properly. At our university, I pulled the data on tech support and Macs have required only 10% of the resource the Windows machines have. I have a colleague in my area that has had to have her Dell laptop re-ghosted 3 times in the last month alone.
May 3rd, 2010 at 10:28 am
A lot of what people are saying here is way off base. The job of an IT shop at a university is not to stifle innovation and creativity, we are here to provide a service and to make sure that our services work like utilities. The introduction of the iPad into some environments has caused problems, particularly since Apple released a product that does not operate according to defined industry standards. The DHCP client holds on to an IP lease long after the lease has expired, this is a Apple programming error. This error can cause IP address conflicts, which we have seen on a very limited basis at our institution. Imagine throwing 900 of these devices on a WLAN with other laptops, mobile phones, and netbooks; 900 iPads possibly creating IP conflicts with other devices would be a major disruption. Princeton was right to limits offending iPads; they need to ensure their network runs like a utility – always available and right at your fingertips.
The real problem here is Apple. They make great consumer devices, but have no vision or ability to execute on the enterprise level. I don’t want to even get started on Apple’s inability to adhere to enterprise level standards, that is a day-long discussion. Lets just say that I am never surprised when I hear of a network or wireless problem on a Apple product. Their wireless security stack is a mess and the 802.1x client has never worked correctly. Once Apple works out their bugs, I am sure that Universities will embrace the iPad with open arms. Until that time, just make sure you do your research before making outlandish claims about Universities and their IT departments.
May 5th, 2010 at 8:06 am
Wrong Dennis? I don’t think so. I’m Mac trained from the git go, 20 years plus. If your seeing Macs only requiring 10% of your resourses it because your still stuck in the dark ages on your PCs. The fact that you use Ghost for your PCs says it all.
May 5th, 2010 at 10:22 am
Royce…let me reiterate the main point of my post. There is a large amount of research out there from Gartner and other research firms that have looked at support costs and demands for Windows v. Macintosh. Two conclusions stand out. First, a Windows only environment has the highest total cost of ownership and support demands. Second, a mixed environment is the most efficient and drops those costs significantly. I wouldn’t say we are stuck in the dark ages with our PC’s but we do face the limitations that budget cuts have placed on IT. The overall track record is still the same…add Macintosh to the mix and support costs go down.
May 5th, 2010 at 10:50 am
@Royce,
It should’ve been obvious that Dennis doesn’t understand enterprise computing when he tried to quote statistical data using a sample size of n=2. It’s also a symptom of Apple’s ability to sway the consumer mindset by convincing people that Windows 7 is somehow still basically Windows 95. Remember the Vista user account control ads with secret service agents prompting you to ‘allow or deny’ everything? At the same time, OS X required you to TYPE A PASSWORD to confirm similar actions, but Apple got away with it because 1) they have good marketing and 2) it’s not worth Microsoft’s time to argue in the public sphere. They just went about building Windows 7 and listening to their customers.
Basically, to sum this up, I’m typing this message on a Mac because they make a mean laptop, but my user account is authenticated against Active Directory because I have a real job at an actual enterprise.
May 5th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Oh Royce, when you actually don’t have a rebuttal its so easy to pick at someone isn’t it? If you look at the statistical data I refer to the sampling size is in the thousands at multiple locations. And sample size doesn’t have anything to do with enterprise computing. It all comes down to understanding the platform strengths and weaknesses and making them work where they fit best. In higher education, the Macintosh fits best in education, fine arts, graphic design, science and math. Even our computer science people prefer to have both platforms available for students to work on since the Mac is essentially a unix box with an elegant UI over the top of it. Business departments still use Windows as does the administrative side of the house. We put the machines where they are capable of shining and where industry uses them. I think that is an understanding of enterprise computing in my field. Care to find any other nitpicky items to support your “argument”?
May 5th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
I have no doubt you can find many studies showing exactly what you want, no matter what your point of view. What I can say from this college’s perspective is Macs take right at 4 times as many man hours to manage as our PCs. This I’m sure is in part because of our advanced management tools for the PCs, that would be those tools that are not available for Macs.
We have a commitment here from the powers that be to keep our IT cutting edge. So much so that other colleges come here for tours to see our operations as well as our in house data center. That commitment allows us to run a staff of less than half of what is normally required to 10 college sites we maintain.
Some examples of this are;
All computers, both PC and Mac are replaced every 3 years.
First college nationwide to roll out XP campus wide.
Third college nationwide to roll out VOIP.
My point is Apple is not making this kind of back end support for IT possible, end of story.
May 5th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Dennis, perhaps you should actually read the posts before you start attributing statements to me.
May 5th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
People are putting too much stock in Apple devices. They are way over priced.
May 5th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
@Dennis,
I was referring to you using your personal experience as a benchmark for how something works across an industry (higher ed). IT staff like Royce and myself see hundreds or thousands of machines, so we just get a better idea of what breaks and what works than would someone that deals with just one computer (their own). This is not IT-specific, it is called expertise. For example, if you bring your car to a mechanic, you do so because he fixes many, many cars. He may prefer Fords over Chevys, and you may have a Chevy, but you probably trust that he knows more about the intricate workings of that device than you do, even though it’s not his favorite kind of car.
Despite this, you state that “your department’s” understanding of enterprise computing is merely whatever someone does on their computer for their job. While that may be your “understanding,” that is not what enterprise computing is. Enterprise computing is the networking of multiple computers throughout an institution (often across continents) that allows disparate technologies and people to work together productively. No one here is arguing that Apple makes a great computer–they do. However, they shortchange IT when it comes to the tools necessary to make Apple computers play nicely with others (i.e. Windows PCs). This is unacceptable in the enterprise, because as I have stated, interoperability is the goal of the enterprise IT staffer.
I suspect your institution may not provide many true enterprise services, and this may result in lower support time for Macs than PCs. Also, as Royce mentioned, there are ways to automate tasks on the PC that are simply not properly put together on the Mac. For example, using Group Policy within Active Directory, we can apply policy changes onto our 5,000+ computers within an hour. Because of this we are able to deliver certain enterprise services at 1/20th the cost of some of our sister institutions. This is why Windows 7 passed the entire market share of OS X computers within 3 weeks of its launch. Of course, if we didn’t utilize Group Policy (many people don’t) or other helpful software that Microsoft provides, we might be frustrated with how difficult Windows support is, and our Macs might actually look pretty good.
Finally, please understand that folks like myself and Royce deal with Apple all the time–we call their tech support, we plead with their software engineers, we beg for a patch that takes years to arrive. In the meantime, people in the Apple “community” blame IT staff because their iPad can’t get online–they don’t care that that device’s failure to adhere to worldwide network standards might cause hundreds of other laptop users to have connection problems–because they blame IT for Apple’s oversight. To return to my earlier analogy, this is like verbally berating your mechanic when you bring your car in for a factory recall replacement. He didn’t make the faulty part–he’s just trying to fix it and get your car back on the road.
May 5th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
I’ve found the enterprise support of Mac at our institution varies by computer tech. It takes some guys hours to bind a Mac to active directory. Others can do so quickly.
Provided someone is passing these problems on to Apple I figure fixes will appear soon in a software update. Apple is well on its way to owning this market niche. Surely they will not squander their lead by creating devices that are incapable of playing nice on corporate networks.
The iPad is like any other new device. Problems are going to surface as the product enters the real world. Fixes will be created. That is why we have software updates.
May 6th, 2010 at 9:11 am
Relax…this too shall pass.
Apple might have some problems with the iPad but so might the IT departments that are having problems supporting the iPad. I am willing to bet that those same folks who had trouble deploying the iPHone are the same ones who are having problems with the iPad.
Why not find out what is happening and resolve the problem? Isn’t that what IT is paid to do? It is why we still all have jobs. Some futurist pundits love to say the IT services will not be needed in the future. That might be true if we could just stop all innovation and everyone would just use Windows XP for the next 20 years. Since that does not seem to be the case, and companies keep coming out with new cool technology that is almost always broken then we will have a lot of things to keep us all very busy over the next 100 years.
LOL …just man up, solve the problem and quit complaining. Apple is just one company that has the latest and greatest. What ever happens next will also be broken but probably in a different way. This problem will also be solved.
If it doesn’t work on your network, and it does work on 90% of the other networks then I wouldn’t be complaining too loudly about Apple’s problems.
Stay busy, happy and enjoy the chaos