This weekend I presented at the Public Good U Conference, which was a collaboration between SUNY and CUNY. Held in Albany, this conference was intentionally pushing back against some of the narratives around higher ed which question it’s role and efficacy. With leadership from the SUNY and CUNY faculty shared governance, Public Good U positioned higher education as a durable public good. The conference description starts with a question that presenters met with optimism and purpose:

Imagine an institution that meets the ideals of public higher education: call it Public Good U. What does this institution look like, who does it serve, how is it funded and governed, and what service does it return to the community?

Public Good U

My contribution to the conference was a panel presentation on how the university can promote public goods through technology decisions. Those of us in the Open Source and Open Educational Resources movements are comfortable talking about our initiatives meeting the classic definition of a public good. Where there is unlimited, non rivalus access. The use of open source technology by one person or institution does not limit the opportunities for others, and it can be used by unlimited numbers of people.

Presenting at this conference was an opportunity to make this case to those who aren’t already familiar with open source and the affordances of open licensing.

Here’s my conference abstract:

This conference calls us to imagine an institution that lives up to the ideals of higher education. Our panel asks: how public and accessible can public universities be when they are built on closed, proprietary software

Open source software is code that is freely available for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It’s part of an international open movement that aims to promote transparency and collaboration, reducing barriers to access across fields like education, medicine, science, and data sharing. When higher education institutions participate in and contribute to open ecosystems, they enact an academic mission that values knowledge sharing, community engagement, and innovation. Beyond these ethical and educational principles, choosing open source is good stewardship of public dollars, allowing institutions to tailor software to their specific needs, better supporting research, teaching and learning, and administrative processes. It fosters collaboration between universities and other public and private institutions that use the same tools, while preventing vendor lock-in.

There are myriad ways for public universities to implement and leverage open source software as the foundation for creating public and open scholarly and educational materials. Adopting open source software, designing and building our own, and purchasing hosting, support, and development services are all possibilities within the open source ecosystem. The choices of what and how to implement open source software are often dependent on available resources, time and expertise, but regardless of the ‘how’ they serve the same ‘why’: to create more pathways between the academic and public spheres. The panelists come from campuses at SUNY and CUNY and have extensive experience building and working with open source applications and championing them at their universities.

Their roles include leading national organizations that support professionals who work with open source software, supporting faculty as they integrate open tools and practices into their projects and teaching, adapting existing applications to higher education contexts, and creating new open source tools that reflect and respond directly to the needs of public higher education. From their expertise and combined decades of experience, they will discuss the open foundations that Public Good U should be built on.