Great writeup by Cory Doctorow on a story that is all too common. A professor of Computer Science tried to bar a student from getting public, open source, peer review on his source code for a project after the course was completed. The complaint was that it would make it easier for other students to cheat. Thankfully, the student appealed and the school board ruled that his goal is quite acceptable and in line with academic rigor.

From the article:

Students work harder when the work is meaningful, when it has value other than as a yardstick for measuring their comprehension. I’ve always thought it was miserable that we take the supposed best and brightest in society, charge them up to $60,000 a year in fees, then put them to work for four years on producing busywork that no one — not them, not their profs, not other scholars — actually wants to read.

I’d bet the odds are great this kid will go on to do great things in software…in spite of whatever company he works for.

Student challenges prof, wins right to post source code he wrote for course – Boing Boing .