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Members of community who organised a search party campaign to find Shannon Matthews, a young girl who went missing on her way back from school (Feb, 2008).

An example of community led action/social care for their members. Does this boil down to locality and grassroots having better knowledge of their own inhabitants?
Search Parties, Missing Posters and Door to Door canvasing all arranged and funded for by members, not academics or governmental organisations.

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Can we source some newspaper articles from this time? 

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Can we source some newspaper articles from this time? 

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Poor handling of staff safety during the Covid pandemic; contracts cut short; less staff protections, etc.

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Suzanne Jones and Audra Heaslip are professors at Collin College in McKinney, Texas. Or, rather, they were until January 28, 2021. That afternoon, college administrators informed both of them, one after the other, that their employment contracts would not be renewed.

"As far as I know, I've never had a single student complaint in over a decade - which is rare, almost everyone has at least one," says Heaslip, a humanities professor. She adds that she's "a go-to person for volunteering and for leadership" on campus, and has previously been asked to mentor other faculty. Jones, for her part, says that the only mark on her record came from her signing an open letter to the Dallas City Council in 2017 that argued for the removal of Confederate statues, though, she adds, she was one of a dozen Collin College faculty members to sign onto the letter.

The only explanation the two educators have for their firing is that they are both leaders of the Collin College chapter of Texas Faculty Association (TFA): Jones is the organization's secretary, and Heaslip is the vice president. While faculty in Texas cannot collectively bargain, associations like TFA, which is an affiliate of the National Education Association, can provide legal support, and otherwise function like unions, strengthening workers' hands against employers.

"We are very positive that our organizing efforts are what was threatening the [Collin College] president," says Jones. Collin College faculty do not have tenure, but longtime professors usually have a multiyear contract. Jones and Heaslip say that they have not found any prior cases of long-serving faculty failing to have their contracts renewed without warning.

"Usually the most humiliating thing that can happen is getting knocked down to a one-year contract," says Heaslip, explaining that when there are disciplinary issues, "there's always a process, there's always paperwork, or a warning, or 'here's the rule that you're breaking' and 'here's the path to get better.'" But in their cases, "there was none of that."

Collin College administration, for its part, insists there is no story here. In an email to Inside Higher Ed, a Collin spokesperson wrote that the college "did not fire" Jones, "despite any misrepresentation you may have received."

The day Jones and Heaslip were let go was the same day their local TFA chapter had scheduled its first recruitment meeting. They had helped officially form the Collin College chapter in the summer of 2020, spurred in large part by the college's lackluster response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, they say the school's administration had come up with a reopening plan that did not require mask wearing.

"They also said 'you're not allowed to tell your students to wear masks. If we find out you're pressuring your students to wear masks, you'll be disciplined,'" says Heaslip. Faculty were "stunned," she says, not least because the school had not solicited their input in creating the plan. As a member of the faculty council, the college's mechanism for shared governance, Heaslip wrote a resolution expressing concern for the reopening plan. Around one-third of the college's full-time faculty added their name to the document, including Jones, who is also a member of the faculty council.

There was reason for concern. On November 14, 2020, Iris Meda, a nursing professor who had come out of retirement to teach home health care aides in-person at Collin College, died of COVID-19. In an email to staff a week after her passing, Collin College president H. Neil Matkin did not mention Meda's passing until the twenty-second paragraph of his message, drawing sharp criticism from faculty.

Feeling that their efforts in the faculty council were going nowhere, Jones and Heaslip hoped building their TFA chapter could help hold that body accountable, offering another means for faculty to raise concerns and look after one another.

That is still their hope. Both Jones and Heaslip have retained counsel from TFA, and they are demanding reinstatement at Collin College. A petition sponsored by TFA describes the pair's "wrongful, retaliatory terminations" as "a blatant and dangerous strifling of academic freedom, shared governance, and safe working conditions."

But beyond this immediate demand, the duo want to keep organizing to push back on the corporatization of higher education, a process that undermines such institution's claims of free speech and assembly.

Collin College president Matkin "uses the word 'Amazonification,'" says Heaslip. "He's really proud about the 'Amazonification' of the college, and he wants to streamline treating students as customers. We're there to provide services."

If Matkin's sentiments are extreme, they're also refreshingly honest about the direction institutions of higher education are heading as they lower labor costs and eliminate faculty job security. Reversing that transformation will be a major fight, but it starts with defending professors like Jones and Heaslip.

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The "Amazonification" of Higher Education Has Arrived. It's Not Pretty.

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Suzanne Jones and Audra Heaslip are professors at Collin College in McKinney, Texas. Or, rather, they were until January 28, 2021. That afternoon, college administrators informed both of them, one after the other, that their employment contracts would not be renewed.

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Grade Inflation, some suggesting the introduction of a marketable university education has led to this.

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Grade Inflation, some suggesting the introduction of a marketable university education has led to this.

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Source: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/16-01-2020/sb255-higher-education-student-statistics/qualifications

see guardian article for some more information

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Student Satisfaction seen as imperative for the livelihood of the university as a whole. Without keeping the 'customer' satiated, bad reviews may be left and the buisness closed down.

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Interesting article.
Letters written by various academics on the topic of Grade Inflation and its effects/reasonings.

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am a professor at a Russell group university with 27 years' experience of teaching and assessment. I have worked as external examiner at almost a dozen other higher education institutions. I also have two children currently at university. Your front-page headline, " Crackdown on grade inflation at universities " (22 October), made my blood boil.

The latest cohort of university students are the product of 13 years of relentless assessment at primary and secondary school, driven by the ever-greater pressure of league tables which, owing to financial incentives, headteachers are largely powerless to resist. Do you think that is perhaps why today's students are better at doing assessments than their predecessors?

They are also burdened with the most punitive student loan system in the developed world. Do you think that is perhaps why student mental health issues take up ever more of my time? Today's students are the most anxious, driven and indebted generation I have ever encountered. They are also entering a job market where working conditions are becoming ever more "Uberised" and "Amazonified".

Surely their struggles and achievements deserve our utmost respect and their prospects our sympathy and support? They certainly do not merit the fatuous reaction of the universities minister, Sam Gyimah, (PPE, Oxford 1995-98 before tuition fees were even introduced), whose identification of the value of degrees purely with the market misses the point entirely and undermines the true value of the degrees for which today's students are sacrificing so much.
Simon Ditchfield
Professor of early modern history and director of the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, Department of History, Vanbrugh College, University of York

In 1990 I was appointed as University of London internal examiner for a new MSc degree, which would also serve as an entry level standard for Intellectual Property Practitioners' professional qualifying examinations. It was, therefore, essential that the results remained uniform, year on year.

My class comprised 25-40 highly motivated postgraduate students, of whom around half were from overseas. Each year, I prepared an exam that included one compulsory question, drawn from the most important part of the syllabus and accounting for 40% of the total marks and two (of seven) optional questions (30% for each) drawn at random from the remainder of the syllabus. Scripts were marked independently by two internal academics and moderated by an external expert. The results were reviewed by a subject exam board and confirmed by a departmental exam board.

I maintained detailed records of the results. The average mark for the compulsory question provided an indication of the quality of that year's class intake, while the average total mark each year moved consistently with that of the compulsory (class quality indicator) question. These parameters did not vary by more than 1 or 2%, while the histogram of the individual scores invariably followed a typical skewed Gaussian profile.

There was no need for grade inflation. I canvassed potential employers individually on behalf of meritorious students (who were also perfectly capable of speaking for themselves).
Prof Roger Cullis
Queen Mary Centre for Commercial Law Studies, University of London

It appears logical that having worked on grade inflation at GCSE and A-levels, the government should now announce plans to do the same in the higher education sector. The "rise in degree outcomes" clearly needs investigation to determine whether it has been caused by "legitimate improvement" or whether the "integrity of the system" is being undermined.

What is rather less logical, and therefore owing much to political ideology, is why the government is seemingly showing such little concern about the integrity of the examination system being undermined by the obvious grade inflation in Pre-U examinations. With many private schools and some state schools now opting for these examinations instead of A-levels, should there not be a similar "crackdown"? If the much higher percentages of A*-A grades awarded in all subjects in Pre-U exams than in traditional A-levels does not amount to grade inflation, what does?
Bernie Evans
Liverpool

The concern with grade inflation derives from an elitist belief that only a very limited minority deserves to receive the highest grades. This belief was reinforced by the norm-referencing system whereby the proportion of students able to receive each grade was predetermined. The clear unfairness of such a system has led, over the years, to the development of criterion-referenced systems whereby learning objectives are clearer and students achieving the requisite standards for each grade are rewarded accordingly.

As the aims of a course in respect of what a student should be expected to know and do become clearer, coupled with a greater knowledge of how people learn with concomitant improvements in teaching approaches, so performance improves. This is only what we would expect in other parts of the economy. In motor manufacturing, for example, we do not expect cars to be unchanged since the beginning of the motor trade. We expect far higher standards of, say, performance, comfort and economy.

Why are we so reluctant to accept that performance in education can improve? Grade inflation is, in many respects, an indicator of that improvement. It should be no surprise that students today achieve higher levels of performance than those of my generation. It would be concerning if it were not so.
Roy Boffy
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands

With reference to grade inflation at UK universities, the following facts are pertinent. First, there has been a massive expansion in student numbers over the last 40 years, with a widening of access to students with a wider range of ability. Second, contact hours per student have decreased significantly as a consequence; no amount of technical fiddling with teaching methods can compensate for this. The fact that the proportion of first and upper second class degrees has increased means that standards have fallen. British universities are now mass-production degree factories offering a diminished product. On top of that, students now have to pay for it; the earlier high-quality product I received as a student in the 1960s was free. I was an academic at Aberdeen University for 26 years until I retired early in 2000 in despair and exasperation.
Nick Williams
Auchenblae, Aberdeenshire

I have been involved in degree accreditation for several engineering professional bodies since 1981. Until the early 1990s, we were able to plot graphs of the A-level points required to start a degree course with the proportion of different grades of degree awarded. There was general consistency across hundreds of courses in different universities. Where the results for a particular course were significantly above or below the line, we could question the staff on why they were over generous to, or particularly hard on, their students.

In the last 20 years, the slow creep of grade inflation in various forms has moved most courses above the historic lines, making comparison more difficult. The professional bodies all conform to the general standards required by the Engineering Council as well as their own additional requirements for their particular field. These standards ensure the competence of new graduates entering professional practice. The grade of degree they are awarded is the responsibility of the individual universities.
Colin Ledsome
Chair of Council, Institution of Engineering Designers

Does it not occur to the government that alleged grade inflation, in terms of the increase in first-class degrees, might be a direct consequence of the "marketisation" of higher education, and the transformation of universities into revenue-maximising businesses?

When fees were increased to £9,000, the then universities' minister, David Willetts, claimed he wanted to put students in the driving seat, so that universities would have to be much more responsive to what their fee-paying "customers" wanted. This drastically changed the relationship between lecturers and students, placing academics under increasing pressure to keep their students happy, in order to ensure high scores in module evaluations (without which, academic career progression might suffer) and the National Student Survey, which in turn impacts upon universities' positions in published league tables. A lower position can lead to a decline in student applications, a drop in income from student fees, and ultimately, departmental closures and job losses.

Under such a crazy regime, would it be surprising if some academics and universities felt compelled to award more firsts, in order to keep their student "customers" satisfied, avoid appeals and litigation, and maintain comparability with other universities in a competitive market? All of this would be a direct consequence of the Conservatives' ideological obsession with forcing universities to operate as customer-led businesses.
Pete Dorey
Bath, Somerset

Your article misses one reason for improved degree performance. Some years ago, many university entrants obtained places by family or other personal connections rather than academic ability. Since the universities have absorbed a wider cross-section of the population who enter on academic ability, it is to be expected that standards will improve.
Andrew Forson
Eckington, Worcestershire
Read more Guardian letters - click here to visit gu.com/letters
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University grade inflation under the spotlight | Letters

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am a professor at a Russell group university with 27 years' experience of teaching and assessment. I have worked as external examiner at almost a dozen other higher education institutions. I also have two children currently at university. Your front-page headline, " Crackdown on grade inflation at universities " (22 October), made my blood boil.

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Fascinating stuff. Inner workings of the Consumer Rights Act which effects/covers what the University provides for us. What's interesting here, is that Universities have to hit these regulations now, else they might have restricted access to public funds (under the Higher Education and Research Bill).

Also note the repeated alluding to this essence of 'competition' and 'compliance', not only between universities, but maybe even the students themselves?

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CMA Regulations mainly effect the extent of information that a student is required to receive as the 'consumer' in order to keep their satisfaction with what the university is providing, high. Although, UoB splits what it decides is relevant information by deeming 'non-material' changes as unimportant, and thus we don't need to know... say, to avoid "confusion". See attached the material conditions, ones which we are required to know.

Note, alerting us of some changes to module information isn't considered something that the university needs to comply to. This also applies to changes within our option modules... Very sneaky!

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Any changes that will impact the consumer (student) has to be discussed with the group which the change will most likely affect, so they have the opportunity to contribute to the decisions.

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Important institutional critique. Remembering, of course, that the university is a big player in the 'Market of Institutions'

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Interesting read on NFT's.
Most notably, 'I just downloaded something for free that someone has paid million of dollars for' and 'Anyone could own a Moet, but only one person can own the original'

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There's nothing like an explosion of blockchain news to leave you thinking, "Um... what's going on here?" That's the feeling I've experienced while reading about Grimes getting millions of dollars for NFTs or about Nyan Cat being sold as one.

In the year since NFTs exploded in popularity, the situation has only gotten more complicated. Pictures of apes have sold for tens of millions of dollars, there's been an endless supply of headlines about million-dollar hacks of NFT projects, and corporate cash grabs have only gotten worse.

All this news may have left you wondering: what is an NFT, anyhow?

After countless hours of research and discussions (most of which were against my will), I think I know. I also think I'm going to cry.

Okay, let's start with the basics.

What is an NFT? What does NFT stand for?
That doesn't make it any clearer.
Right, sorry. "Non-fungible" more or less means that it's unique and can't be replaced with something else. For example, a bitcoin is fungible - trade one for another bitcoin, and you'll have exactly the same thing.

A one-of-a-kind trading card, however, is non-fungible. If you traded it for a different card, you'd have something completely different. You gave up a Squirtle, and got a 1909 T206 Honus Wagner, which StadiumTalk calls "the Mona Lisa of baseball cards. " (I'll take their word for it.)
How do NFTs work?
At a very high level, most NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain, though other blockchains have implemented their own version of NFTs. Ethereum is a cryptocurrency, like bitcoin or dogecoin, but its blockchain also keeps track of who's holding and trading NFTs.
How do you pronounce NFT?
Almost everyone spells it out, saying "en eff tee." The brave call them "nefts." The enlightened have never had the word cross their lips.
What's worth picking up at the NFT supermarket?
NFTs can really be anything digital (such as drawings, music, your brain downloaded and turned into an AI), but a lot of the current excitement is around using the tech to sell digital art.
You mean, like, people buying my good tweets?
I don't think anyone can stop you, but that's not really what I meant. A lot of the conversation is about NFTs as an evolution of fine art collecting, only with digital art.

But yes, someone could buy your good tweets. The founder of Twitter sold one for just under $3 million shortly after we originally posted this article.
Could you do a real quick rundown of what the blockchain is?
Well, they're pretty complex, but the basic idea is that blockchains are a way to store data without having to trust any one company or entity to keep things secure and accurate. There are definitely nuances and exceptions there, which you can read about in our blockchain explainer, but when most people say "blockchain," that's the kind of tech they're talking about.

There's also... a lot of nuance about whether NFT's are on the blockchain or not, which we'll dig into in a bit.

I know, I feel like a real writer.
So do people really think this will be the future of collecting?
I'm sure some people really hope so - like whoever paid almost $390,000 for a 50-second video by Grimes or the person who paid $6.6 million for a video by Beeple. Actually, one of Beeple's pieces was auctioned at Christie's, the famou-
Sorry, I was busy right-clicking on that Beeple video and downloading the same file the person paid millions of dollars for.
Wow, rude. But yeah, that's the awkward bit. You can copy a digital file as many times as you want, including the art that's included with an NFT.

But NFTs are designed to give you something that can't be copied: ownership of the work (though the artist can still retain the copyright and reproduction rights, just like with physical artwork). To put it in terms of physical art collecting: anyone can buy a Monet print. But only one person can own the original.
No shade to Beeple, but the video isn't really a Monet.
What do you think of the $3,600 Gucci Ghost? Also, you didn't let me finish earlier. That image that Beeple was auctioning off at Christie's ended up selling for $69 million, which, by the way, is $15 million more than Monet's painting Nymphéas sold for in 2014.
Whoever got that Monet can actually appreciate it as a physical object. With digital art, a copy is literally as good as the original.
But the flex of owning an original Beeple...

Sales have absolutely slumped since their peak, though like with seemingly everything in crypto there's always somebody declaring it over and done with right before a big spike. Am I predicting that NFTs are about to make a comeback? Absolutely not, but I'm sure there are plenty of folks in NFT-based communities that are sure they're still on the gravy train.
Oh no you're about to talk about the apes aren't you?
If you haven't heard about the Bored Ape Yacht Club, it's one of the most successful NFT projects, with apes (which are procedurally generated and have unique characteristics) selling for millions of dollars. The company behind the series of NFTs has created a spin-off cryptocurrency, broken the blockchain for a few hours with how popular one of their sales was, and even acquired other massive NFT brands. And a reminder: this all happened because people really like saying that they own a picture of a Bored Ape.

People like, for instance, Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton, who discussed their apes on TV in a clip that went viral for being soooo uncomfortable.

This kind of club isn't really a new phenomenon - people have long built communities based on things they own, and now it's happening with NFTs. It could be argued that one of the earliest NFT projects, CryptoPunks, got big thanks to its community.
What's the point of NFTs?
That really depends on whether you're an artist or a buyer.

First off: I'm proud of you. Way to go. You might be interested in NFTs because it gives you a way to sell work that there otherwise might not be much of a market for. If you come up with a really cool digital sticker idea, what are you going to do? Sell it on the iMessage App Store? No way.

Also, some NFT marketplaces have a feature where you can make sure you get paid a percentage every time your NFT is sold or changes hands. That makes sure that if your work gets super popular and balloons in value, you'll see some of that benefit.

One of the obvious benefits of buying art is it lets you financially support artists you like, and that's true with NFTs (which are way trendier than, like, Telegram stickers). Buying an NFT also usually gets you some basic usage rights, like being able to post the image online or set it as your profile picture. Plus, of course, there are bragging rights that you own the art, with a blockchain entry to back it up.
No, I meant I'm a collector.
Ah, okay, yes. NFTs can work like any other speculative asset, where you buy it and hope that the value of it goes up one day, so you can sell it for a profit. I feel kind of dirty for talking about that, though.
So every NFT is unique?
In the boring, technical sense that every NFT is a unique token on the blockchain. But while it could be like a van Gogh, where there's only one definitive actual version, it could also be like a trading card, where there's 50 or hundreds of numbered copies of the same artwork.
Who would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for what basically amounts to a trading card?
Well, that's part of what makes NFTs so messy. Some people treat them like they're the future of fine art collecting (read: as a playground for the mega-rich), and some people treat them like Pokémon cards (where they're accessible to normal people but also a playground for the mega-rich). Speaking of Pokémon cards, Logan Paul sold some NFTs relating to a million-dollar box of the-
Please stop. I hate where this is going.
Yeah, he sold NFT video clips, which are just clips from a video you can watch on YouTube anytime you want, for up to $20,000. He also sold NFTs of a Logan Paul Pokémon card.
Who paid $20,000 for a video clip of Logan Paul?! It would be hilarious if Logan Paul decided to sell 50 more NFTs of the exact same video.
Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda (who also sold some NFTs that included a song) actually talked about that. It's totally a thing someone could do if they were, in his words, "an opportunist crooked jerk." I'm not saying that Logan Paul is that, just that you should be careful who you buy from.
Are NFTs mainstream now?
It depends on what you mean. If you're asking if, say, my mom owns one, the answer is no.

But we have seen big brands and celebrities like Marvel and Wayne Gretzky launch their own NFTs, which seem to be aimed at more traditional collectors, rather than crypto-enthusiasts. While I don't think I'd call NFTs "mainstream" in the way that smartphones are mainstream, or Star Wars is mainstream, they do seem to have, at least to some extent, shown some staying power even outside of the cryptosphere.
But what do The Youth think of them?
Ah yes, excellent question. We here at The Verge have an interest in what the next generation is doing, and it certainly does seem like some of them have been experimenting with NFTs. An 18 year-old who goes by the name FEWOCiOUS says that his NFT drops have netted over $17 million - though obviously most haven't had the same success. The New York Times talked to a few teens in the NFC space, and some said they used NFTs as a way to get used to working on a project with a team, or to just earn some spending money.
Okay, but what does Keanu Reeves think of NFTs? That moment would make a great NFT.
Someone thought that too, and minted that clip as an NFT. It wasn't us though! Rampant copyright infringement is an ongoing problem in the space. One of the post popular NFT trading sites estimated that over 80 percent of the artwork minted using its free tool were "plagiarized works, fake collections, and spam." Which is, you know, not a great look?
Can I buy this article as an NFT?
No, but technically anything digital could be sold as an NFT (including articles from and , provided you have anywhere from $1,800 to $560,000). deadmau5 has sold digital animated stickers. William Shatner has sold Shatner-themed trading cards (one of which was apparently an X-ray of his teeth).
Gross. Actually, could I buy someone's teeth as an NFT?
There have been some attempts at connecting NFTs to real-world objects, often as a sort of verification method. Nike has patented a method to verify sneakers' authenticity using an NFT system, which it calls CryptoKicks. But so far, I haven't found any teeth, no. I'm scared to look.

There are several marketplaces that have popped up around NFTs, which allow people to buy and sell. These include OpenSea, Rarible, and Grimes' choice, Nifty Gateway, but there are plenty of others.
I've heard there were kittens involved. Tell me about the kittens.
NFTs really became technically possible when the Ethereum blockchain added support for them as part of a new standard. Of course, one of the first uses was a game called CryptoKitties that allowed users to trade and sell virtual kittens. Thank you, internet.
Arrrrrggggg!
Same. At one point I thought that the kittens would be used in games in a somewhat interesting ways. That glimmer of hope has been decimated by the fact that almost every salesperson in the NFT space promises that their tokens will be part of a game or metaverse.

When real game developers like Ubisoft and the studio behind STALKER have said they'd integrate NFTs into their games... people reacted VERY negatively. The companies have either had to scrap their plans entirely or severely tone down the amount of blockchain stuff in their games.

Of course, there have been a few fun experiments in the NFT space (though I'll admit that at least one of them was poking fun at the concept of NFTs), but... listen, one of the most successful NFT-based games is kind of a weird version of feudalism, and also got mega-hacked. So there's that.
At least it's not digital pet rocks... right?
In fact, there are people who spent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on NFT pet rocks (the website for which says that the rocks serve no purpose other than being tradable and limited).
Can I cry on your shoulder?
Only if I can cry on yours.
Could I pull off a museum heist to steal NFTs?
That depends. Part of the allure of blockchain is that it stores a record of each time a transaction takes place, making it harder to steal and flip than, say, a painting hanging in a museum.

Or at least that's the theory. In reality, many, many people have gotten their NFTs stolen by attackers using a variety of tactics. To be clear, hackers aren't always playing 5D chess here. For the ever complicated hack of the programs that control the flow of crypto, there's a case where someone was tricked into signing a transaction they shouldn't have through run-of-the-mill phishing.

Note: Please don't steal.
Should I be worried about digital art being around in 500 years?
Probably. Bit rot is a real thing: image quality deteriorates, file formats can't be opened anymore, websites go down, people forget the password to their wallets. But physical art in museums is also shockingly fragile.
But wait, doesn't the fact that they're on the blockchain make them permanent?
Okay, so this is a whole thing. Technically, yes: when you say NFT you're referring to an entry on the blockchain. However, the actual media, like the picture, GIF, or flagrant flaunting of copyright law is very rarely actually stored on the blockchain - it'd be too expensive to do that.

Sometimes the media the NFT points to is stored on a cloud service, which isn't exactly decentralized. Since this has come up as an issue, with people worried that their NFT proving they watched the Lions lose could go poof if one company goes under or changes their URL scheme, many in the NFT space have been turning to decentralized storage solutions like the InterPlanetary File System that use torrent-like technology. It's not bulletproof, but it's better than having your million-dollar JPG stored on Google Photos.
Torrent-like? So people are pirating NFTs?
No... Well, kinda, but hold that thought. The idea behind IPFS is that files are stored on a peer-to-peer network, meaning they could be stored on several computers at once. Files are given an identifier, and when a computer goes to load the file it asks the IPFS network to give it the file with that ID. Any of the computers storing it can say, "Oh, here it is!"

When you make an NFT, the content link is baked into the token. If that link goes to IPFS, it'll be pointing to something that's more permanent than, say, an image on a regular server.

In theory, anyways. Of course, distributed does not equal perfect. Experts have warned that files could still end up on a single computer, and could be lost in the case of a hard drive crash.
Okay, so what's that you said about pirating?
So someone created this site called The NFT Bay as a sort of art project, where they put up a torrent pointing to a 19TB ZIP file, which they said included every NFT on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains. There's some doubt about whether was actually a treasure trove of NFTs (if such a thing could be referred to as "treasure"), but in theory it's actually possible to scan the blockchain to find every record of an NFT being minted, and download the media it links to.

Real or not, it was an incredible piece of performance art, sparking a conversation (okay, closer to a flame war) about the right-clicker mindset.
Sorry, what on Earth is a right-clicker mindset?
Ah, sorry. "Right clicker" is sort of a joking derisive term used by NFT boosters to deride people who just don't get it. The thought is that you're completely missing the point if you think that just downloading (or pirating) a JPEG will actually get you the valuable part of an NFT.

Has anyone ever had their feelings hurt when someone tells them they have a right click mindset? Probably not, but their eyes may get a little sore from rolling so hard.
I want to maximize my blockchain use. Can I buy NFTs with cryptocurrencies?
Yes. Probably. A lot of the marketplaces accept Ethereum. But technically, anyone can sell an NFT, and they could ask for whatever currency they want.
Will trading my Logan Paul NFTs contribute to global warming and melt Greenland?
It's definitely something to look out for. Since NFTs use the same blockchain technology as some energy-hungry cryptocurrencies, they also end up using a lot of electricity. There are people working on mitigating this issue, but so far, most NFTs are still tied to cryptocurrencies that generate a lot of greenhouse gas emissions. There have been a few cases where artists have decided to not sell NFTs or to cancel future drops after hearing about the effects they could have on climate change. Thankfully, one of my colleagues has really dug into it, so you can read this piece to get a fuller picture.
Can I build an underground art cave / bunker to store my NFTs?
Well, like cryptocurrencies, NFTs are stored in digital wallets (though it is worth noting that the wallet does specifically have to be NFT-compatible). You could always put the wallet on a computer in an underground bunker, though.
What if I wanted to watch a TV show that's somehow related to NFTs?
Believe it or not, you have options! Steve Aoki is working on a show based on a character from a previous NFT drop, called Dominion X. The show's site says that it'll be an episodic series launched on the blockchain (the first short video is on OpenSea), and there are hundreds of NFTs already associated with the show.

There's also a show called Stoner Cats (yes, it's about cats that get high, and yes it stars Mila Kunis, Chris Rock, and Jane Fonda), which uses NFTs as a sort of ticket system. Currently, there's only one episode available, but a Stoner Cat NFT (which, of course, is called a TOKEn) is required to watch it.
Random question: what's an NFT party like?
My colleague went to an event linked to NFT.NYC. It sounds like it was a... unique (or should I say non-fungible?) experience.
Are you tired of typing "NFT"? This story was first published March 3rd, 2021. It has been updated to reflect new developments in NFTs.

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People are spending millions on NFTs. What? Why?

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NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, have been A Thing for a while now, but what's the meaning of "NFT"? A couple of high-profile stories have made us stop and go "Hey... what exactly are these things?" And you may have had the same question.

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Incredibly telling. Fascination with this idea of the 'successful artist' being based on the perception that they have 'made it'... what constituted 'making it?': Hard work? Determination? Book/Art Sales?
"Social Achievement in Competition"
This could also be linked to the university tactics to represent success through they 'alumni' list.

Secondly, this perpetrates a evermore relevant toxic individualism. The cult obsession with individual success- to form part of the university statistics- doesn't take into account external faults with the institution and society as a whole.
Aptly named in this small article as 'the illness of responsibility'- internalising systemic failure as your own.
'The success of the minority is founded on the large majority of the unsuccessful' ...

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Two years ago, Joanie Lemercier, a French artist known for his perception-bending light sculptures, took on a new role as a climate activist. He attended protests against coal mining, projecting lasers onto excavators and government offices with dramatic effect, and began a campaign demanding Autodesk stop selling its design software to fossil fuel operations. He also took a closer look at his own energy use, which included a hefty heating bill for his studio in Brussels, electricity for the high-end computers to render his creations, and dozens of flights each year to exhibitions around the world. He tracked it all down to the watt and vowed to reduce his energy use by 10 percent each year, a goal he had successfully met. Then, a few months ago, in the course of a few minutes, his progress was erased.

The culprit was Lemercier's first blockchain "drop." The event involved the sale of six so-called nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, which took the form of short videos inspired by the concept of platonic solids. In the clips, dark metallic polyhedrons rotate on loop and glisten-a reference to Lemercier's installations in the physical world. The works were placed for auction on a website called Nifty Gateway, where they sold out in 10 seconds for thousands of dollars. The sale also consumed 8.7 megawatt-hours of energy, as he later learned from a website called Cryptoart.WTF.

That figure was equivalent to two years of energy use in Lemercier's studio. Since then, the art has been resold, requiring another year's worth of energy. The tally was still climbing. The problem, as Lemercier saw it, went well beyond himself. His fellow artists were becoming millionaires overnight as the cryptoart world exploded. But so was their role in emitting carbon. Artists didn't seem to understand the scope of this problem-Lemercier himself hadn't-and the platforms making the sales didn't seem interested in clarifying.

Cryptoart, or NFT art-the field's practitioners haven't quite settled on the terminology-is having a moment of massive, headline-grabbing sales. Last month, an animated image of Nyan Cat, the popular meme of a rainbow-shooting feline made out of a Pop-Tart, sold for $660,000 in a blockchain sale. The latest bid in an ongoing Christie's auction for an NFT by Beeple, an artist known for his playfully grotesque takes on current affairs, is $3.5 million. But those are just the tip of a rollicking industry. Works by lesser-known artists routinely sell for thousands of dollars, and a booming subgenre of TikTok videos advise viewers on how to quickly flip them for a tidy profit. The numbers hardly make sense to anyone, and the same has been said of some of the artwork listed for sale. But that was also recently true for the prices of GameStop stock and Dogecoin. It's a strange, heady time for digital speculators.

Still, there are signs of substance underneath it all. "It's easy to look at NFTs and say, OK, this is Beanie Babies," says Jill Carlson, a venture capitalist who invests in blockchain technology. That had been her own stance for years, when the NFT art world was defined by Cryptokitties, collectible cartoon cats that briefly sold for tens of thousands of dollars. (Ridiculous then but pennies compared to now.) She changed her mind recently after seeing the interest of artists who had established themselves independently of blockchain hype-people like Lemercier. Some of the NFTs Carlson saw even looked like actual art. "The prices are still totally outrageous," she adds. But both things can be true at once.

For digital artists, the attraction of blockchain is a new model of ownership. Crypto art is no more secure from copycats than anything else posted on the internet; a person could easily record a video or screenshot an image and proudly display the replica on their desktop. But with an NFT, the owner buys a verified token providing digital evidence that the art is theirs-a bit like an artist's signature. The idea is to offer some semblance of the authenticity that is naturally bestowed on physical art. After all, most people would say that a perfect copy of a Mondrian abstract painted on your garage door is not the same as the one created by the artist. Why couldn't the same be true for a .CAS file? A bonus of the model is that ownership can be extended to resales of that token, allowing artists to continue receiving a cut.

"We have to change our existing habits. So how can we build new platforms that are unsustainable?"

Memo Akten, technology artist

The trade-off is that this model consumes lots of energy. The major marketplaces for NFT art, which include MakersPlace, Nifty Gateway, and SuperRare, conduct their sales through Ethereum, which maintains a secure record of cryptocurrency and NFT transactions through a process called mining. The system is similar to the one that verifies Bitcoin, involving a network of computers that use advanced cryptography to decide whether transactions are valid-and in doing so uses energy on the scale of a small country.

How exactly that energy use translates to carbon emissions is a hotly contested subject. Some estimates suggest as much as 70 percent of mining operations may be powered by clean sources. But that number fluctuates seasonally, and in a global energy grid that mostly runs on fossil fuels, critics say energy use is energy use. Some mining hotspots popular because of cheap hydropower, such as Missoula, Montana, have banned new operations over concerns that even "clean" mining would push neighboring energy users to dirtier energy sources. Ethereum's developers have planned a shift to a less carbon-intensive form of security, called proof-of-stake, via a blueprint called Ethereum 2.0. But this has been in the works for years, and there is no clear deadline for the switch.

"If you look at how much energy we are going to spend in the meantime, it's ridiculous," says Fanny Lakoubay, a crypto art collector and adviser. Ethereum became the platform of choice for digital art sales because it was designed to handle digital transactions that go beyond cryptocurrency, using a system called smart contracts. And as the second-largest blockchain platform after Bitcoin, it was known to be fairly reliable, with an established community of developers. There are alternative blockchains, some of them already using proof-of-stake, but they are perceived as less established-and perhaps less permanent, Lakoubay explains. That makes them less appealing to art buyers who want their claims to very expensive things etched in digital stone.

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NFTs Are Hot. So Is Their Effect on the Earth's Climate

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Two years ago, Joanie Lemercier, a French artist known for his perception-bending light sculptures, took on a new role as a climate activist. He attended protests against coal mining, projecting lasers onto excavators and government offices with dramatic effect, and began a campaign demanding Autodesk stop selling its design software to fossil fuel operations.

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What income avenues do universities rely on? Well, It seems most universities depend on domestic student tuition fees (many claiming up to 80% of their finances are made up of this)
Whilst others are reliant on international student tuition fees. Obviously this has been severely affected by covid.

However, something that I found interesting was this notion of 'multi-employer pension schemes' and staff structuring as a financial strain. How does this deficit, and finger pointing, affect the education we receive?

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Sixty-one per cent of higher education providers reported a deficit in 2018/19, according to new data published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa).

The data for last year appears to show more universities in deficit than in surplus for the first time since records began. Of the 194 higher education providers to submit data to Hesa's annual finance record, 75 were in surplus while 119 were in deficit.

It is a big increase on the previous year's figures, which showed that 47 of 165 reporting higher education providers - or 28.5% - recorded a deficit at the end of 2017/18.

The figure is substantially higher than that reported in 2015/16. Of the 162 institutions which provider data to Hesa then, just 24 - or 14.8% - were in deficit.

This year's finance record is the first to include privately funded providers.

In a statement announcing the data's release, Hesa said many more higher education providers were in deficit "due to a significant pension accounting adjustment (a non-cash expense) in this year following the 2017 valuation of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).

"This expense is not a typical annual operating expense for these providers and therefore not reflective of their underlying financial operating performance in 2018-19," the statistics agency said. However, many of the universities that have reported deficits are not contributors to the USS.

Overall, collective revenue in the sector grew to £40.8 billion in 2018/19, compared with £38.6bn in the previous year-although the more recent data includes alternative providers.

Total expenditure, however, topped £44bn - up from up from £37.3bn in the previous year.

Deficits increase across the sector

The provider with the largest deficit as a proportion of its total income was the New College of the Humanities. The private university, owned by Northeastern University and founded by AC Grayling in 2011, had a deficit of 140% of its total income, the Hesa figures suggest.

The public universities with the largest deficits are the University of Wales (65%), Birkbeck, University of London (28%), Aston University (26%), Aberystwyth University (26%) and the University of Stirling (25%).

University Business approached the above providers for comment.

"This reduction in activity has led to one-off accounting charges within the 2018/19 financial statements which has amplified the accounting deficit position. The university is expecting to deliver a break-even cash position for the 2019/20 financial year."

A spokesperson from Aberystwyth University said: "In February this year, we published our latest financial statements which showed a deficit in the operating position of £2.3m. The statements feature a number of non-cash accounting items required by Accounting Standards, but which do not contribute to the university's underlying operating position.

"It also showed Aberystwyth University to be on track to deliver a small operating surplus in 2019/20, demonstrating a successful focus on the financial sustainability of our institution.

"As with higher education institutions through our sector throughout the world, we are monitoring the effects of the current global COVID19 outbreak and continue to discuss its implications with both sectoral partners and government".

A University of Stirling spokesperson said: "The 2018/19 position is exceptionally impacted by an increase in pension movements, totalling £29 million. These are future commitments to pay down the deficit, not current expenditure.

"Setting aside these pension movements, to allow like for like comparability, the underlying operating position for 2018/19 was a £3.3 million deficit, with a prior year comparable deficit of £2.7 million. This reflects the true operating performance of the university."

An Aston University spokesperson said: "The deficit occurred as a result of technical accounting adjustments. Without these adjustments, the university delivered an underlying operating surplus of £1.6 million."

A spokesperson for Birkbeck said the university first reported an underlying deficit two years ago and have implemented a recovery plan.

"The national USS pension scheme, over which the College has no direct influence, increased by £20.5m in the year and was the single largest contributor to the 28% 'loss'. A large part of this will be reversed by a revaluation of the scheme in 2018," Birkbeck added.

In total, 13 providers - including the universities of Kent, Reading, Keele and King's College London - reported deficits above 20% of their income. In comparison, only two institutions reported deficits above this level in 2017/18.

Many universities have reported a steep increase in staffing costs. At the five public universities with the highest deficits, staffing costs account for 75% of all expenditure.

Some larger Russell Group universities dropped into deficit in 2018/19, and recorded large increases in staffing costs. UCL staffing costs increased from 50.01% of total income in 2017/18 to 70.3% in 2018/19. King's College London staffing costs increased from 56% of total income in 2017/18 to 75.3% in 2018/19.

Revenue from tuition fees

Universities rely on different income sources.

Oxford and Cambridge universities, for example, derived just 14% of income from tuition fees, and Imperial less than a third (29%). The universities of Bedfordshire, Sheffield Hallam, Sunderland, De Montford and Nottingham Trent, however, derived over 80% of their income from students' tuition.

The data shows that over half of the overall income of institutions in England and Wales comes from tuition fees - a drop in domestic student numbers this year could adversely impact universities that rely on their fees to balance the books.

The sector made just under £7bn in revenue - or about 17% of total revenue - from the tuition fees of international students. However, there are only 48 universities that receive 20% or more of all their income from non-UK students.

The London School of Economics, Coventry University and City, University of London derived more than a third of total revenue from international students.

A drop in international student recruitment this year because of coronavirus could impact those higher education providers whose revenues are substantially boosted by overseas recruitment.

How has the Office for Students responded?

Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of the Office for Students (OfS), said: "This data shows that the underlying financial position of most higher education providers is sound.

"Clearly responding to coronavirus is a huge challenge for all providers and could have a significant impact on the financial health of the sector. One of our key priorities during the pandemic is to support the financial sustainability of the sector. Providers with concerns about their financial viability or sustainability should contact us at the earliest opportunity."

Since it was founded in 2018, the OfS has repeatedly said it would not bail out English institutions that are failing - but a recent letter sent to higher education providers suggests the regulator might change tack because of the impact of coronavirus.

In the letter sent on 17 March, Susan Lapworth, OfS director of competition and registration, said that the regulator has set "three key objectives for the coming months, which reflect how we will intend to respond to the impact of Covid-19".

Ms Lapworth told university chiefs her team would be "working with providers to develop practical ways to maintain teaching quality and standards, enable adequate exams and assessment and support financial sustainability".

The OfS has already suspended its normal regulatory regime to minimise to "avoid placing any unnecessary burdens" on institutions, Ms Lapworth added.

An OfS report on financial sustainability published in April 2019 warned: "Providers face increased cost pressures, not least following recent valuations of large multi-employer pension schemes and more general inflationary pressure on costs.

"In light of the uncertainties and challenges they face in the foreseeable future, providers will need to re-assess their financial assumptions and forecasts and ensure that adequate contingency measures are in place to navigate an uncertain environment and ensure financial viability and sustainability."
Read more: Coronavirus: only 49% of students happy with online learning, says Hepi poll You might also like: A-level students not put off by coronavirus crisis, says Ucas

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More than half of higher education providers report deficit - Hesa - University Business

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Sixty-one per cent of higher education providers reported a deficit in 2018/19, according to new data published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa). The data for last year appears to show more universities in deficit than in surplus for the first time since records began.