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Noble, David F. "Digital Diploma Mills: the Automation of Higher Education," First Monday, Issue 3_1, 1998.

This classic paper argues that the trend towards automation of higher education as implemented in North American universities today is a battle between students and professors on one side, and university administrations and companies with "educational products" to sell on the other. It is not a progressive trend towards a new era at all, but a regressive trend, towards the old era of mass-production, standardization and purely commercial interests.

White, Frank.  "Digital Diploma Mills: A Dissenting Voice,"  First Monday, Issue 4_7, 1999.

Professor David Noble's series of three papers, which appeared in 1997-98 under the uniform title, Digital Diploma Mills, has provoked widespread debate and controversy. Noble contends that technology in general, and Internet/Web-based technologies in particular, are instruments of social control that neither faculty nor students want. Noble is leading the battle to wrestle technology from the grips of conniving university administrators and greedy corporate CEOs. While I support his defense of faculty rights, I challenge his biased and ill-informed opinions about distributed learning technologies and I worry that he may be alienating potential faculty and student allies.

The result of the new technologies may be to deepen the divide between educational haves and have-nots, and that the marketplace alone will not fix the problem.  Public policy must intervene to narrow the “digital divide’ between whites and minorities, the wealthy and less advantaged.