* * * Politics Beware * * *
I've tried writing this email a few times and it's not going to sound good any
way up so this is just a brain dump with a request for comment at the end.
1. I'm told that the current government are keen to have FE colleges teach more
degree courses validated by Universities as it's, apparently, cheaper.
2. I'm also told the way our institution has decided to make this arrangement
work is for a cohort of N students to be taught by the FE College but have X%
of N be in our HESA stats and (100-X)% be in theirs.
3. It transpires that the FE Colleges require the use of our online service
subscriptions (here be MONSTERS!) for reasons which it would be improper for me
to go into here.
This presents me, as the person implementing our Shibboleth IDP, with a
problem:
Let N = 1000 and X = 50%.
So 500 new students will appear on our official numbers and 500 on the
associated FE college. I'm working on the assumption that the first 500
constitute "member" but the other 500 don't.
Assuming the above is correct (and I'm happy to take discussion on that point),
what could we possibly assert for the others? All I could come up with was
"affiliate" as the technical recommendations document[1] says:
§7.1.2.1 The value affiliate is defined as applying to those with whom
the organisation has some dealings, but to whom no set of general membership
privileges are extended.
This would seem to apply. However we'd need to get all the relevant online
services to agree to accept (for a fee?) the assertion of affiliate as
"allowed".
The other option that I can see is agreeing, either bilaterally with SPs or
multilaterally via the Federation, to the use of an eduPersonEntitlement to
assert access should be allowed (i.e. we've done some checking and think that
this user is allowed under any specific terms agreed between the subscriber and
the service).
So many license things seem to be keyed off the HESA return that this can't be
a good idea in the long run, can it?
Is there precedent for any of this (the FE college students being shared
between HESA numbers, having access to journals etc)?
[1] http://www.ukfederation.org.uk/library/uploads/Documents/technical-recommendations-for-participants.pdf
Thanks for getting this far and I hope it made sense!
--
Matthew Slowe
Server Infrastructure Team e: [log in to unmask]
IS, University of Kent t: +44 (0)1227 824265
Canterbury, UK w: www.kent.ac.uk
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