Not sure what you mean by graph, but w/the EWS page you linked it seems they make it possible to control which apps can connect by looking at the user-agent string.

For davmail, apparently it means .davmail.properties would need to have davmail.userAgent=OWS (where OWS is whatever the server expects). But if the admins are diligent, they could make it difficult by choosing a random string for that, which would then require sniffing packets leaving an approved client. And if the approved client is a web app, it’s possible that the user-agent string is added on the server side.

Are you saying the MS Outlook mail client is viable? If so, then I would expect Thunderbird and maildav to simply work because those tools both directly speak Microsoft’s exchange protocol. I would be interested in knowing if Thunderbird and maildav are blocked because it would require the mail server to do something a bit proactively evil, as opposed to merely pushing a proprietary protocol and looking the other way.

I should mention that I assumed from context that EWS was a web-only workflow, but after a quick look that seems to be how people describe the exchange protocol.

I hate, for example, that my college only enables the use of Outlook through EWS as an email client, and Office 365 web as a web client.

I never knew the nannying could go that far as to force students & staff into a web browser for email. Usually in MS Exchange situations, Thunderbird is a drop-in replacement and there’s also davmail if you want to use your linux client of choice. But these are only options if the exchange server is reachable.

And I can’t have an email client on a Linux computer to read and write those emails? I hate it. But I also don’t want to be one of those who reply from a personal email to professional stuff.

I recall a long time ago Yahoo introduced a change to make their mail servers exclusively reachable to paying subscribers. Those with gratis plans were forced to use their web UI (presumably to feed advertising revenue). One rebellious developer scraped the website and integrated an IMAP or POP3 server, so the gratis users could use that bridge to return to using their mail clients of choice. It seems bizarre that a university would impose the shitty web on email users. But the same scraping trick could be a way around it. I see there already exists some projects along the same lines for EWS.

OTOH, EWS will be dropped this year.

W.r.t using a different ESP, you could send email to your recipients without touching the university system. Neomutt will let you enter the FROM: address freehand. From there, you just need an ESP that’s flexible about that, or you can run your own server just for sending. For inbound, then you are still chained to the garbage toolchain unless you take the scraping route or harvest EML files from EWS.

but why can’t there be another network where labs can host their own databases, file servers, compute servers, and can connect their own PCs?

In the 90s, my university had general services for all students and all disciplines, but then the engineering department had their own servers including email. I can’t imagine a university that would nanny their engineering dept and block them from practicing the trade they are studying. It would be embarrassingly anti-academic.

Speaking of anti-academic -- I must say the mere use of MS mail servers is anti-academic because MS blocks all inbound mail from residential IPs. It means the university is actually blocking students from running their own mail server at home and then using it to email other students. It’s effectively a proactive assault on students and profs who want to tinker.

The bullets were all w.r.t. a Danish university. I know some US universities have some of the same issues -- certainly the 1st bullet.

Indeed I was aware that my experiences would differ from others when I wrote that. I got a couple degrees in the 90s (US), got another degree purely online around 2005, then recently went to a Danish university. The comparison spans countries and ~25 years.

How is it the fault of a University that the majority of the public uses social media? Yes, my institution uses social media, though I don’t think they use facebook anymore… Besides Lemmy, I have zero social media, and yet I am aware of all events going on campus. Everything is notified via university email, not just social media.

The problem is not the mere use of social media. The problem is exclusion. Facebook and all the other I mention are exclusive platforms. You must agree to the terms of a giant monopolistic US corporation. If you don’t supply a mobile phone number to that corp, you are excluded. You cannot even read content on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn without an acct. (Side note: Facebook is also purposely designed to be destructively addictive - and yes a school that promotes FB deserves blame for that)

I have no problem with inclusive, non-controversial social media that does not require selling one’s soul to the devil.

And yes, the blame is squarely on the university who opts for Facebook and Twitter. The university becomes exclusive when it puts its own resources and content inside of an access-restricted technofeudal walled-garden. Students will use the shit platforms if they want and that’s orthoganol to the university. But when the university itself uses Facebook, that crosses a line. It excludes people and drags others into shit.

In fact, when it’s a public university it crosses a human rights line. From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Art. 22-2:

“Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.”

If the university /duplicates/ every single Facebook and Twitter msg in a public space, which also has a feedback mechanism for those outside of FB and Twitter, that’s fair enough. But then you have to ask, how is the cost of maintaining redundant Facebook and Twitter accounts cost effective given the funding limits? Using something like Mastodon and Lemmy is inclusive. They could perhaps have a bot that copies Mastodon posts to Twitter, perhaps with a disclosure that Twitter replies won’t be read. That would enable all to participate without excessive cost.

(update)

ChatGPT and AI is a giant problem right now in academia. Nothing I do seems to convince students that using AI to do their homework harms their education. If someone knows a solution to this, I’m all ears. I’m tired of people blaming me, or the university, for things we’re trying to find solutions to.

I would first say it’s not your problem (details here).

Schools and profs indeed get blamed for the fact that grades cannot be accurate as cheaters get far ahead of the game. But schools can (and should) point the finger back to the employers. It’s incompetent employers who use school grades to appraise new hires.

Their appraisal is their job. It’s not the school’s responsibility to produce grades that employers can use for their profit-driven purposes. This problem will sort itself out. Employers will eventually be forced to accept this fact.

Note that my mention of chatbots in the OP of this thread herein is entirely unrelated. I was just expressing discontent with the universities not being on the ball about deploying their own AI research tools.

Indeed, the failure belongs to the adults, not the kids. As Rutger Bregman said in the linked article:

“Now remember, this is not human nature, it's human culture. The kids are merely holding up a mirror and what they reflect back is what we've been teaching them. Currently, around 40% of Harvard graduates end up in that Bermuda triangle of BS jobs…”

The kids have been pushed into this lousy mindset and direction to a large extent. But I would attribute as much to culture as force of the underfunding situation. It’s not entirely force but the culture we have created.

There is money to get into school, and then there is money to be earned after graduation. The research Bregman seems to refer to the latter because developing a long-term philosophy about life is not something with the same here-and-now urgency as money to get into school.

You’re probably right w/a lot of that. I’m not real in tune with the funding. But indeed lack of funding has consequences. In the very least we can examine whether the funding they get is being wisely spent. For example:

Students need jobs.

Students are also cheap labor. Campus jobs are ideal for a number of reasons. I’m not sure why 4 years of system admin experience on a campus mail server and Lemmy or Mastodon server would not be good to have on a CV -- as opposed to a student who was paid for flipping burgers or bartending before seeking a tech gig. In-sourcing should be viewed as an opportunity to give students relevant experience that employers value. Having MS run the email server squanders that opportunity.

Ditch proprietary s/w to save money

I’m probably not well informed about the funding issues, but certainly one way to save money is to nix all the software licensing costs and run FOSS. Then have students improve the FOSS (for pay or to work a class assignment) as needed by the university, which in turn gives students hands-on experience for the CV. Enriching the commons like that also means the university brings value to the public that further justifies public funding.

I would sooner welcome my tax spent on schools that give back to the commons through FOSS use and improvement, than I would a school that then feeds the giant corps.

Gratis hardware is fine for FOSS

University hardware can be had for free to a large extent. Windows boot lickers are forced to upgrade their hardware chronically. They throw away hardware that still has 15 years of useful life if only it had linux installed on it.