Disclaimer: I went through college and currently teach part time. I wish something like github was around when I was in college - I only got into self-hosted SVN repos near my senior years. As a professor - I believe in transparency when it comes to my classes.
tl;dr; What should have happened is that UofI should have worked with github to turn those repos into (free) private ones. That way the content is removed from the public and search indexes and the students can still use/review the material they created in the class later on if they want to.
I have only taught 3 classes/2 subjects - object oriented (heavy programming), and operating systems (light usage). I run my own source code hosting service and will pre-provision private repos for them (for free obviously). I also encourage them to get private repos from github (you can get it for free if you need it for a class) if they don't like mine (I am not one of those teachers who force them to use their book or service - students are free to use whatever resource they want....just maybe not CVS or RCS...).
I strongly recommend private because obviously I don't want other students to copy their work (but I do encourage collaboration for homework). However, most of my assignments are pretty open-ended to the point where I would notice obvious plagiarism. A few students have created public git repos because they aren't familiar with github or even git - which I am perfectly fine with. I would rather change my assignments than force a student to take down their git repo (which I should probably do anyways). The last thing that I would want is for a student to have a negative association with using source code hosting services like github.
Some comments suggest that the university may claim ownership over the code - which may be BS depending on how the code was acquired. The university may have paid some guy off the street to write this code and the university hired a professor and said "you will use this code to teach your class". If this was the case - then I could be ok with this takedown. If a professor wrote it in their spare time for the class and the university is trying to claim ownership - then I have a problem with it.
This does make me wonder - how many students requested private repos for their classes and shoved the code there? They won't have their code taken down obviously - so the only people who are punished are those trying to learn and understand the class and git/github.
tl;dr; What should have happened is that UofI should have worked with github to turn those repos into (free) private ones. That way the content is removed from the public and search indexes and the students can still use/review the material they created in the class later on if they want to.
I have only taught 3 classes/2 subjects - object oriented (heavy programming), and operating systems (light usage). I run my own source code hosting service and will pre-provision private repos for them (for free obviously). I also encourage them to get private repos from github (you can get it for free if you need it for a class) if they don't like mine (I am not one of those teachers who force them to use their book or service - students are free to use whatever resource they want....just maybe not CVS or RCS...).
I strongly recommend private because obviously I don't want other students to copy their work (but I do encourage collaboration for homework). However, most of my assignments are pretty open-ended to the point where I would notice obvious plagiarism. A few students have created public git repos because they aren't familiar with github or even git - which I am perfectly fine with. I would rather change my assignments than force a student to take down their git repo (which I should probably do anyways). The last thing that I would want is for a student to have a negative association with using source code hosting services like github.
Some comments suggest that the university may claim ownership over the code - which may be BS depending on how the code was acquired. The university may have paid some guy off the street to write this code and the university hired a professor and said "you will use this code to teach your class". If this was the case - then I could be ok with this takedown. If a professor wrote it in their spare time for the class and the university is trying to claim ownership - then I have a problem with it.
This does make me wonder - how many students requested private repos for their classes and shoved the code there? They won't have their code taken down obviously - so the only people who are punished are those trying to learn and understand the class and git/github.