The odds are that the students are freeloading on the dime of the taxpayers anyway, and somehow the aid or tax money essentially helps to buy and pay for the computer. IE: the degree nor the computer is truly theirs until the debts are paid off. If you are going to break my bread; then, I'll be damned if you aren't going to sing my song. Don't like it, pay for private school on your own family's dime. The world owes you nothing.

It does not matter if they are an adult or juvenile. If they are a student on campus,and using a campus computer then they do not have the right to privacy. The student can be monitored by the instructor.

then the institution should be able to monitor your activities. Whether or not the individual being monitored is an adult or minor is of no consequence. If you want to web browse, use your PDA or Iphone. School resources are for school work.

Easy, yes it they are kids and yes if adults that are using school resources including bandwidth.

How can we answer this without knowing whether the students are kids or adults?

If you are not doing anything wrong why worry. You are in school to learn not surf the web or hang on My Space all day.

If we're talking about a professor monitoring his student's computer activity during class, when the student is supposed to be working on class-related work, I see no difference between that and going around checking their progress on math problems, or reading over their shoulder when they're writing essays.

In the off chance that this question includes monitoring computers after-hours, when the student is on his own time, that I naturally would object to. But from my reading of the article, I assume the question has to do with the former.

The question wasn't very specific. It's a valuable teacher tool to be able to see how your students are doing without having to break from the lecture and walk around or ask everyone if they're ready to continue when they probably don't know if they got the step right. Outside of class it's really just spying.

I answered no to the general question. However, if the student is a minor, ie too young to vote, my answer is yes.