Bear And Copyright Contract Fall Through The Cracks: Who Owns Student Art Work?

In the early 1990's, when I was applying to film schools, I recall that different schools had different policies regarding the copyright ownership of student work. Copyright in any work, of course, is owned by the author in the first instance. However, many colleges and universities have policies (and in some cases contracts) that purport to alter that basic ownership principle, by requiring that students assign some or all of their rights to the school. For example, USC film school's policy provides that the school owns the copyright in any film made using school equipment. The policy at NYU's film school, by contrast, is that students retain their copyright for the most part but must grant NYU the right to purchase copies of and display the work. These policies are rarely tested because, historically, there has not been a large or profitable market for this work.