Pandemic Privatisation in Higher Education: Edtech & University Reform
pandemic’.21 Technology companies ‘argue for increased experimentation, in part, because a return to normality is virtually impossible without the use of technology. Technological fixes can be uncritically adopted to facilitate the new circumstances of everyday activities such as studying and working’ (Evangelista and Firmino 2020, p. 103). The rise of disaster technocapitalism is enabling the ‘rapid acceleration’ of commercial networked technologies ‘into the realm of critical services such as health and education without democratic participation and oversight’ (Yeung 2020, p. 55). Private technology actors push for technological solutions, greater data collection and increased access for users, but ‘when technology is presented as a scalable and efficient solution to complex social problems by governments, companies, or (more often than not) a combination of the two, there is little (if any) space to question the power structures and institutions that gave birth to these social problems in the first place’ (Marda, 2020, p. 31). The role of technology companies in the emergency response to the pandemic has therefore amplified many existing problems of technology, ‘including techno-solutionism; the frequent thinness of the legitimacy of technological intervention; excessive public attention on elaborate yet ineffective procedures in the absence of a nuanced political response; and the (re)production of power and information asymmetries through new applications of technology’ (Taylor et al, 2020, p. 14). HE is currently experiencing a state of emergency, exception and experimentation too, with private sector organisations and commercial technology proffered as policy solutions to the pandemic. This is both a short-term emergency strategy and, for some organisations, an exceptional long-term opportunity for experimentation with potentially profound consequences for the future of HE, raising sharp questions about whether future HE systems will be centred on concerns of educational purpose, technologically-measurable learning performance, private reformatory interests, or commercial profit advantage.
3. About this report Our aim in this report is not to criticise the emergency response, or to take up a partisan position in relation to debates about campus reopening or the uptake of various modes of remote, flexible, hybrid or 21
Sharma, G. & Martin, A. 2020, 21 August. Global Data Justice and COVID-19: Governing through technology during the pandemic. Data Active: https://data-activism.net/2020/08/bigdatasur-COVID-global-data-justice-and-COVID-19-governingthrough-technology-during-the-pandemic/
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