Pandemic Privatisation in Higher Education: Edtech & University Reform

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Education International

including Ernst and Young, McKinsey and Company, KPMG and Deloitte have all produced blueprint proposals for the future of universities that emphasise the potentially transformative effects of digital technologies and data use.30 Digital and data-intensive smart universities, it has been claimed, are ‘institutions that can use the huge amounts of data they generate to improve the student learning experience, enhance the research enterprise, support effective community outreach, and advance the campus’s infrastructure’ (Lane and Finsel, 2014, p. 4). However, these ideals of the digital university favoured by policymakers and policy influencers also emphasise neoliberal logics of economics, efficiency, competition, audit, accounting, performance measurement, quality management, marketisation, commercialisation and privatisation (Selwyn, 2014). Processes of marketisation, privatisation and commercialisation of HE mean universities are increasingly focused on achieving market value through competition, performance ranking, consumer demand, and return on investment (Busch, 2016). Data and metrics such as performance rankings and accountability ratings have become driving ‘engines’ of HE, exerting powerful effects on how universities are evaluated and incentivising institutions to ensure they perform to meet the metrics (Espeland and Sauder, 2016). Universities have been encouraged to advance their use of digital infrastructures and platforms, particularly by ‘unbundling’ their services into component parts and exposing them to market forces for ‘rebundling’ by outsourced commercial companies as new digital products (McCowan, 2017).

3. Global Higher Education Industry As part of this shift to digital and data-intensive universities, a ‘Global HE Industry’ has expanded and mutated to include a range of digital providers and data services vendors (Komljenovic and Robertson, 2017). The Global HE Industry includes a vast array of businesses, consultancies, think tanks, investors and other private actors and commercial organisations, which together function to open up tertiary education to market processes. Combined, the Global HE Industry and processes of marketisation, privatisation and commercialisation underpin the 30

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Ernst and Young. 2018. Can the universities of today lead learning for tomorrow? The University of the Future. EY: https:// www.ey.com/en_au/government-public-sector/can-the-universities-of-today-lead-learning-for-tomorrow; McKinsey and Company. 2018. How higher-education institutions can transform themselves using advanced analytics. McKinsey: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/how-higher-education-institutions-cantransform-themselves-using-advanced-analytics; Deloitte. 2018. The impact of predictive analytics in higher education. Deloitte: https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/ public-sector/articles/five-principles-for-improving-student-outcomes.html; KPMG. 2019. Future-proofing the university. KPMG: https://home.kpmg/uk/en/home/insights/2019/02/future-proofing-theuniversity.html


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Role of unions

8min
pages 73-80

Research recommendations

1min
page 72

7. Reproducing inequalities

6min
pages 68-71

6. Academic freedom and autonomy

4min
pages 66-67

4. Programmed pedagogic environments

2min
page 64

5. Datafication and surveillance

1min
page 65

10. Student and staff surveillance

4min
pages 54-55

1. Reimagining Higher Education

1min
page 61

2. Governance by technology infrastructures

1min
page 62

3. University-industry hybridities

1min
page 63

7. Reimagining credentials

6min
pages 47-49

8. Challenger universities and new PPPs

4min
pages 50-51

5. Online program management

6min
pages 42-44

6. Student-consumer edtech

3min
pages 45-46

9. Campus in the cloud

3min
pages 52-53

11. AI transformations

8min
pages 56-60

4. Return of the MOOC

7min
pages 38-41

2. Market catalysts

7min
pages 30-33

4. Digitalisation and datafication

4min
pages 21-23

1. Higher Education privatisation and commercialisation

1min
page 11

3. Global Higher Education Industry

1min
page 20

2. States of emergency, exception and experimentation

6min
pages 12-14

3. About this report

7min
pages 15-18

1. Animating imaginaries

10min
pages 24-29

3. Learning management and experience platforms

7min
pages 34-37
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