The surreptitious infiltration of private interests in public education

The surreptitious infiltration of private interests in public education Pearson Education Australia at the University of Newcastle

In recent times, highly visible instances of the private interests infiltrating Australian public universities, like Ramsay Centres, have been critiqued for posing a threat to the autonomy and integrity of our higher education system. Also troubling are the less visible ways private interests are being ensconced into the fabric of public tertiary education.

Elizabeth Adamczyk, University of Newcastle

Human Geography, School of Environmental and Life Sciences; Economics, Newcastle Business School I am a casual academic, Committee Member of the NTEU Newcastle Branch, and a member of the National Tertiary Casuals Committee (NTCC). I write these words on the un-ceded lands of the Awabakal people. These views are my own.

At the University of Newcastle (UoN) in Semester 2, 2018 the substantive content of some first-year courses delivered through face-to-face classes in the Newcastle Business School (NBS), including Microeconomics, was contracted to an external private company – Pearson Education Australia. Pearson offers ‘digital courseware’ in areas including business, teaching, social sciences, nursing, anatomy and physiology, science and maths. Pearson provides content, exercises, homework questions, and exams delivered via the company’s online platform that is integrated into a university’s own online platform: in their words, a holistic ‘solution’ that 'unlocks benefits for students and educators'. Pearson markets their courseware as serving ‘the needs of students’, and ‘saving time and cost’. Alongside UoN, the University of the Sunshine Coast, Monash, Flinders, and undisclosed tertiary institutions including in Western Australia have each established commercial agreements with Pearson to provide courseware. Commoditising components of public tertiary education As tertiary education has been commoditised, its electronic delivery has taken on the characteristics of product exchange in a global marketplace. In 2015 in the USA ‘e-learning’ was a $107 billion USD ‘industry’. By 2025, it is predicted to triple to $325 billion USD. In Australia the commodification of online education is an emerging venture led by what the NTEU calls ‘its largest player’ Pearson Australia, a subsidiary of Pearson Global with the somewhat lofty aspiration to become 'the Netflix of education'. Without recognising that the marketisation of tertiary education is structured around the profit-seeking and competitive imperatives of university managements we run the risk of falsely blaming private companies – such as Pearson, Ramsay, or Navitas – solely for the corrosive dimensions of the commercialisation of education. Through agreements with these private companies, entrepreneurial university managements are authorising the presence of private interests to guide curriculum in public institutions.

Benefits or costs? The incentive to ‘save time’ for teachers using these resources is clear. Pearson can provide teaching slides, assessment items, homework, and exams. In this way, the upfront costs and labours of developing the information contained in these resources (and the supporting technologies) are shouldered by the third-party company rather than academic staff. Still, the decision to use Pearson courseware at UoN seemed to be made by management – rather than in consultation with academic staff delivering this course. Such a choice risks fostering malaise and constrains autonomy. Using third-party class, homework, and assessment content also removes ownership. Academic staff simply become intermediaries in the classroom, connecting the online content provided by Pearson to the student. Students could access this courseware in any place they can access a device, which could lead UoN to deliver these courses solely online in the future. Accountability and risk Academic staff at UoN delivering Pearson coursework encountered repeated freezes and logouts in the online platforms. With accountability unclear, the experience of a number of staff teaching the course was that neither Pearson nor UoN Management purchasing the content provided effective pre-emptive nor reactive support to equip academic staff to manage electronic failures. Students of course do not necessarily differentiate between teaching staff, Pearson sales people, or UoN managers. When problems arise at the coalface in the classroom, the staff in front of students bear responsibility. A Pearson ‘sales representative’ did advise UoN academic staff if they encountered absent, confusing, unsubstantiated, or other problematic content to simply ‘fix’ the content in Pearson’s online platform. This advice ironically came to UoN staff teaching a course with concepts including how profit-seeking private companies seek to maximise revenue by minimising their cost of production. As management in public universities gift private companies the labours and knowledges of their own staff, to (re) develop Pearson resources, this enables Pearson to progress at minimal cost to the company. Not only are academic staff being arguably rendered redundant, universities are themselves actively building the conditions to be pushed out of this education 'marketplace'. Privacy concerns in these commercial interests are also rife. Operating via their own online platform that can be integrated into the courses of a public institution, Pearson requested students and academic staff sign a 17-page, 8,000 word contract to access their courseware. This contract also gave Pearson permission to mine ‘Personally Identifiable Information’.

Its ambiguous terms remained unquestioned by students. Concerningly, the commercial agreement and its contents were not transparently communicated to staff teaching the course, nor clearly disclosed online on the university's website

A questionable standard The erosion of academic integrity and critical intellectual inquiry in ‘public’ higher education through sub-contracting course content is not isolated. In the USA, Pearson has enjoyed a chequered history of testing problems, contract fails, and lawsuits. Yet, many of the ‘efficacy reports’ that Pearson publishes on their website as exemplars of their offerings to persuade university decision-makers of the benefits in using their ‘digital courseware’, draw examples from the USA. Private interests have also penetrated into other government-provided education in Australia. Pearson holds a $41.6 million contract to deliver Naplan. Pearson also delivers the ‘Pearson Test of English Academic’: a computer-based test of English used for university admission and immigration purposes. By engaging private companies to deliver education in a capitalised marketplace, public bodies like universities and governments allow them to also shape the terms on which individuals are able to progress through education, and enter our country.

Questioning a status quo Sub-contracting to the private sector arguably enables profiteering decision making that puts finances over the interests of quality and pedagogies. At UoN, sub-contracting to Pearson has occurred concurrently to increased tuition fees, reduced course resourcing, increased executive remuneration, and building a sector-leading surplus. As an active choice in the strategic use of resources by managements, out-sourcing education needs to continue to be interrogated. At ANU for example, the Enterprise Agreement requires contracting and labour hire be used only for activities that cannot be met from existing staff resources.

The practical effect of normalising practices like this is that the quasi-private dimensions of ‘public’ education become accepted. While neoliberalism seems to have become the master-signifier of the tertiary education system, we need to continue to interrogate the privatised conditions being established in our public institutions. As Tronto notes, the neoliberalisation of the university is neither normal nor invincible. ◆