Digital Learning in the UK: Sociological Reflections on an Unequal Marketplace

Perrotta, Carlo

doi:10.3390/socsci7100170

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Finally, the impacts of digitalisation on HE are studied via partnerships between public universities, and MOOC and OPM platform companies (Thomas & Nedeva, 2018). These partnerships are found to reinforce university stratification and inequalities in the HE sectors that were analysed (Perrotta, 2018;Swinnerton et al, 2019). Moreover, unbundling of HE provision into its parts and reconfiguring it into new delivery forms is found to be one of the most significant impacts of digitalisation in HE (Cliff, Walji, Mogliacci, Morris, & Ivancheva, 2020;Swinnerton et al, 2019).…”

Section: On the Intersection Of Digitalisation And Marketisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…OPMs support universities in developing and delivering courses online. The monetisation model is either that OPM companies share tuition revenue with universities over a certain period (usually a decade) for investing their resources in developing a course or charge a fee-for-service that universities pay (Perrotta, 2018). In case of MOOCs, the profits are made from charging fees for services other than access to content, i.e.…”

Section: A Need For Studying the Diversity Of Digitalisation In And Omentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the case of partnerships between universities and platform companies like OPMs and MOOCs to offer study programmes or their parts together, the most common model is to share the profits, which I elaborated above. However, it seems that the sharing of profit refers to monetary rent (Perrotta, 2018;Taneja & Goel, 2014). It is not known how the data rent is shared, if at all.…”

Section: A Need For Studying Data Rents In Higher Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Not much is known about these trends specifically in HE. The emerging research found that partnerships between universities and OPMs and MOOCs in the UK and South Africa reinforce existing inequalities and stratification of HE systems (Perrotta, 2018;Swartz et al, 2019;Swinnerton et al, 2019). We indeed urgently need research on the political economy of EdTech, but we also need a public debate on what kind of HE digitalisation and EdTech we want.…”

Section: Political Move: From Data Privacy To Data Valuementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The study of HE markets has so far almost entirely focused on service-commodities (for example, Brown, 2011;Jungblut & Vukasovic, 2018;Marginson, 2013Marginson, , 2018Naidoo & Williams, 2015). This is including emerging studies on digitalisation of HE (Castañeda & Selwyn, 2018;Perrotta, 2018;Swinnerton et al, 2019;Williamson, 2018). However, digitalisation of HE involves production and extraction of digital data, and data and data products do not act like commodities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The future of value in digitalised higher education: why data privacy should not be our biggest concern

Komljenovič

2020

High Educ

100

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Universities around the world are increasingly digitalising all of their operations, with the current COVID-19 pandemic speeding up otherwise steady developments. This article focuses on the political economy of higher education (HE) digitalisation and suggests a new research programme. I foreground three principal arguments, which are empirically, theoretically, and politically crucial for HE scholars. First, most literature is examining the impacts of digitalisation on the HE sector and its subjects alone. I argue that current changes in digitalising HE cannot be studied in isolation from broader changes in the global economy. Specifically, HE digitalisation is embedded in the expansion of the digital economy, which is marked by new forms of value extraction and rentiership. Second, the emerging research on the intersection of marketisation and digitalisation in HE seems to follow the theories of marketisation qua production and commodification. I argue that we need theories with better explanatory power in analysing the current digitalisation dynamics. I propose to move from commodification to assetisation, and from prices to rents. Finally, universities are digitalising in the time when the practice is superseding policy, and there is no regulation beyond the question of data privacy. However, digital data property is already a reality, governed by ‘terms of use’, and protected by the intellectual property rights regime. The current pandemic has led to ‘emergency pedagogy’, which has intensified overall digitalisation in the sector and is bypassing concerns of data value redistribution. I argue that we urgently need public scrutiny and political action to address issues of value extraction and redistribution in HE.

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