Digital asset-making in the global higher education sector
Janja Komljenovic (Lancaster University)

Higher education (HE) is traditionally perceived as part of the public sector. This perception has long been put under pressure by processes of privatisation and commodification via tuition fees, private universities, micro-credentials, and other measures (Verger et al., 2016). More recently, it is being increasingly assetised akin to other economic and social sectors embedded in the digital economy (Komljenovic, 2021). Assets can be understood as resources that bring continuous economic benefit to the owner as a consequence of ownership or control of the asset (Birch & Muniesa, 2020). In particular, the digitalisation of the HE sector brings new opportunities for creating a diversity of digital assets, such as video recordings of lectures, digital user data as students and staff engage with digital platforms in their teaching and learning practices, and infrastructure for skills matching. These assets are being created through digital platforms used in the HE sector. They span from those offering virtual learning environments (e.g. Blackboard) to research management systems (e.g. Pure), massive open online courses (e.g. Coursera), and a myriad of new education technology (edtech) specific platforms. Moreover, big tech companies are key in the digitalisation of HE (e.g. Microsoft suite including Teams). These diverse digital platforms connect in university institutional and higher education sectorial digital ecosystems (Hein et al., 2020). The question then becomes, what are the technological, legal and economic relations between individual users, universities and platform owners in these ecosystems; who owns, controls, and uses the emerging digital assets in the digital HE sector; and who benefits economically?

This talk draws on a large scale-research project analysing edtech companies, investors in edtech, and universities as users of edtech. Drawing on 50 interviews and document analysis of more than 2,000 texts, the analysis maps the evolving and emerging dynamic of digital asset-making in HE. The presentation focuses on aspects of (1) the notions of value in a digitalising HE sector (what is perceived to have value and can be turned into an asset), (2) future imaginaries (what future is imagined for edtech, its assets, and the higher education sector), (3) the struggles of entrepreneurs, investors and universities over future asset control and economic benefit. I argue that assetisation is a new form of governing social and economic relations in digitalised higher education; and as such, needs urgent attention.

References:

Birch, K., & Muniesa, F. (Eds.). (2020). Assetization: Turning things into assets in technoscientific capitalism. The MIT Press.

Hein, A., Schreieck, M., Riasanow, T., Setzke, D. S., Wiesche, M., Böhm, M., & Krcmar, H. (2020). Digital platform ecosystems. Electronic Markets, 30(1), 87–98. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-019-00377-4

Komljenovic, J. (2021). The rise of education rentiers: Digital platforms, digital data and rents. Learning, Media and Technology, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2021.1891422

Verger, A., Lubienski, C., & Steiner-Khamsi, G. (Eds.). (2016). World Yearbook of Educaiton 2016: The Global Education Industry. Routledge.

Janja Komljenovic is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Higher Education Research and Evaluation at Lancaster University in the UK. She is also a Research Management Committee member of the Global Centre for Higher Education, with headquarters at the University of Oxford. Janja’s research

focuses on the political economy of knowledge production and higher education markets. She is especially interested in the relationship between the digital economy and the higher education sector; and in digitalisation, datafication and platformisation of knowledge production and dissemination. Janja is published internationally on higher education policy, markets and education technology.