Education International
technological contexts, and that technical solutions from industry offer the best means of doing so - either directly as products or less directly as ‘templates’ for rethinking HE practices. As a recent example in the Times Higher Education put it, there are valuable lessons for universities in understanding how Amazon and Netflix use customer data to improve user experience. This would entail ‘building tighter feedback loops and letting student feedback more drastically shape institutional design’, being ‘more data/user informed’, ‘making continuous and speedy user-informed improvements’ and cultivating a culture of institutional experimentation’.51 In this example, the key web platforms of the digital economy are treated as exemplary sources of inspiration for HE modernisation. Overall, the imaginary of a more digital and data-intensive HE sector has become increasingly shared and stabilised, as influential organisations and charismatic individuals have sought consensus not just on emergency measures but long-term aspirations to transform HE. Nick Hillman of the UK’s Higher Education Policy Institute has described many ‘revolutionary’ predictions about HE after COVID-19 as ‘exceptionally vague’ and ‘unoriginal’, and while suggesting many of them are unlikely to materialise, he acknowledges significant signs of HE restructuring, including mergers between non- and for-profit providers, and further hybridisation of on-campus and online teaching.52 Rather than appearing in their ‘idealised’ form, imaginaries materialise in context-specific, partial and contingent ways. Many of the visions documented above are also reflected in edtech markets, with private capital positioned as a key force for realising high-tech HE imaginaries.
2. Market catalysts Over the last decade, venture capital and other forms of investment in educational technologies have grown significantly as companies and investors have sought to transform imaginaries of educational transformation into reality through product development funding (Santori, Ball and Junemann 2016). Edtech has become a significant multibillion dollar market segment of a larger global education market now valued, according to market intelligence agencies, at US$6trillion.53 The reported growth of edtech spending by the education sector, and associated growth of private capital sources of investment, is 51 52 53
24
O’Connor, M. 2020, 30 August. Higher education needs a user experience overhaul. Times Higher Education: https://www. timeshighereducation.com/blog/higher-education-needs-user-experience-overhaul Hillman, N. 2020,16 October. The Future of Higher Education After COVID. HEPI: https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2020/10/16/thefuture-of-higher-education-after-COVID/ HolonIQ. 2019, 30 January. 10 charts that explain the Global Education Technology Market. HolonIQ: https://www.holoniq. com/edtech/10-charts-that-explain-the-global-education-technology-market/
