The Algorithmic University: On-Line Education, Learning Management Systems, and the Struggle over Academic Labor

Abstract

The use of on-line education (OLE) to deliver higher education using learning management systems (LMS) has received growing critical attention for its reliance on precarious faculty, high dropout and failure rates, and as a form of privatization. While these critiques are well grounded, they overlook the role of OLE as a strategy for rationalizing teaching and deskilling academic labor in order to produce more self-disciplined precarious “platform” workers who can labor remotely under the control of algorithmic management. To recompose the power of academic workers, new tactics, strategies, and objectives based on an analysis of the new technical composition of capital in higher education are needed.