The complicity of digital technologies in the marketisation of UK higher education: exploring the implications of a critical discourse analysis of thirteen national digital teaching and learning strategies

Morag Munro

doi:10.1186/s41239-018-0093-2

Abstract

National strategies play a crucial role in framing how digital technologies are enacted in Higher Education (HE). This paper draws on some of the findings of a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of thirteen digital teaching and learning strategies issued by government departments and non-departmental public bodies in the UK between 2003 and 2013. It demonstrates that, across the strategies, digital technologies are depicted as tools for advancing the marketisation of UK HE. Rather ironically, the strategies are also fraught with contradictions and paradoxes with respect to the claimed relationships between digital technologies, learning, and markets. I argue that this problematic portrayal of digital technologies makes them complicit in the neoliberal erosion of UK HE.

Highlights

Digital technologies have become an accepted part of the contemporary Higher Education (HE) landscape
The current paper draws on some of the findings of a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of 13 digital teaching and learning strategies issued by government departments and non-departmental public bodies in England, Wales, and Scotland4 that were concerned partly, or entirely, with HE, spanning the time frame 2003–2013, and amounting to a corpus of approximately 138, 900 words
CDA encompasses a diverse range of approaches, which differ in their theoretical frameworks and methods (Wodak & Meyer, 2009)

Summary

Introduction

Digital technologies have become an accepted part of the contemporary Higher Education (HE) landscape. Proponents of marketisation assert that market-based competition drives HEIs to become more efficient, innovative, and entrepreneurial; leads to a higher quality of research activity and education provision; generates better diversity of provision (and more student choice); and results in a better alignment between HE’s ‘outputs’ (research and graduates) and economic and societal needs (Brown, 2011; Massy, 2004; McGettigan, 2013).

Results

Conclusion