- Educational technology is being used as a tool in the war on public education and the commodification of higher education. - Technologies like cloud computing, learning management systems from companies like Blackboard, and mobile learning are enabling the privatization and outsourcing of academic services. - These technologies facilitate the separation of work, distribution of skills to low-wage societies, and attempts to commodify and monetize aspects of education. - Academics must critically examine and question how technologies impact universities and what can be done to re-imagine higher education as a public good rather than a private commodity.

1. Educational technology and the
war on public education
The Problem of "Dirty Hands" in UK Universities
Dr Richard Hall [@hallymk1, rhall1@dmu.ac.uk]

2. • The University is folded inside a systemic,
historical crisis of capitalism.
• Capital is accumulating historically-
developed, public/social value through
commodification and coercion [TINA].
• Within the University, educational
technology is a central site of struggle/'dirty
hands'.

3. ‘we’re living in a moment when, for the first time,
capitalism has become a truly universal
system.... Capitalism is universal also in the
sense that its logic – the logic of accumulation,
commodification, profit-maximisation,
competition – has penetrated almost every
aspect of human life and nature itself’.
Meiksins-Wood, E. (1997). Back to Marx. Monthly Review, 49(2), 1.

4. [Technology] is a high level system that
affects the way humans interact with the
world. This means that one technology in
most cases can comprise numerous
artefacts and be applied in many different
situations. It needs to be associated with a
vision that embodies specific views of
humans and their role in the world.
Ikonen et al., 2010, pp. 3-4 [http://bit.ly/GM05en]

5. Technology discloses man’s mode of
dealing with Nature, the process of
production by which he sustains his life,
and thereby also lays bare the mode of
formation of his social relations, and of the
mental conceptions that flow from them.
Marx, K. (2004). Capital Volume 1, p. 493)

6. Educational technologies embedded at the heart
of the University’s practices:
3.re-inscribe hegemonic cultural positions;
5.enable the systemic re-production of social
relationships; and
7.offer a critical insight into how teaching,
research and development inside the University
co-opt academic practices for value formation
and accumulation.

7. Polyarchy, the shock doctrine
and technology as kettle

8. Polyarchy
• An elitist form of democracy manageable in a modern
society.
• Normalising what can be fought for in terms of
organisation and governance.
• Universal, transhistorical norms make it unacceptable to
argue for other forms of value or organisation.
• It is no longer possible to address the structural
dominance of elites within capitalism, or the limited
procedural definitions of democracy/participation/power.
Political enclosure is reinforced technologically.

9. The Shock Doctrine: ‘control by imposing economic shock
therapy’.
• structural re-adjustment: competition and coercion
(internationalisation/distance learning)
• a tightening/quickening of the dominant economically-
driven, anti-humanist ideology (student-as-consumer; HE-
as-commodity)
• the transfer of state/public assets to the private sector
(efficiency; consultancy; outsourced services)
• the privatisation of state enterprises/elements in the name
of consumer choice, economic efficiency or sustainability
(state-subsidised privatisation)
Klein, N. (2007). The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Metropolitan
Books: New York

10. HEFCE: http://bit.ly/JikvC

11. http://bit.ly/jom3Ht

13. JISC-Announce: what is legitimised?
5 March 2012: The case studies are examples of how
institutions working in an open way can enjoy cost savings, a
better student experience and make resources easier to find.
1 March 2012: A new tool launched by Cardiff University’s
information services directorate and JISC allows people to
assess the popularity and use of e-resources so they continue
to deliver value for money.
24 Feb 2012: JISC online webinars help your organisation
become more efficient and effective.
3 Feb 2012: "This report provides further evidence about the
value and impact of the resources and discovery systems which
UK academic libraries make available."

14. HEA, Strategic Plan 2012-16:
http://bit.ly/GDkuVd

15. The Treasury position, on shared services:
2.186 VAT: providers of education – The
Government will review the VAT exemption for
providers of education, in particular at university
degree level, to ensure that commercial
universities are treated fairly. (Finance Bill
2013)
HM Treasury (2012) http://bit.ly/GCRYCy

16. http://bit.ly/GI2nP4

17. The Treasury position, on technology and
research
a new £100 million fund to support
investment in major new university research
facilities, including through additional
provisions. The fund will allocate its first
bids in 2012–13 and will attract additional
co-investment from the private sector
HM Treasury (2012) http://bit.ly/GCRYCy

18. “Almost every field of employment now depends on
technology. From radio, to television, computers and the
internet, each new technological advance has changed our
world and changed us too.
“But there is one notable exception. Education has barely
changed. Our school system has not prepared children for
this new world. Millions have left school over the past
decade without even the basics they need for a decent job.
“And the current curriculum cannot prepare British students
to work at the very forefront of technological change.”
Michael Gove at British Educational and Training Technology showcase:
http://bit.ly/z1SZ9l

19. Case 1: Cloud Computing

22. • facilitates remote working, and the separation and
surveillance of proletarianised work;
• distributes available commodity- and leveraged-skills
amongst low-wage societies through outsourcing;
• attempts are being made to commodify and sell the
idea of cloud computing in terms of green IT or
sustainability, despite the lack of evidence that the
cloud is ‘greener’, and industry wraps itself around this
concept as a space for further service-led innovation;
• academic services are further privatised through
outsourcing/consultancy/rent to Google, Amazon,
Microsoft etc..

23. Case 2: Blackboard, private equity
and the Pentagon

24. http://bit.ly/nLQJFG

25. http://bit.ly/GJjTPu

26. A re-focusing on:
3.Student Services, based on the student lifecycle;
4.Business/learning analytics;
5.cloud/software-as-a-service; and
6.increased marketing beyond North America/Western
Europe.
Do we critique, question, take issue with the broader
politics of our educational investment?

27. See also the uncritical implementation of the following.
• Mobile learning [in spite of human/labour rights abuses]
http://bit.ly/yTNDM9;
• Direct university/industry partnerships:
http://bit.ly/GHSWRG
• Implementing communications solutions like MS Lync
that enable surveillance/enclosure: http://bit.ly/tYHbgj
• The coming fetishisation of learning analytics and data-
mining: http://bit.ly/xmbqrq

28. An ending:
against coercion

30. “The struggle is not for the University,
but against what the University has
become.”
Prof. Mike Neary (2010): http://bit.ly/9Milqc

31. On technologies for occupation
Occupation is painted as extremism
Yet there is a raft of them
Many with educational or outreach agendas
That give voice through communiques
And there are radical educational alternatives as
works in progress
And worker/student movements in social centres
and beyond

32. That reflect/refract/enhance the
edufactory collective’s call for reinventing
universities:
• general assemblies as democratic process;
• militant research strategies;
• research/teaching/labour in public.
and which enable us to think through how
technology impacts what might be saved from the
University, as a commons of scholars. In public.

33. The crisis is our university!
A Manifesto of the Transnational Struggles Against the Financial (i.e.
State-Private) University
Thesis #5: The opposite of university cuts is not money to the existing
academic power, but claiming funds for autonomous education and the
self-organization of knowledge production.
Thesis #9: The opposite of the corporate university is not the
state/public university, but the common university.
The Knowledge Liberation Front (2011). http://bit.ly/sUSaUe

34. and so the process of creating a
Commons or a Network of Commons
through dissent, occupation, protest
and refusal and pushing back shows
the courage we share in re-imagining
and re-producing something different

35. What is the role of academics in
this process of refusal/negation?

37. Educational technology and the war on public education is licensed under
a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
.