Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.1007/s10734-025-01395-2

Publication Title

Higher Education

Volume

Article in Press

Pages

21 pp.

Abstract

Research on academic capitalism has critiqued the commodification of knowledge, but it has not critiqued assetization. The difference between commodification and assetization is more than a technical distinction. Extracting value from assets requires a different regime of coordination than what is required for extracting value from commodities. Through an analysis of 132 texts related to the online course review process at 16 research universities in the USA, I propose and problematize an online learning assetization regime which transforms discipline-based knowledge into digital content that can be owned, controlled, and managed as a university asset. This process potentially alienates faculty from pedagogical decision making; entices, beguiles, or coerces faculty to transfer intellectual property rights to the university; and shifts faculty from structures of academic governance to the private law of contracts. I show how techno-pedagogic discourse mystifies the online learning assetization regime even as it exhorts faculty and staff to accommodate it.

Rights

© 2025 The Author.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Data Availability

Article states: "Due to the nature of the research and ethical concerns, data collected from research sites are not publicly available."

ORCID

0000-0002-9137-9014 (Ayers)

Original Publication Citation

Ayers, D. F. (2025). Techno-pedagogic discourse and the online learning assetization regime. Higher Education. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-025-01395-2

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