From Digital Disruption to Educational Excellence: Teaching and Learning in the Knowledge Economy

Abstract

Three cultural forces have shaped and framed higher education in the last twenty years: economic changes, technological changes and the increased speed and mobility of people, goods, money and ideas. Public institutions have managed a decline in public funding, requiring commercialization and private partnerships, alongside changes in the labour force through casualization and short term contracts. Digitization has enabled disintermediation and deterritorialization. The power relationships in knowledge dissemination have flattened through the changes to publishing and social media. Traditional, industrial supply chains have collapsed. There is little need for middlemen and agents. This article reflects on the changes to higher education in the last twenty years and how they provide exemplars, warnings and beacons for the radical transformations in the post fordist, post-Global Financial Crisis economy. Policy development is often disconnected from the social reality of working in – and gaining services from – the health and education industries. This article contributes to a free and robust dialogue, enabling collaboration and debate about what went right and wrong in higher education in the last two decades.

Keywords

• Higher Education Studies
• Disintermediation
• Deterritorialization
• Digitization
• Neoliberalism
• Global Financial Crisis