TY - JOUR
T1 - EdTech-mediated outsourcing and casualisation of academic labour
T2 - toward a research agenda
AU - Ivancheva, Mariya
AU - Courtois, Aline
PY - 2024/2/27
Y1 - 2024/2/27
N2 - Located at the intersection of scholarship on critical higher education (HE), the casualisation of the academic workforce and studies of digitalisation and online platforms in Higher Education (HE), this article examines the impact of online programme management companies (OPMs) on academic labour. OPMs partner with universities to provide core teaching functions while relying on the labour of increasingly casualised, often outsourced academics. We use a composite case study to illustrate how OPMs work in partnerships with universities to reorganise academic work. We discuss this model vis-a-vis the theoretical concepts in the digital HE, platform labour and sociology of work literature, elaborating on how the new forms of casualised labour in HE undergo real subsumption by technology-mediated programmes operated by OPMs. On this foundation, we discuss the possible implications and draw out questions for future research and trade union activity, two arenas where, we argue, more attention needs to be paid urgently to casualisation and the outsourcing of teaching through digital platform-mediated programmes.
AB - Located at the intersection of scholarship on critical higher education (HE), the casualisation of the academic workforce and studies of digitalisation and online platforms in Higher Education (HE), this article examines the impact of online programme management companies (OPMs) on academic labour. OPMs partner with universities to provide core teaching functions while relying on the labour of increasingly casualised, often outsourced academics. We use a composite case study to illustrate how OPMs work in partnerships with universities to reorganise academic work. We discuss this model vis-a-vis the theoretical concepts in the digital HE, platform labour and sociology of work literature, elaborating on how the new forms of casualised labour in HE undergo real subsumption by technology-mediated programmes operated by OPMs. On this foundation, we discuss the possible implications and draw out questions for future research and trade union activity, two arenas where, we argue, more attention needs to be paid urgently to casualisation and the outsourcing of teaching through digital platform-mediated programmes.
KW - academic precarity
KW - online programme management companies
KW - EdTech
KW - digitalisation
KW - academic labour
KW - casualisation
KW - outsourcing
KW - higher education
KW - labour process
U2 - 10.13169/workorgalaboglob.18.1.0065
DO - 10.13169/workorgalaboglob.18.1.0065
M3 - Article
SN - 1745-641X
VL - 18
SP - 65
EP - 82
JO - Work, Organisation, Labour & Globalisation
JF - Work, Organisation, Labour & Globalisation
IS - 1
ER -