Our increasing inability to view globalised higher education from any perspective other than that of competing nation states in a transnational system, and of universities as competing capitals inside that world-view, is highlighted by Matt Lingard’s report on the Universities UK event, Open and online learning: Making the most of Moocs and other models. Critically, Lingard highlights how MOOCs are being utilised to catalyse further marketisation of education in the global North with the on-line space being used less as a socially transformative experience, and more as a space for public/private partnership, in order to lever global labour arbitrage and strengthen the transnational power of specific corporations:
The University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) could become the first mainstream higher education institute to become a private company.
UCLAN announced to staff last week that it is seeking to dissolve its corporate form to become a private company, raising fears among staff that the institution could become a for-profit enterprise
‘Private equity’s undisclosed business model is value capture through financial engineering focused on the enrichment of a managerial elite, with mass investors mainly involved in providing the cheap debt which makes the whole thing possible.’ Julie Froud and Karel Williams, Private Equity and the Culture of Value Extraction, New Political Economy, 2007