Markets, metrics, and modernisation

Higher Education strategy makers' conceptualisations of digital empowerment

Bibliographic Data

ID2929696
AuthorsDaniel Clark (0000-0001-9447-5637, Canterbury Christ Church University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume46
Issue4
Pages550-565
Publication date2025-07-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDiscourse Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0159-6306 • E-ISSN: 1469-3739
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01596306.2024.2425680
OpenAlexW4404160344
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited62

Digital empowerment is a recurrent theme in the discourse of educational technology in post-pandemic Higher Education and a leitmotif of organisational strategy. Yet, despite its prevalence, digital empowerment is a poorly understood concept. As organisations reimagine themselves as the digital Universities of the future, attention must turn to strategy and its role in defining the digitally empowered student, teacher, and organisation, and how such definitions manifest through policy. This study combines a synthesis of institution-level digital strategies from UK Higher Education with the voices of the strategy-maker, including senior leaders. This study reveals that conceptualisations of digital empowerment are underpinned by an assemblage of neoliberal narratives, including those associated with marketisation, metrics, and modernisation. The findings of this study are illustrative of the role that strategy plays in the alignment of Higher Education with neoliberalism and why notions of digital empowerment therein are inherently problematic

Economic growth · Economics · Empowerment · Higher education · Modernization theory · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Digital Education and Society · Online Learning and Analytics · Public Administration · Social Media and Politics

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