Academics teaching and learning at the nexus: unbundling, marketisation and digitisation in higher education

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how academics navigate the Higher Education (HE) landscape being reshaped by the convergence of unbundling, marketisation and digitisation processes. Social Realism distinguishes three layers of social reality (in this case higher education): the empirical, the actual and the real. The empirical layer is presented by the academics and their teaching; the actual are the institutional processes of teaching, learning, assessment, mode of provision (online, blended); the real are the power and regulatory mechanisms that shape the first two and affect academics’ agency. Two dimensions of academics’ experiences and perceptions are presented. The structural dimension reflects academics’ perceptions of the emergent organisation of the education environment including the changing narratives around digitisation, marketisation and unbundling in the context of digital inequalities. The professional dimension aspects play out at the actor level with respect to work-related issues, particularly their own. This dimension is portrayed in academics’ concerns about ownership and control.

KEYWORDS:

• Marketisation
• educators
• academics
• higher education
• unbundling
• critical realism
• social realism‌

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF), South Africa, under grant number 105395 and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK, under grant number ES/P002102/1.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF), South Africa, under grant number 105395 and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK, under grant number ES/P002102/1.