Investing in imagined digital futures: the techno-financial ‘futuring’ of edtech investors in higher education
Investing in imagined digital futures: the techno-financial ‘futuring’ of edtech investors in higher education
复制标题
投资想象中的数字未来：高等教育中教育科技投资者的技术金融“未来”
DOI：
10.1080/17508487.2022.2081587
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发表时间：
2022
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
Janja Komljenovic
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ben Williamson;Janja Komljenovic
教育技术是财政加大投入的重点。在这篇文章中，我们通过一家英国投资公司的实证案例研究，探讨教育科技投资者如何想象和投资高等教育的未来。利用经济社会学的概念和方法，我们分析了投资公司如何从事技术金融“未来”的做法。我们确定了两种未来的做法。首先，投资者的想象实践产生了关于教育未来的定性“虚构预期”，并得到定量财务估值实践的支持，这些实践预测了资助教育技术的货币投资回报。其次，我们分析了教育科技投资者的具体投资支持业务，强调了在投资者选择和支持教育科技产品或服务时，想象中的教育未来是如何获得资金的。通过这些方式，教育机构可以通过对特定教育技术产品的金融投资来实现未来的教育。我们特别追踪了投资机构和运营如何从销售商品的edtech市场转移到控制数字产品和资源作为资产的edtech行业。因此，这两种互补的未来实践作为“资产化”过程，旨在将教育服务和资源转化为数字资产，为教育技术投资者提供可计算的未来价值。
ABSTRACT Educational technology is the focus of increasing financial investment. In this article, we examine how edtech investors imagine and invest in the future of higher education through an empirical case study of a UK investing company. Utilising concepts and methods from economic sociology, we analyse how investment companies engage in techno-financial ‘futuring’ practices. We identify two kinds of futuring practices. First, investors’ imaginary practices produce qualitative ‘fictional expectations’ about the future of education, supported by quantitative financial valuation practices that predict the monetary returns on investment available from funding edtech. Second, we analyse the specific investment-supporting operations of edtech investors, highlighting how imagined futures of education are funded into existence (or not) as investors select and support edtech products or services. In these ways, imaginaries of the future may be materialised in educational institutions through financial investments in specific edtech products. We particularly trace how investment imaginaries and operations shift from edtech markets as selling commodities to edtech industry controlling digital products and resources as assets. Therefore, the two identified complementary futuring practices function as processes of ‘assetisation’, aimed at turning educational services and resources into digital assets with calculable future value for edtech investors.