For-Profit Information and Technology Companies and Global Educational Policies

• In Event: Roundtable Session 54
  In Roundtable Session: Educational Globalization’s Impact on Our Childhoods, Languages, Minds, and Morals

Abstract

Schools and students are increasingly relying on information and communication technology (ICT) for e-learning, including online instruction, test preparation and tutoring, data management and instructional software packages. This paper will examine the global economic forces promoting the use of ICT in education including the for-profit education industry, global economic and political elite networks, and educational advocates of instructional technology and digital games.
My methodology will be network analysis and analysis of the stated goals, intentions, and reports of politicians, ICT companies, educational organizations, and global forums, such as the World Economic Forum; Education Industry Association and its membership; the U.S. Department of Education, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the McArthur Foundation. One example that will be used in the proposed paper is the New York City school system. The New York City example highlights the power of social and economic networking in influencing school policies with the head of the public schools, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, having made his fortune in ICT and now listed by Forbes as one of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world. His ex-Chancellor of Schools, Joel Klein, former lawyer for an ICT firm and now head of the education division of NewsCorp owned by another Forbes listed influential ICT billionaire Rupert Murdoch. This group of influential industry leaders advocates the increasing use of ICT in school administration and in the classroom.
This paper’s elite network analysis will describe those who move between government and private companies promoting the privatization of government services. I will discuss how this shadow elite, as exemplified by the New York City example, move between for-profit e-learning companies and government to lobby for more government money to be spent on the purchase of ICT products for schools. A central player in promoting these connections is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
For this network analysis of the “shadow elite’s” movement between government and private industry, I will use J. Wedel’s (2009) framework of the “shadow elite” (2009) and D. Rothkopf’s (2008) methodology for analyzing elite networks (2008).
References
Wedel, J. (2009). Shadow elite: How the world’s new power brokers undermine democracy, government, and the free market. New York: Basic Books.
Rothkopf, D. Superclass: The global power elite and the world they are making. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Author

• Joel H. Spring, Queens College - CUNY