Venture Capitalists as Educational Actors: Understanding the Racialized and Gendered Political Economy of Silicon Valley Investments in Education Technology

• In Event: Political Economy of EdTech: Analyses of the Racialized, Gendered, and Classed Dimensions of EdTech in the Global Economy

Abstract

This paper theorizes venture capitalists (VCs) as educational actors. VCs are very wealthy actors that operate with no public mandate, yet whose financial investments and other business decisions have powerful impacts on public education policy and practice in the U.S. and around the world. While educational researchers have extensively examined the influence of venture philanthropists in education, due to difficulties of access and limited transparency, there is limited empirical understanding of VCs, their networks, and the extent of their power in education. As VCs and technology companies produce unprecedented wealth, resulting in rapidly rising inequality and dispossession in the Bay Area and beyond, this this mixed method paper focuses on quantitative network analysis based on investment data previously unanalyzed in educational research and open-ended interviews with VCs to examine the structure of venture capital in education. Drawing on a lens of racialized and gendered political economy in education (Anyon, 1997; Dumas, 2011; Lipman, 2013; Hamilton & Darity, 2017; Moeller 2018, 2020) and technology (Benjamin, 2019; Hicks, 2017), it examines the role of venture capital within the political economy of education through an analysis of the structure of venture capital and its influence in education. It puts forward a framework for thinking about VCs as educational actors and their effects on educational policy and practice. This framework begins with a conceptualization of venture capital as an economic practice of wealthy individuals (majority white men) and firms investing in for-profit companies, principally technology companies, within the global capitalist economy. The paper builds on an understanding of gendered and racial capitalism, where “the development, organization, and expansion of capitalist society pursued essentially racial directions”, and as feminist scholars note, gendered and sexualized directions as well (Ferreira da Silva 2007; Melamed, 2015; Moeller 2018; Robinson, 2000). Our analysis shows the financial mechanisms and socio-cultural, racial and gendered practices through which venture capitalists seek to profit and expand their influence in education. It considers the stakes associated with investing in education in a structure that ultimately prioritizes profit over students, teachers, and communities.

Authors

• Kathryn Moeller, University of Cambridge

• Klint Kanopka, Stanford University

• Joanna French, Innovate Schools