Abstract:

Higher education is poised for a disruptive transformation as new technocratic models of education innovate the experience of learning. Such is the argument of many within and without the academy enacting a technopositivist view that combines a compulsive enthusiasm for technology with a relentlessly neoliberal commercial mindset. This paper deconstructs the transformational narrative using experiences and reflections on the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact that it continues to have on established norms and assumptions that have framed higher education in recent decades. As well as examining the confluence of political, economic, social and technological factors framing the transformation narrative, the paper analyses the shifting global connections that have influenced the evolution of higher education systems. COVID-19 has dramatically shifted the patterns of global education, but this has also occurred within a pre-existing shift in political climates towards a less connected and de-globalised economic and cultural national culture in a number of countries. Likely medium to long term changes in the system are considered and used to test the pre-COVID-19 assumptions about the nature of future transformation and disruptive innovation, concluding the paper with advice and further questions for higher education leaders and sector stakeholders.

Keywords:

Innovation, transformation, higher education, organisational change, technopositivism.