The role of technological actors in the privatization of higher education in a pandemic context: immediate responses to major transformations

Abstract

This article contributes to the debate on the effects of the pandemic on higher education. It analyses the different public-private alliances that involve technological commercial agents to respond to the continuity of teaching in universities from Latin American and Caribbean region. It also analyses the role that international organisms and technological agents have in the construction of "big opportunity of innovation" discourse that challenges the in-person university model dominant in Latin America. It starts from a theoretical perspective that contemplates the complexity of educational privatization phenomenon and recognizes that, in these processes driven by various global actors, national states and different governments play a central role when it comes to materialize this trends. The study was based on a documentary analysis that involved gathering discourses and actions from different actors that assumed centrality in the context of the pandemic at the university level.