New Keynesianism or smart austerity? Digital technologies and educational privatization post COVID-19

Abstract

The neoliberal hegemony has found its last expression in a technoeducational agenda that, organized in policy networks with concrete ramifications in each country (technological corporations, philanthropic foundations, lobbies and think tanks), governs the subjects as in no other historical epoch. Among its most significant trends is the expansion of markets towards even more spheres of education through digital platforms, teacher’s and student’s data valorization processes, as well as dynamics of privatization or deregulation that had not been present during the last more than a decade of austerity. Therefore, the objective of the article is to analyze the displacement of public power towards the private sector and the blocking of alternative pedagogical solutions different to the market as a result of the introduction of digital technologies in Spanish educational policy. In addition to a detailed analysis of public tenders (web scraping), the methodology is based on the analytical approaches of “Network Ethnography” and “Critical Discourse Analysis”. The results verify that the European mechanisms to eradicate inequalities or digital gaps in education, or NextGenerationEU, materialize in important programmatic agendas to digitize education that end up reinforcing Spanish national capitalists.