Accounting for the Corporate: An Analytic Framework for Understanding Corporations in Education

Abstract

Drawing on an integrative review of the literature on the privatization of education and an empirical case study of technology corporations in education, this article examines the corporate within the political economy of education. It argues that by analytically conceiving of corporations under the banner of the private sphere and, correspondingly, by subsuming the processes of corporatization within the processes of privatization, the literature on privatization conceals the very specific role and influence of corporations. The article puts forward an analytic framework for researching and theorizing corporations in education. How the field of education conceives of corporate actors and their related practices, processes, and power relations is analytically and empirically significant for ensuring equitable, transparent, and accountable educational systems in the United States and globally.

Keywords

case studies educational policy globalization politics social context

Although private and corporate actors have been involved in K–12 education in the United States and globally since the 19th century (Arnove, 1980; Carnoy, 1975; Cuban, 2004; Hall, 2008; Lagemann, 1992; Molnar, 1996; Shipps, 2006; Watkins, 2001), over the past few decades, they have become increasingly powerful in shaping education policy and practice around the world. During this time, education has become a vehicle for increasing corporate profits and extending market logics through processes identified as exogenous privatization (Ball & Youdell, 2007, p. 13). This expanded reach of private actors has occurred in the context of and as a consequence of the rollback of state investment and increasing ideological attacks on public education in a variety of global contexts (Au & Ferrare, 2015; Fabricant & Fine, 2015; Lipman 2011). This has generated ardent debates about whether public or private models function best (Adamson et al., 2016; Carnoy, 2000; Chubb & Moe, 1990; Cuban, 2004; Levin, 2001; Lubienski, 2005; Plank & Sykes, 2003; Scott, 2005).

Within these debates, an extensive critical literature has emerged on phenomena such as charter schools, school vouchers, educational tax credits, philanthropy, for-profit schools, public-private partnerships, and education reform (Apple, 2013; Au & Ferrare, 2015; Ball & Youdell, 2007; Verger, Fontdevila, & Zancajo, 2016). In examining this range of practices and policies, this literature on K–12 education conceives of a wide variety of actors in the private sphere.¹ These include corporations (Bhanji, 2012b; Burch & Good, 2014; Koyama, 2010; Robertson, Bonal, & Dale, 2002); corporate foundations (Moeller, 2018; Schwittay, 2005); private foundations (Reckhow & Synder, 2014; Scott, 2009; Tarlau & Moeller, 2020; Tompkins-Stange, 2016); nongovernmental organizations (NGOs; Kamat, 2004); religious organizations, think tanks, and lobbying groups (Anderson & Donchik, 2016); parent associations (Posey-Maddox, 2016); and global and national forums (Ball, 2012). Scholars have illuminated the material and nonmaterial resources, power-knowledge practices, and networks (Ball, 2012; Levin, 2001; Lipman, 2011; Tarlau & Moeller, 2020) these private actors employ with the goal and/or effect of shifting the provision and/or governance of education through private means and often toward private ends. This literature on privatization has contributed to our understanding of the complex shifts and openings that have enabled private actors to increase their power and relevance; the policy enactments, new practices, and configurations private actors have generated; and the intended and unintended effects they have had on a range of unequally resourced social, political, and economic actors. Their actions have often been criticized for including minimal deliberation, public accountability, or transparency and a significant emphasis on rates of financial return and achieving scale.

Theorizing the Corporate

This article theorizes one particularly important aspect of the literature on the privatization of education: the corporate. In this article, the corporate refers to actors, processes, networks, styles, and power relations related to businesses or the for-profit sector. I present a framework for attending to the specific and multifaceted nature of corporate influence in education. I argue that the literature on privatization analytically conceives of corporations, corporate foundations, and other for-profit actors under the banner of the private sphere and, correspondingly, subsumes the processes of corporatization within the processes of privatization. Whereas critiques of privatization often frame it as an expansion of the private sphere that poses a threat to the public sphere, actually much of what we call privatization today is the influence of corporations on the public sphere. Legal scholars john powell and Stephen Menendian (2011a, p. 7; 2011b) described how “the privatization of public entities or property is not simply a shift from public to private control; it is a shift from public to corporate.” Within this shift, corporate influence is often subsumed within the private sphere, thus making invisible the scope and magnitude of corporations within education.

This leads to the following effects: (a) It lumps together actors such as parents, families, community-based organizations, NGOs, small businesses, and religious institutions with corporations and corporate foundations even though the logics, goals, and scales of these different actors vary considerably; (b) it conceals the very specific role and influence of corporations; (c) and lastly, it obscures the inverse relationship between the increasingly disproportionate nature of corporate power and prerogative in education and decreasing funding for and commitment to public education.

Thus, I posit that how the field of education conceives of corporations, corporate foundations, and other for-profit actors and their related practices, processes, and power relations is analytically and empirically significant for ensuring equitable, democratic, transparent, and accountable educational systems in the United States and globally. Yet, to ensure this, the field must be attentive to how processes of corporatization operate through and simultaneously exacerbate existing structural inequities across gender, race, and class on multiple spatial scales. This is important so that critiques of corporatization do not demonize those who seek equitable educational opportunities, such as parents choosing for-profit charter schools or low-fee private schools, and pit them against advocates of public education (Jabbar, 2015; Lipman, 2011; Pedroni, 2007; Scott, 2005; Srivastava, 2013). These critiques can promote a romanticized notion of a return to an inclusionary public in the United States and globally that has never actually existed for all.

In the following section, I present a framework for theorizing the corporate in relationship to the concept of and literature on privatization. The framework is developed with the intention of furthering research on corporations in the field of education by creating different ways for researchers to attend to corporate influence in education and the ways it operates through and exacerbates uneven power relations across multiple axes of difference. Finally, I attempt to illuminate the usefulness of these concepts for researching and theorizing corporations in education through the empirical case of technology corporations influencing policy and practice in education in the United States and globally.

An Analytic Framework for Conceptualizing the Corporate

To understand the corporate within educational policy and practice, I propose an analytic framework for examining corporations within the political economy of education. This includes the following analytic categories: corporations, corporate foundations, corporatization, corporate networks and lobbying, corporate-style, and corporate power (see Table 1).

Table 1

Defining the Corporate in Education

Concepts	Definitions
Corporations	Corporations are businesses that are legally separate from their owners or shareholders
Corporate foundations	The philanthropic arms of corporations (with 501[c][3] status)
Corporatization	A dynamic set of processes and power relations through which for-profit actors influence education
Corporate networks and lobbying groups	Collectivities comprised of corporations, corporate foundations, and other private groups that seek to influence public education
Corporate-style	A descriptor for understanding a set of characteristics attributed to corporations
Corporate power	A specific form of power generated by the interactions between corporations, corporate foundations, the state, and other social and institutional actors

Corporations

To begin, I examine the history and nature of the corporate form and then tease apart the range of different corporate actors influencing education. As powell & Menendian (2011a, p. 6) explained, “corporations were never intended to be persons or citizens” or to have prerogative beyond the public good in the way they do today. In the founding of the United States, corporations were public institutions with charters intended to service the public good, whether that was building infrastructure or facilitating trade and commerce (powell & Menendian, 2011a, p. 6). But, as powell and Menendian further explained, “in the 19th century lawyers and judges, often in the service of corporate entities, began to free corporations from state control” (p. 6). By the mid-1840s, the court made the decision that corporations were citizens able to sue in federal court (p. 6). The adoption of the 14th Amendment provided the legal ground for “protecting corporate prerogative” (p. 6). As one of the Reconstruction amendments “designed to protect the rights of freed slaves after the Civil War,” it provided equal protection and due process for Blacks (p. 6). These protections were extended to corporations. Yet, rather than simply extend personhood to corporations, there has been an inverse relationship between the extension of rights to corporations over time and the erosion of rights granted to Blacks; a relationship that persists today, as powell and Menendian described. Thus, when analyzing the expansion of corporate power in education today in the United States, in particular, it is critical to understand its relationship to the marginalization of Blacks and other communities of color.

Corporations have become one of the dominant institutions of our time with extensive power and influence over our political system and democracy (powell & Menendian, 2011a). In size and profit, many corporations are larger, wealthier, and more influential than nation-states and global governance institutions. Thus, I situate my understanding of corporations within the context of their power in the global economy. In order not to homogenize all corporate forms, however, I draw on an anthropological conceptualization of corporations and their foundations not as singular or monolithic entities but rather as a complex intersection of various interests vying for control over corporate goals, resources, and practices. How these are controlled, by whom, and for whom are politically contested questions, both internally and externally, even though these internal contestations are often masked over in the educational literature because scholars focus on showing the extent of corporations’ external power and influence.

In this article, I specifically conceive of corporations as “temporally, spatially, and socially differentiated” businesses that are legally separate from their owners or shareholders (Ballard & Banks, 2003, p. 294). They are constituted through unequally distributed power and multiple competing interests and sources of agency and organized around the dominant goal of profit maximization (Ballard & Banks, 2003). A range of different types and sizes of corporations exist, particularly in the field of education. Thus, it is important to distinguish between different corporations operating in the terrain of education because the scales at which they operate, the scope of their influence, and the stake of their involvement are often different (see Table 2).

Table 2

Types of Corporate Actors in Education

Types of Corporate Actors	Descriptions
Noneducational corporations	Companies that influence the field of educational policy and practice through corporate social responsibility, corporate philanthropy, and/or lobbying
Technology corporations	These corporations sell educational technologies but are not education companies
Education corporations	Companies whose entire business is education
Venture capital firms	For-profit venture capital firms that invest directly in for-profit educational companies
Investment banking firms	Firms that invest in education, particularly EdTech and knowledge services companies, and provide financial advisory services
Limited liability corporations	These entities engage in for-profit investing, commonly understood as venture capital, particularly in EdTech; some combine this with philanthropic activities, often termed venture philanthropy

Note. EdTech = educational technology.

Noneducational corporations

First, there are noneducational corporations like ExxonMobil, Nike, Inc., and General Electric that influence the field of educational policy and practice through corporate social responsibility, corporate philanthropy, and/or lobbying (Bhanji, 2012b). In the following, I discuss corporate philanthropy through corporate foundations in more detail. In the decades since the government publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983, the U.S. business community has focused on national education policy to influence standards and workforce preparation. These efforts have continued through corporate lobbying for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 2001 (Trammel, 2004), more commonly known as No Child Left Behind, as well as the more recent adoption of the Common Core State Standards (Schneider, 2015).

Technology corporations

Second, there are technology companies that are not educational corporations per se but that sell educational technologies. In the case of Microsoft and Apple, for example, these are companies that do direct business with students, teachers, schools, and districts and influence the types of technologies, curriculum, and pedagogical practices adopted in schools and by districts due to the nature of their products. These companies have a vested interested in securing markets for their products and ensuring there is a “tech talent pipeline” for their future workforce, as I discuss further in the following.

Education corporations

Third, there are corporations whose entire business is education. This includes educational technology (EdTech) companies whose entire business is education, such as DreamBox, an online mathematics software. There are also significant shifts occurring in the operation and management of schools, which has led to the contracting out of particular services or entire schools (Burch & Good, 2014; Fabricant & Fine, 2012; Koyama, 2010; Saltman, 2005). Scholars have demonstrated how this occurs in the United States via for-profit educational management organizations (EMOs) that develop and/or administer schools (Levin, 2001). Examples include EMOs like Edison Learning, Inc., which run public charter schools, and the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, which was an online charter school, the largest in Ohio until it closed in 2018 after legal contestations with the Ohio Department of Education. Charter management organizations (CMOs), like Summit Public Schools or KIPP Schools, similarly operate networks of public schools, but they are distinguished by being nonprofit rather than for-profit entities even though they often generate revenue and partner with for-profit institutions. In international contexts, there is also a proliferation of for-profit companies like Bridge International Academies, Omega, Rising Academies, and Affordable Private Education Centers that operate low-fee, for-profit schools in countries like Kenya, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Philippines, and India, often through contracts with Ministries of Education (Hook, 2017).

In addition to the management of schools, there are education companies, such as Pearson, that sell educational products and services and assessment and professional development services. This has resulted, for example, in compensatory after-school tutoring programs run by corporate entities like Pearson but paid for by the public (Burch & Good, 2014; Koyama, 2010).

Venture capital firms

Fourth, there are for-profit venture capital firms that invest directly in for-profit educational companies, particularly in EdTech or for-profit schools like Bridge Academies International. These are funds with millions or billions of dollars that invest in EdTech companies to generate a high financial return for their investors. This includes firms that are solely dedicated to education, such as Owl Ventures, NewSchools Venture “Seed” Fund, Rethink Education, Learn Capital, and GSV Capital, as well as firms that invest in education as a portion of a broader portfolio, such as Kapor Capital and Norwest Ventures.

Investment banking firms

Fifth, there are also investment banking firms that have an investment division dedicated to education. These firms, such as Goldman Sachs, invest in EdTech and knowledge services companies and also provide advisory services on mergers and acquisitions of companies and function as bookrunners, also known as underwriters, during initial public offerings or leveraged buyouts.

Limited liability corporations

Sixth, there is an emergence of powerful entities like Omidiyar Network, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, and Emerson Collective, which operate as limited liability corporations (LLCs) (and in some cases also as 501[c][3] foundations; Reiser, 2018).² These LLCs were founded by the founders or spouses of the founders of major corporations, in these cases, eBay, Facebook, and Apple, respectively, yet they are legally distinct from these corporations and their foundations even though the LLCs’ values, narratives, and practices may align with these companies. The LLC model “provides founders substantial operational flexibility” because they are “free to combine traditional grantmaking with strategic investments and political advocacy” (Reiser, 2018, p. 4). These entities engage in for-profit investing, commonly understood as venture capital, particularly in the areas of computer science and EdTech. Some of them combine this with philanthropic activities, often termed venture philanthropy (Scott, 2009).

Corporate Foundations

There are corporate foundations, such as Nike Foundation or Microsoft Philanthropies, which I identify as legally distinct (based on 501[c][3] status) yet financially, politically, socially, and culturally associated entities whose goals and interests, in most cases, align with those of the corporations from which their wealth is accumulated (in these cases, Nike, Inc. and Microsoft Corporation). Corporate foundations usually operate under the power of a corporate board that ultimately reports to the corporation, whose goal is to preserve the bottom line and shareholder value (in the case of publicly traded companies). Literature on corporate philanthropy in education has documented both direct financial contributions to schools, districts, governments, and NGOs as well as the promotion of particular educational policy reforms (Ball, 2012). In the United States, for example, the literature has examined how philanthropy (Lipman, 2011; Scott, 2009) has influenced school voucher policies, small schools, and the Common Core State Standards, among other policy initiatives. Globally, it has examined how they have funded the growth of low-fee private schools, girls’ education initiatives, and STEM programs, among other areas (Moeller, 2018; Srivastava, 2013).

Correspondingly, I analytically conceive of private family foundations, such as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation, to be legally, politically, and financially distinct entities from the Microsoft Corporation and Wal-mart Stores, Inc., the publicly traded corporations whose wealth creation enabled the philanthropic largesse of their founding families yet whose values, narratives, and practices can align with, support, and/or in rare moments compete with those of the corporation from which the foundations’ endowments are originally derived. The purpose of this distinction is not to diminish or minimize the power of these foundations to profoundly shape the terrain of educational policy and practice (Reckhow & Synder, 2014; Tarlau & Moeller, 2020; Tompkins-Stange, 2016) but to analytically distinguish them so their differences are understood rather than lumping corporate and private foundations together, as often occurs within the literature.

Corporatization

I understand corporatization to be a set of processes and power relations through which for-profit actors, including corporations, their foundations, venture capitalists, and/or their lobbying and networking groups, influence the rationales, norms, and goals as well as the provision, practices, and policies of education. Corporatization is a specific process within the umbrella of privatization that is specific to corporations as opposed to other types of private actors. In this way, I distinguish it from other processes of privatization that represent a shift from public to private entities, including parent associations, NGOs, and religious institutions, often through market mechanisms. As powell and Menendian (2011a) identified, it is “a shift from public to corporate space” (p. 120). It is important to name this expansion of corporate space and the establishment of a corporate prerogative in education. The concept of corporatization considers the different means by which corporations assert power and influence, including funding, authoritative knowledge, and formal and informal networks. These dimensions are key for understanding how corporate actors establish authority and legitimacy in education.

There are a vast array of corporatization efforts, far too many to discuss in this article. School-corporate partnerships are a standard form of corporatization in schooling. In the context of insufficient resources and increasing budget cuts to public education, these partnerships extend corporate reach into schools and districts while providing resources through in-kind donations, fundraising opportunities, and volunteers (small businesses committed to their local public schools may also participate in these activities, albeit usually on a much smaller scale). These can be run through the corporation directly or through a corporate foundation. Scholars have examined the various forms partnerships take and the different motivations companies have for forming them, including establishing markets for their products in schools and creating opportunities for schools to raise money to generate brand loyalty (Fabos & Young, 1999; Molnar, 1996).

Yet, over time, there has been a shift from traditional product placement or fundraising to more intensive endeavors, including corporate-funded or -operated programs in schools as well educational programs in NGOs (Boyles, 2000). Although low-fee private school networks, often operating through public-private partnerships, are a primary example, another type of example are programs, like Year Up, that bring together young people and corporations through internships and job placement. The Cristo Rey Network is another example. It is a network of private Catholic (Jesuit) high schools that run intensive Corporate Work-Study Programs from which companies contract full-time, entry-level employees and students’ earnings are applied by the program toward their tuition. These companies are working to diversify by funding workforce development within communities of color while also potentially influencing the population of students served and the curriculum and pedagogy of these schools.³

On a broader level, as education increasingly becomes part of the global service economy, corporatization efforts have been aided by global governance institutions, like the World Trade Organization, that have made “education systems and education provision within nation-states more amenable to global accumulation strategies” (Robertson et al., 2002, p. 479) through entities like the General Agreement on Trade in Services (Robertson et al., 2012).

Corporate Networks and Lobbying

Another primary means for expanding corporate power is through corporate networks and lobbying efforts for policies, including education reform agendas. I understand networking and lobbying groups comprised of multiple corporations and/or corporate executives, such as the New American Schools Corporation (Berends et al., 2002), American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC; Anderson & Donchik, 2016), the libertarian think tank the Atlas Network, and the Commercial Club of Chicago (Lipman, 2011), to be entities that conceptualize, fund, advocate for, and/or implement particular visions of education reform based on corporate management styles and/or corporate workforce and training needs. Although these entities may or may not have a direct profit motive, they are comprised (although not solely) of for-profit companies and business leaders and thus are ultimately entangled with corporate goals, profit motives, and geographies.

As scholars have illuminated, the involvement of corporations and foundations in education globally has been encouraged in the context of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and, more recently, the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG; Robertson et al., 2002). The annual circuit of global forums, including the Clinton Global Initiative,⁷ Global Philanthropy Forum, and the World Economic Forum, have also facilitated the creation and circulation of knowledge on educational policies (Ball, 2012; Moeller, 2018). Important forums also exist on a national scale, such as Todos pelo Educação (All for Education) in Brazil, which draws together corporate actors, such as Vale, Instituto Unibanco, and Itaú Social, with private foundations and NGOs to lobby for education reforms like the Base Nacional Commun Curricular, the new Brazilian Common Core (Tarlau & Moeller, 2020). Through these networks and forums, corporations and private philanthropies have rapidly positioned themselves at the forefront of national and global education agendas in the new millennium. As research has shown, these entities are often structured to quell dissent by excluding critical voices to garner consent for educational ideologies, policies, and practices (Ball, 2012; Moeller, 2018; Tarlau & Moeller, 2020).

Corporate-Style

Much of the conversation on “corporate” education actually refers to the restructuring of schools to emulate corporations (Apple, 2013; Lipman, 2004) or the use or imposition of accountability mechanisms to establish more efficient and effective schools and districts (Hursh, 2008; Lipman, 2004, 2011), as in the common language of “corporate-style reform” (Shipps, 2006) or “corporate turnaround strategies” (Lipman, 2011). I identify this phenomenon as corporate-style—where the characteristics of corporations and corporate management are imported and emulated by noncorporate actors such as school administrators and districts, often as a result of promotion by corporations, corporate foundations, private foundations, and corporate networks seeking to use these management styles to restructure public schooling. Although the language of corporate is often used, this phenomenon does not necessarily involve corporate entities. This conception of corporate-style parallels the idea of endogenous privatization framed as the “importing of ideas, techniques and practices from the private sector in order to make the public sector more like businesses and business-like” (e.g., accountability policies; Ball & Youdell, 2007, p. 13).

Corporate Power

Lastly, to understand the ways corporations exercise power over the governance of educational systems, I have developed the concept of corporate power. I define it as a specific form of power generated by the interactions between corporations, corporate foundations, the state, and other social and institutional actors that led to increasingly disproportionate corporate prerogative and influence in education. It differs from corporate-style in that the focus is on the particular ways in which corporations establish a presence and influence and reshape education or educational reform. More specifically, it seeks to understand the political and economic role of corporations in establishing norms, policies, and practices in education. This concept considers the different means for asserting this power, including funding, authoritative knowledge, networks, and media. This is key for understanding how corporate actors can influence educational policy and practice with often minimal public deliberation, accountability, or transparency and normalize the extent of their power in the public sphere.

The Case of Technology Corporations in Education

In this final section, I examine the power and influence of technology companies in the United States and globally to illuminate the processes of corporatization and expanding corporate power in educational policy and practice. This empirical case provides a concrete example of how scholars can use the concepts from this analytic framework in their education research. It builds on interviews and observations that I have conducted with employees of technology corporations, educators, and NGO leaders as well as document analysis and actor network mapping of technology corporations operating in education. I analyze the corporate actors involved, examine their corporatization practices and corporate networks and lobbying efforts, and conclude with a discussion of the expansion of corporate power by technology companies in this realm of education.

Corporate Actors in EdTech

The field of EdTech is a multibillion-dollar industry, and corporate actors like Google, Microsoft, and Apple are at the heart of it. Quite simply put, “Google, Microsoft and Apple are battling for dominance in classrooms. They all want their devices in the hands of the next generation of consumers.”⁴ It’s a valuable market to dominate. As an industry, EdTech is expected to reach $43 billion in value in 2019, according to a study by Technavio.⁵ Approximately half of this value is in K–12 education.⁶

Corporatization of Computer Science Education

But beyond expanding education markets for their products, these corporate actors are also actively investing in computer science education in public schools and nonformal settings through their business development, corporate responsibility, and philanthropic strategies. This is the product of multiple interrelated factors that have created an historical moment in which tech companies are experiencing intense external pressures. First, as these companies produce unprecedented wealth, they have received intense criticism for their role in exacerbating inequality and spurring gentrification in Silicon Valley, other tech hubs like Seattle, and beyond. Second, they are also under scrutiny for the industry’s “diversity problem,” particularly around the lack of gender and racial diversity, and hostile climates for women and employees of color. Yet, internally companies are also facing a “tech talent crunch,” as a Microsoft employee in the area of civic engagement explained to me, with a shortage of trained computer science teachers, a dearth of properly trained computer scientists, and increasing limits on high-skilled immigration (H-1B visas) to the United States. Fourth, there are rising costs of labor and property in Silicon Valley and Seattle, which are, in part, due to the exponential growth of these and other technology companies.

As a response to these external and internal pressures, these companies are engaging in efforts to diversify their workforce and prepare and secure new talent in areas where they have extensive business and in regions in the United States and around the world where their business has been more limited. In the language of one Microsoft employee I interviewed, technology corporations are seeking to “home grow” new talent. These businesses are actively creating new frontiers for corporate expansion on the population and geographic peripheries of technological growth.

Corporate Lobbying and Networks in EdTech

Based on my analysis of a range of corporatization efforts by technology companies, they are also extensively engaged in lobbying for and supporting computer science (CS) education policies and developing curriculum for schools. This has occurred through support for former President Obama’s 2016 Computer Science for All initiative,⁷ with funding from Salesforce.org and Google, and President Trump’s 2017 initiative to prioritize funding for STEM and computer science education, with $300 million pledged from companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce.⁸ CS4All, an organization that seeks “to ensure high-quality computer science education is available to all students,”⁹ is a powerful example of an influential network comprised of corporations, corporate foundations, other private groups, and public entities like the National Science Foundation that seek to influence K–12 CS education in U.S. public schools. Its members and funders include powerful technology companies like Google, AOL, Amazon, Dell, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Facebook. Moreover, companies like Microsoft,¹⁰ Google,¹¹ and Apple¹² have developed corporate curricula for teaching CS, with many of these initiatives targeting girls and students of color in particular. These pipeline building efforts are articulated through discourses of corporate responsibility and gender and racial equity to directly engage the critiques described previously.

The Case of Microsoft

Microsoft, for example, has a range of programs in this area that highlight its influence as a corporate actor and the extent of its ability to expand its power through corporatization efforts in informal and formal education spaces, including promoting gender equity in tech and training teachers in CS (Bhanji, 2012a, 2012b). In the United States, these efforts are occurring in cities like Chicago and Detroit, where Black and Latinx communities have been largely excluded from the benefits of technology growth, as well as areas on the periphery of the technology industry, such as Wisconsin and North Dakota.¹³ In Wisconsin, this is occurring through the Microsoft corporation’s partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, the company’s TechSpark program, and Microsoft Philanthropies’ TEALS program (Technology Education and Literacy in Schools), which trains teachers to get CS into every school.

Facing steep cuts to public education, these urban and rural districts are often seeking the in-kind technology gifts, funding, CS curricula, and teacher training these companies offer but that districts otherwise cannot afford. Yet, even as teachers and administrators acknowledge these needs, my research shows they are concerned that companies are locking their students, classrooms, and districts into long-term relationships with a company’s software and products; limiting learning and future opportunities for their students who, for example, may only learn to code on one company’s software and thus become dependent on these platforms and products; and narrowing the creative possibilities of CS to basic skills deemed necessary for a low-wage labor market.

Beyond corporate programs in schools, Microsoft’s corporatization efforts have developed a global #MakeWhatsNext campaign to support girls and women in STEM. Efforts have included offering free in-store workshops like DigiGirlz and supporting organizations like Girls Who Code. Globally, it has also promoted these initiatives with NGO partners around the world,¹⁴ including in Senegal, South Africa, Turkey, and Brazil, as well as through partnerships with governments, such as its initiative with the Egyptian government that has consisted of events and training programs that seek to give young women the “skills and confidence necessary to take up a career in STEM fields” (see earlier work by Bhanji 2012a, 2012b).¹⁵ Microsoft has said it hopes “to offer support toward women wanting to brave an industry ready for more female leaders.”¹⁶

Yet, as the manager of a community engagement program in CS for Microsoft explained to me in an interview in 2018, these efforts to train and attract girls and women do not interrogate the problems of gender and racial inequity in Microsoft and the broader industry: “Why are people not recognizing that the flipside to ‘why are we not attracting talent?’ is ‘why are we repulsing talent?’ Maybe you should figure out what you’re doing to make yourself unwelcoming to women.” A year later, in April 2019, Microsoft’s female employees accused the company of systematic gender discrimination and sexual harassment at an employee meeting with CEO Satya Nadella.¹⁷ This contradiction raises the question of whether companies are exacerbating problems of gender and racial equity in the tech industry even at the same time as they claim to be promoting educational policies and practices that support “computer science for all.”

The Expansion of Corporate Power

We are witnessing the expansion of corporate power in education, as demonstrated by the case of technology companies involved in education discussed previously. Ultimately, at the heart of corporate power are contradictions that enable companies to profit off of gender, racial, class, and geographic inequalities without attending to those contradictions, even as they often claim to be “investing in education” for all, whether it is CS education in the United States or girls’ education around the world.

As these technology companies produce a future where artificial intelligence, robots, and automation may render most forms of work unnecessary, their investments in education policy, curriculum, and teacher training also raise questions about their power to shape the future of education to fit a technological future of their own making. Some of the students these companies are training may become computer scientists at varying levels within the hierarchy of the industry. Yet, as these CS education initiatives the grow in schools and nonformal educational spaces, coding is becoming a “blue collar” job, increasingly defined by standardized, repetitive, and devalued labor. Thus, as companies seek to expand “computer science for all” through the discourses of gender and racial equity, are they also seeking to develop less expensive, increasingly feminized and racialized talent in cities and rural areas where they seek to expand? To further compound the problem, in the near future, most coding will be automated with code writing code,¹⁸ potentially rendering redundant many of the CS jobs students are being trained for in schools and NGOs today.

Understanding the extent of corporate power necessitates scholars continuously examining the ways in which these companies are able to normalize their power and influence without resolving the fundamental contradictions that define their engagements in the sphere of education and the broader social and political world.

Conclusion

In this article, I have presented an analytic framework for examining the complex nature of corporate influence in education. The framework outlines corporate actors, processes, networks, styles, and power relations in an effort to analyze the specific roles of corporations in the sphere of education and their intended and unintended effects on educational policy and practice. The framework seeks to support future research that empirically examines corporate visions for educational futures and the means through which and extent to which corporate actors are influencing educational policy and practice based on these visions. In doing so, I insist that scholarly accounts of corporatization and the expansion of corporate power attend to the ways in which it operates through and simultaneously exacerbates existing structural inequities across race, gender, class, and nation. This will enable educators, researchers, and policymakers to better advocate for just futures for all.

Footnotes

Notes

Author

KATHRYN MOELLER, PhD, is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, 217 Education Building, 1000 Bascom Mall, Madison, WI, 53711; kathryn.moeller@wisc.edu . Her research focuses on the political economy of education.

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