IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/cshedu/qt7p0114s8.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Private Side of Public Universities: Third-party providers and platform capitalism

Author

Listed:
  • Hamilton, Laura T.
  • Daniels, Heather
  • Smith, Christian Michael
  • Eaton, Charlie

Abstract

The rapid rise of online enrollments in public universities has been fueled by a reliance on for-profit, third-party providers—especially online program managers. However, scholars know very little about the potential problems with this arrangement. We conduct a mixed methods analysis of 229 contracts between third-party providers and 117 two-year and four-year public universities in the US, data on the financing structure of third-party providers, and university online education webpages. We ask: What are the mechanisms through which third-party relationships with universities may be exploitative of students or the public universities that serve them? To what extent are potentially predatory processes linked to the private equity and venture capital financing structure of third-party providers? We highlight specific mechanisms that lead to five predatory processes: the targeting of marginalized students, extraction of revenue, privatization by obfuscation, for-profit creep, and university captivity. We demonstrate that contracts with private equity and venture capital financed third-party providers are more likely to include potentially problematic contract stipulations. We ground our findings in a growing body of work on “platform capitalism” and include recommendations for state universities, accreditors, and federal policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Hamilton, Laura T. & Daniels, Heather & Smith, Christian Michael & Eaton, Charlie, 2022. "The Private Side of Public Universities: Third-party providers and platform capitalism," University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education qt7p0114s8, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:cshedu:qt7p0114s8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/7p0114s8.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Helen Irvine, 2007. "Corporate Creep: An Institutional View Of Consultancies in a Non-Profit Organisation," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 17(41), pages 13-25, March.
    2. Justin C. Ortagus & Lijing Yang, 2018. "An Examination of the Influence of Decreases in State Appropriations on Online Enrollment at Public Universities," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 59(7), pages 847-865, November.
    3. Eric P. Bettinger & Lindsay Fox & Susanna Loeb & Eric S. Taylor, 2017. "Virtual Classrooms: How Online College Courses Affect Student Success," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(9), pages 2855-2875, September.
    4. Paul Gompers & Josh Lerner, 2001. "The Venture Capital Revolution," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 145-168, Spring.
    5. David J. Deming & Noam Yuchtman & Amira Abulafi & Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz, 2016. "The Value of Postsecondary Credentials in the Labor Market: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(3), pages 778-806, March.
    6. William G. Bowen, 2015. "Higher Education in the Digital Age Updated Edition," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 2, number 10481.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. M Paula Cacault & Christian Hildebrand & Jérémy Laurent-Lucchetti & Michele Pellizzari, 2021. "Distance Learning in Higher Education: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment [A Randomized Assessment of Online Learning]," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 2322-2372.
    2. Gaulke, Amanda & Cassidy, Hugh & Namingit, Sheryll, 2019. "The effect of post-baccalaureate business certificates on job search: Results from a correspondence study," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    3. Marigee Bacolod & Latika Chaudhary, 2018. "Distance To Promotion: Evidence From Military Graduate Education," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(4), pages 667-677, October.
    4. Kameshwari Shankar & Punit Arora & Maria Christina Binz-Scharf, 2023. "Evidence on Online Higher Education: The Promise of COVID-19 Pandemic Data," Management and Labour Studies, XLRI Jamshedpur, School of Business Management & Human Resources, vol. 48(2), pages 242-249, May.
    5. Lisa Barrow & Wesley T. Morris & Lauren Sartain, 2024. "The Expanding Landscape of Online Education: Who Engages and How They Fare," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(S1), pages 417-443.
    6. Prelipcean, Gabriela & Boscoianu, Mircea, 2019. "Aspect Regarding the Design of Active Strategies for Venture Capital Financing – the Flexible Adjustment for Romania as a Frontier Capital Market," Proceedings of the ENTRENOVA - ENTerprise REsearch InNOVAtion Conference (2019), Rovinj, Croatia, in: Proceedings of the ENTRENOVA - ENTerprise REsearch InNOVAtion Conference, Rovinj, Croatia, 12-14 September 2019, pages 187-196, IRENET - Society for Advancing Innovation and Research in Economy, Zagreb.
    7. Mark A Perkins & Jonathan W Carrier, 2023. "Using R Shiny to develop a dashboard using IPEDS, U.S. Census, and bureau of labor statistics data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(1), pages 1-23, January.
    8. Yingkai Li & Boli Xu, 2024. "Information Acquisition Towards Unanimous Consent," Papers 2405.18521, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2025.
    9. Carolin Bock & Maximilian Schmidt, 2015. "Should I stay, or should I go? – How fund dynamics influence venture capital exit decisions," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(1), pages 68-82, November.
    10. Mikaela Backman & Charlie Karlsson, 2016. "Determinants of self-employment among commuters and non-commuters," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95(4), pages 755-774, November.
    11. Gerard Llobet & Javier Suarez, 2010. "Entrepreneurial Innovation, Patent Protection and Industry Dynamics," Working Papers wp2010_1001, CEMFI.
    12. Demougin, Dominique M. & Fabel, Oliver, 2006. "The division of ownership in new ventures," SFB 649 Discussion Papers 2006-047, Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649: Economic Risk.
    13. Johannes Hörner & Larry Samuelson, 2013. "Incentives for experimenting agents," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 44(4), pages 632-663, December.
    14. Nicolás Ajzenman & Bruno Ferman & Sant’Anna Pedro C., 2023. "Discrimination in the Formation of Academic Networks: A Field Experiment on #EconTwitter," Working Papers 235, Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE).
    15. Valérie Revest & Alessandro Sapio, 2012. "Financing technology-based small firms in Europe: what do we know?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 179-205, July.
    16. Baert, Stijn & Picchio, Matteo, 2021. "A signal of (Train)ability? Grade repetition and hiring chances," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 867-878.
    17. Fabio Bertoni & María Ferrer & José Martí, 2013. "The different roles played by venture capital and private equity investors on the investment activity of their portfolio firms," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 607-633, April.
    18. Jarunee Wonglimpiyarat, 2010. "Commercialization strategies of technology: lessons from Silicon Valley," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 35(2), pages 225-236, April.
    19. Laeven, Luc & Popov, Alexander, 2023. "Carbon taxes and the geography of fossil lending," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    20. Valérie Revest & Alessandro Sapio, 2016. "Graduation and sell-out strategies in the Alternative Investment Market," Discussion Papers 4_2016, CRISEI, University of Naples "Parthenope", Italy.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Education; online education; predatory inclusion; higher education; private equity; privatization;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:cshedu:qt7p0114s8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://escholarship.org/uc/cshe/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.