Data as asset, data as rent? Rentiership practices in EdTech startups

The Covid pandemic highlighted the increasing deployment of digital technologies in educational institutions, defined as ‘edtech’. The most visible edtech was video conferencing software, but a swathe of edtech startups have sought to roll out their products and services to educational institutions. We focus specifically on the deployment of edtech in UK higher education by these startups. Much of this deployment happens behind the scenes with little public debate, raising concerns about the implications of the increasing digitalization of higher education. Of particular concern, edtech startups have significantly expanded their data collection capacities and analytics through the roll-out of edtech across universities. Data are being transformed into assets (i.e., capitalizable property) by these startups, promising to generate economic rents for them. Examining this data assetization in the edtech sector enables us to analyze what kinds of data rents are being created from what kinds of data assets.