Assetizing academic content and the emergence of the ‘assetizen’: education platforms, publisher databases, and AI model training

Abstract Academic content, such as teaching materials and academic publications, has become an economic resource. This has occurred through assetization as the key economic regime in contemporary techno-capitalism. We analyse three cases of academic content being made into revenue-generating assets: (1) universities enclosing online learning content, (2) EdTech platform companies building databases of academic assignments and manuscripts, and (3) academic publishers licensing academic publications to Generative AI companies to train Large Language Models. We find that the licensing of intellectual property rights is the technical-legal instrument that enables assetization and acquisition of proprietary power. This enclosure of economic value has significant consequences for the higher education sector. It (i) changes how academic content is valued and governed, (ii) constructs markets in which assetized content brings economic value to licence holders, and (iii) impacts on core higher education processes, including teaching and learning, pedagogic relations, and staff and student rights. Assetization of academic content (and assetization in HE more broadly) constructs students and staff as a new kind of economic actor – an ‘assetizen’. The assetizen is subject to contract and property law, with diminished educational and social rights as assetization becomes a governance principle in higher education.