Last week's THE has this headline:
World’s university ‘oligopoly’ accused of blocking OECD bid to judge learning quality
... with a great image of great animals blocking a US highway (that is, the economy and implied progress). There were no pictures of dinosaurs available, I guess; even in Kansas.
The THE quotes Hamish Coates, chair of higher education at the University of Melbourne, who led the OECD’s feasibility study on Ahelo:
“Broadly what’s happening is the established oligopoly isn’t keen to be disrupted by the new order, the new commercial order, of higher education."
Well, Mandy Rice Davies gave the most apt response to comments like that about 50 years ago. Coates is quoted as adding:
"What we’re seeing happen is essentially the legacy providers, who are very dominant in the research space, trying to prevent new information about education coming to light.”
That's now quite how I'd put it, but as I have noted earlier, there are always interests to be protected, and positions maintained.
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