Pedagogy and Profit? Efforts to Develop and Sell Digital Courseware Products for Higher Education

The individual economic benefits of higher education are largely determined by what students learn in the process of obtaining their degrees. Increasingly, for-profit companies that develop and sell digital courseware products influence what college students learn. Employees' pedagogical expertise, content knowledge, and understanding of organizational goals are likely to affect product characteristics and outcomes associated with the use of those products. This study draws on 15 months of ethnographic data to examine one organization's efforts to develop and sell courseware for use in higher education. The data suggest organization members' interpretations of educational access and quality support product development and sales efforts consistent with profit aims, but that may promote credentialism, negatively affect learning, and exacerbate quality differences across institutions.