Keywords
higher education
infrastructure
university governance
modularity
institutional autonomy
platformisation
Global South
India
China
South Africa
How to Cite
Abstract
The article examines how national digital transformation strategies in higher education articulate divergent institutional futures in India, China, and South Africa. A comparative analysis of policy documents from 2013–2024 demonstrates how governance rationalities and infrastructural designs redefine the epistemic role, operational logic, and autonomy of universities. Digital transformation is conceptualized not as technical modernization but as a socio-political project encoding institutional imaginaries and normative frameworks. Three dominant models are identified: the Chinese model—a technocratic centralized strategy with algorithmic monitoring and STEM prioritization; the Indian model—open digital architectures preserving institutional discretion within a federal governance structure; the South African model—flexible decentralization emphasizing equity and epistemic decolonization.
These models reveal contradictions between strategic coordination and autonomy, equity and efficiency, infrastructural control and pedagogical reflexivity. The study demonstrates that digital infrastructures determine not only access to education but also academic temporality, agency, and epistemic authority. The proposed understanding of digital transformation as an infrastructural imaginary contributes to critical debates on higher education reform and global governance under conditions of systemic uncertainty.
This article is a part of the special issue “Transforming Education in the 21st Century: Foresight and Sustainable Development”
Guest Editors: Asad Abbas (Writing Lab, Institute for the Future of Education, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico), Ahsan Ali (Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, China), Jose Luis Martin-Nuñez (Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain), Mehul Mahrishi (Swami Keshvanand Institute of Technology, Management & Gramothan, Jaipur, India)
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