Remaking Higher Education?: A Content Analysis of the Media Discourse on Online and Blended Education in India

Abstract

India has the second largest higher education system in the world with 993 universities, 39931 colleges and 10,725 Stand Alone Institutions and improving higher education is a major policy priority of the government. Online education has emerged as the preferred form of education in the COVID-19 milieu. The media has served an important platform for debates on online education in India, and this debate got intensified during the two pandemic years. This paper undertakes a detailed analysis of the media discourse surrounding online and blended education in India. It identifies a focus on cost, access and learning outcomes as salient features of this discourse. The paper uses Framing theory to categorize this discourse into an “access-outcome” frame. The paper situates this access-outcome frame into a broader milieu of global discourse on online education. The authors observe that, given certain political (right-wing government) economic (neo-liberal) and social developments (rise of the new, aspirational middle class, education as product and institutions as service providers) in India, the aforementioned access-outcome frame is likely to strengthen over time with continued positive coverage by the media and enabling state policies.



Author Information
Juhi Sidharth, FLAME University, India
Chaitanya Ravi, FLAME University, India

Paper Information
Conference: ACE2022
Stream: Higher education

This paper is part of the ACE2022 Conference Proceedings (View)
Full Paper
View / Download the full paper in a new tab/window


To cite this article:
Sidharth J., & Ravi C. (2023) Remaking Higher Education?: A Content Analysis of the Media Discourse on Online and Blended Education in India ISSN: 2186-5892 The Asian Conference on Education 2022: Official Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5892.2023.66
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5892.2023.66


Comments & Feedback

Place a comment using your LinkedIn profile

Comments

Share on activity feed

Powered by WP LinkPress

Share this Research

Posted by James Alexander Gordon