Paper short abstract:

Power BI is a Microsoft product promising to accelerate higher education's ”digital transformation." Using critical discourse analysis of Power BI's marketing and interviews at a large Danish public research university, this paper investigates how Power BI is entangled with neoliberal policies.

Paper long abstract:

Power BI is a Microsoft data visualization and business intelligence platform currently being used for higher education governance at a range of institutions. This platform promises to accelerate higher education’s ”digital transformation,” enable “data democratization,” and support more “data-driven” and “objective” institutional decision-making. Using critical discourse analysis of Power BI’s promotional materials and interviews with administrators and staff connected to humanities programs that are particularly vulnerable to de-funding and enrollment challenges at a large public research university in Denmark, this paper investigates how the use of Power BI is entangled with the infusion of neoliberal policy agendas in Danish higher education. It emphasizes how students are constructed as discursive objects whose demographic information, academic progress, and workforce participation can be sorted, aggregated, and tracked for meeting performance metrics as well as regulatory compliance. It examines how Power BI’s demographic classification system intersects with broader debates over who belongs in Danish higher education, with disparate consequences for marginalized students. Furthermore, this paper investigates how Power BI is transforming faculty working conditions by intensifying surveillance in the name of efficiency, and rendering faculty and program administrators increasingly responsible for hedging against the vagaries of the post-graduation job market. Ultimately, this paper argues that despite promises of a democratizing digital transformation, Power BI reflects the conditions and constraints of top-down higher education policy in Denmark that prioritizes labor market considerations over the educational needs of students, and contributes to rising corporate consolidation of power over the sociotechnical infrastructure of Danish higher education.