We’ve all heard that our data is being collected so often that it’s become white noise. But what happens when that data isn’t just your shopping preferences or your music taste, but the data about how a child learns? What happens when every struggle, every breakthrough, every moment of confusion becomes a commodity?

This is the reality we’re sleepwalking into with the assetization of student learning experiences.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since I observed a primary classroom where students were using a popular adaptive learning platform. The teacher proudly showed me how the system tracked each student’s progress, generating detailed reports and personalizing content. What struck me wasn’t the technology itself, but the transformation happening beneath the surface: learning was being converted into an asset.

Let’s be clear about what assetization means in this context. It’s not simply data collection – it’s the process of turning the lived experience of learning into a commodity that can be packaged, owned, and monetized. Every click, every hesitation, every repeated attempt at a problem becomes not just information but a form of capital.

The typical narrative around this data collection is seductively simple: “We’re capturing this information to improve educational outcomes.” And there’s truth there – data can certainly inform better teaching practices and more responsive educational tools. But that’s only part of the story.

What’s often left unsaid is how this data becomes an asset on company balance sheets. Learning analytics aren’t just used to help students; they’re aggregated, analysed, and leveraged to create marketable products. The moments where a child struggles to grasp a concept become data points that fuel algorithmic refinement, which in turn becomes a selling point for the next version of the platform.

This transformation represents a shift in how we conceptualize education. Learning has traditionally been understood as a process – messy, non-linear, deeply personal. But assetization recasts it as a product – something that can be standardized, quantified, and ultimately, owned.

The consequences of this shift extend far beyond the immediate classroom. When learning becomes an asset, priorities inevitably change. The question shifts from “What experiences will help this child grow?” to “What data can we capture from this interaction?” The former centres the learner; the latter centres the data.

I’m particularly concerned about what this means for creativity and divergent thinking. Assets are valuable when they’re predictable and standardized. But learning at its best is often unpredictable and deeply individual. What happens to the beautiful meandering paths of discovery when everything must be trackable, quantifiable, and ultimately convertible into an asset?

There’s also the question of ownership. When a student writes an essay on paper, we intuitively understand that the thinking behind that work belongs to them. But when a student’s learning process generates data that’s owned and monetized by a third party, the lines blur. Who owns the insights derived from how a child learns? Who benefits from the patterns discovered in thousands of learning journeys?

I don’t mean to paint a dystopian picture. Data-driven approaches to education have real value. But we need to be clear-eyed about the transformation that’s occurring and the logic driving it. The assetization of learning experiences isn’t inevitable – it’s a choice we’re making, often without explicit discussion or consent.

Perhaps what we need is a new framework for thinking about educational data – one that recognizes its value without reducing learning to an asset. We need to ask harder questions about who benefits when learning becomes a commodity, and whose interests are served when educational experiences are mined for their data rather than valued for their inherent worth.

Are we shaping technology to serve our educational values, or are we reshaping education to fit a technological and economic logic of assetization? The answer will shape not just how we teach, but how we understand the very purpose of learning itself.