College Wasn’t Built to Be a Marketplace

By Andrew G. White IV, PhD –

Higher education in the United States is increasingly organized like a market, where institutions compete for students and students evaluate degrees as investments.

That shift is often framed as a move toward efficiency and choice. But markets do not distribute opportunity evenly—they sort it. As colleges compete on price, prestige, and selectivity, inequality is not corrected. It is structured into the system itself.

Commercialization is Long-Term, Deliberate Change

Over the past several decades, the language of markets has come to define how higher education is understood. Students are encouraged to think of degrees in terms of return on investment. Institutions differentiate themselves through pricing, branding, and rankings. Policymakers emphasize competition as a mechanism for improving quality. These changes are often presented as neutral or necessary adaptations. But they alter not only how education is delivered—they reshape how its value is defined.

When education is treated primarily as a private investment, its worth becomes tied to measurable economic outcomes. Earnings, employment rates, and institutional prestige serve as proxies for value. Degrees function not only as indicators of learning but as signals of status. Some institutions are understood to confer greater value, regardless of the actual content or quality of education they provide.

Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital helps explain this dynamic. Educational credentials carry social meaning beyond their practical function. A degree from a prestigious institution signals legitimacy and distinction, reinforcing hierarchy even as the system presents itself as meritocratic. George Psacharopoulos observed that while individuals capture private returns from education, the social returns—distributed across the broader economy—are equally significant and often greater. A system organized around prestige and private gain systematically undervalues those broader returns.

Part of a Larger, Inequitable System

These symbolic distinctions do not operate in isolation. They interact with existing inequalities in access, preparation, and resources. Students from more advantaged backgrounds are better positioned to enter institutions that carry higher symbolic value. They are more likely to possess the cultural capital—familiarity with institutional norms, access to guidance, confidence in navigating bureaucratic systems—that these environments reward. Critical race scholars name this advantage more directly: whiteness has itself functioned as a form of property, carrying social power and the capacity to exclude. As race-conscious admissions retreat under color-blind pressure—the logic contested in the legal case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, centered on Asian American applicants—opportunity is shaped less by ability than by prior access to recognized, and racially uneven, forms of capital.

Not Education, but ROI (Return on Investment)

Market dynamics intensify this pattern. Institutions compete not only on educational quality but on perceived prestige. Rankings, selectivity, and branding become central to institutional identity. Students respond by making decisions within a hierarchy of perceived value, often equating higher cost and selectivity with better outcomes. In this context, competition does not eliminate inequality; it organizes it.

The financial structure of higher education reinforces these dynamics. Rising tuition and widespread reliance on student debt—now exceeding $1.7 trillion nationally—mean that access to high-status institutions is often mediated by financial capacity. Even when aid is available, the perceived and actual costs shape decision-making. Students are not simply choosing among equal options; they are navigating constraints that influence both access and outcomes.

The result is a stratified system in which educational pathways differ not only in content but in social recognition. Some credentials carry greater weight in labor markets and social institutions, independent of what students actually learn. Education allocates not only skills, but status. Bourdieu described this broader process as reproduction: institutions maintain social hierarchies by rewarding forms of capital that are already unevenly distributed. In a market-oriented system, this process becomes more visible but no less powerful.

The Public Good

Reframing higher education as a public good would not eliminate hierarchy or competition, but it would change what they reward. It would place greater emphasis on access, participation, and capability development, rather than on positional advantage. It would also reduce the extent to which cost functions as a gatekeeping mechanism. As long as market logic defines value, institutions will compete on prestige and price, and inequality will remain built into the system. The question is not whether higher education can be efficient. It is whether it is organized to distribute opportunity—or simply to sort it.

Andrew G. White, IV, PhD, is Dean of Enrollment Management at NYADI College of Transportation Technology. He can be reached at [email protected].

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed here, as well as assertions of facts, are those of the author. They do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of The Urban News.