The more insecure people feel, the more they are willing to spend money for an insurance policy against low wages, unemployment, and downward mobility. A consequence of that efficiency has been greater economic insecurity.

More work can be produced with fewer workers.

In the knowledge economy, technological advancements make human labor more efficient. When economists say that these agile, responsive institutions are better suited to career training, they’re talking about inequality. It’s there, even in the rosiest interpretations of the rise of for-profit higher education, or “lower ed,” at the turn of the 21st century.

That inequality is just shrouded in euphemisms that don’t challenge the conventional wisdom of the educational gospel. And they are profitable for reasons that suggest the success of for-profit colleges in their current form is a barometer of deep, far-reaching inequalities.ĭespite the claims that for-profit colleges serve an unmet need, are more nimble than stodgy traditional colleges, and increase access to poor and minority students, for-profit colleges-as I explain in my book, Lower Ed-target and thrive off of inequality. Those favorable markets are not naturally occurring phenomenon they come from somewhere. To capitalize on these conditions, the for-profit college organizations relied on growth and acquisition strategies consistent with shareholder-business organizations. I call this blithe because the conditions in question are systemic inequalities in access to good jobs and a social safety net as good jobs become fewer. When talking about for-profit colleges, financialization refers to the period of time when for-profit credentialing organizations were transformed into what investors blithely call “favorable markets.” These markets are favorable to investors because the conditions that produced them are significant and predictable.

At the macro level, markets have financialized mortgages ( see: the 2009 housing crisis) and education spending ( see: student loans). Rather than exchanging money for goods, increasingly consumers use credit and debt to construct their social lives and its accoutrements. Randy Martin, an author and sociologist, has called America’s current socioeconomic culture one where daily life has been financialized.

Tressie cottom lower ed