The modern school brochure no longer opens with a promise of learning. It opens with a promise of outcomes. Rankings, college acceptance lists, alumni salaries, and glossy photographs of smart classrooms and international collaborations now speak louder than any philosophy of education. In this world, a school’s name has become its most valuable product, and education itself has quietly shifted from a public good into a branded commodity. This is not a cosmetic change. It marks a deeper transformation in how knowledge is produced, sold, and valued, and who is left behind.

Across countries, schools and universities increasingly operate like market actors. Parents are addressed as customers, students as investments, and degrees as returns. According to UNESCO, private spending on education has grown faster than public spending in many regions over the last two decades, reflecting a steady transfer of educational responsibility from the state to households. In India, household expenditure on education has risen by over 50% in the last ten years, even as government schools remain underfunded, a trend documented in National Sample Survey data. What families are buying, however, is not always better learning. More often, they are buying access to credentials and brand signals that promise mobility in an overcrowded, competitive economy.

Schools are increasingly optimized not for deep learning but for measurable and marketable outcomes. Curricula are narrowed to what performs well in high-stakes examinations. Areas of study that do not easily lend themselves to being measured on tests or in higher education, such as philosophy, the arts, ethics, or critical social inquiry, have been relegated to the sidelines. "The OECD has repeatedly pointed out that the education systems of countries worldwide are favoring rote over problem-solving and creativity, even as employers indicate the gap in critical thinking and flexibility." In India, multiple industry surveys have found that a significant share of graduates is technically qualified but lack basic analytical and communication skills. More degrees than ever, yet struggling for applicability of acquired knowledge beyond exams, the paradox is stark.

This “hollowing out” of learning is further fueled by the proliferation of what sociologists describe as the “shadow education system”: privatized tutors and online educational technology entrepreneurs complementing traditional education. In cities such as Kota, Hyderabad, and Delhi, coaching institutes have grown to reach billions of rupees. Estimates suggest India’s test-prep and coaching market alone is valued at over $7 billion and continues to grow rapidly. For many middle-income families, spending on coaching now exceeds school fees themselves. The logic is brutal but simple: school provides the credential; coaching provides the competitive edge. Even if a poor student gains admission into a good school, too often he or she cannot compete with their peers who have round-the-clock AI tutors, personalized test analytics, and professional test strategies. Education is double-gated: first by institutional access, second by the ability to pay for parallel instruction.

The fact that schools covertly depend on this system makes it especially pernicious. Even though the real learning happened somewhere else, the high board scores and entrance exam successes are hailed as institutional triumphs. The coaching factories raise the rating of a school, and the school benefits from this aura of excellence without actually enhancing the quality of teaching. This mutual convenience widens inequality and props up the prestige of elite institutions. The student? An almost passive buyer: gulping down content, chasing scores, and outsourcing real understanding.

Evolution at the top: A transformation of leadership in a profound way is underway, where the principals and administrators behave more like corporate-type managers rather than educational leaders. The measure of success in these institutions includes enrollment, fee income, and brand recognition. Marketing departments expand even as teacher training budgets stagnate. Decisions about which subjects to offer, which teachers to hire, and which programs to cut are guided less by educational value and more by market appeal. The arts and humanities are affected first because they are not immediately lucrative. This is not just anecdotal. There have been studies done in both the UK and Australia that have reflected a steady decrease in both funding and enrollments for arts programs as institutions have come to favor “employability-oriented” studies for which they can charge more funding. The branding model also changes university culture. International partnerships are hyped despite little actual academic collaboration. Innovation labs are publicized despite how many students can really use them. The parlance of education changes from curiosity to competition, from questioning to optimization. Students absorb this message early on. They come to wonder not “What will I learn?” but “What will this look like on my resume?”

Practical consequences can be witnessed all around. The student loan debt in the United States exceeds $1.7 trillion, and graduates are wondering if the “promise” of education was worth the price tag. The cost for private schooling in India continues to rise, but in terms of direct improvements in educational outcomes, very little exists. At a world level, the World Bank has warned about a "learning crisis" in which years of schooling rise without actual learning improving, or even falling back, particularly for students from less privileged groups. What is particularly pernicious about educational capitalism is that it disguises inequality as meritocracy. When success is portrayed as the product of individual diligence within the system of a brand, the advantages of the system become invisible. Failures will be judged as lacking talent or discipline rather than access or resources. The brand will be held responsible; the student assumes the risk.

And yet, the most unsettling thing is how normal this has become. We rarely ask why education must function like a market at all. We rarely question why learning must justify itself in economic terms to survive. The campus brand feels inevitable, even natural, because it aligns so neatly with a broader economy that treats every institution as a business and every individual as human capital. But education was never meant to be just another product. It was meant to inculcate judgment, imagination, and the ability to question the world rather than merely learn to live with it. When institutions trade on their brand and not on their values, they fail to deliver on something basic. The crisis in education is not simply about rising fees or stressful exams. It is about a system that has learned to monetize aspiration while hollowing out understanding. As long as campus brands are allowed to stand in for learning, degrees for thinking, and outcomes for education itself, inequality will deepen and knowledge will shrink. The most expensive thing a student may lose is not money, but the chance to truly learn.

Sources:

• Federal Reserve Bank of New York. (2023). Quarterly report on household debt and credit. https://www.newyorkfed.org
• National Sample Survey Office. (2022). Household social consumption: Education in India (NSS Report No. 585). Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India. https://mospi.gov.in
• OECD. (2019). OECD future of education and skills 2030. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. https://www.oecd.org
• UNESCO. (2021). Global education monitoring report: Central and Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. https://www.unesco.org
• World Bank. (2018). World Development Report 2018: Learning to Realize Education’s Promise. https://www.worldbank.org

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