This is far from a philosophical answer, Glenn, but education has been a commodity through my entire life in the US. I selected my first college major in the career planning office at UT Austin based explicitly on the income generating potential of the degree - Accounting (1977) A few years and life changes later, I earned a masters of divinity because I wanted employment as a clergyman (1986). When I decided I wanted to teach in higher ed, additional discipline-specific degrees were earned in psychology and social work (2002, 2007, 2009).

The cost of a college education and the foundational role education plays in occupational and financial success has commodified education for many like me.

Hi Glenn, 

An interesting question, without a doubt. I’d be interested to know what the stakes of this debate are for your current project, and what philosophers and theorists you’re thinking of in particular. Is this a discussion taking place in the British Philosophy of Education Society specifically? In a lot of the U.S.-based literature, it seems like liberals, progressives, and radicals alike seem to be quite comfortable with the language of commodification in education, though the complexity of their positions varies. I don’t know that I’ve encountered the position that because education is a “public good” it can’t be commodified. It seems quite clear that schools and many of the distinct aspects of schooling are being commodified by the hegemony of market principles and invasive maneuvers of corporate school reformers, threatening the public-ness of schooling both in the institutional sense as well as in social, cultural, and political senses. It just seems like the idea that using the term “commodity” equates to a “category mistake” is a pretty abstract position, one that is so decontextualized and ahistorical that it shouldn’t warrant much attention in the first place. As far as Marxist and other radical positions on the matter, I can imagine some theorists being ornery about the specific definition of “commodity” being used (its fidelity to Capital, for example), but it seems to me that the associated concepts of fetishism, mystification, and reification are all bound up in pretty tightly in the neoliberal process of educational reform. Theories of immaterial production also seem like they bring significant insights to the issue, but I think that the material struggle over the control of schools and educational materials, etc. alone is enough to warrant the language of commodities and commodification. It seems like in the first position you sketch, the category mistake would be to conflate schooling and education. To miss the degree to which schooling is under assault by corporate reform and neoliberal austerity, thus threatening even the most idealistic conception of education as a public good, is a mistake of an even higher order. Looking forward to hearing where this issue is situated in your education and crisis project.

Best,

Graham

Dear Peter

Thanks for your response. Yes, I think that the commodification of education (especially higher education) is more developed in the US than in the UK. Perhaps that's why there is more inclination to avoid the issue here, or to wander off into some notion of 'education for its own sake', or see it as a 'public good'. However, the situation here in the UK has reached a point where it's becoming rather embarrassing if philosophers of education ignore it altogether. Hence, David Bridges paper at the recent Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB) Annual Conference, that I attended. I have attached the Bridges paper. 

Dear Graham

Thank you for your reply. The sort of philosophers of education, critical educators and Left educational theorists I have in mind can be gleaned from my three most recent papers here on ResearchGate (alternatively go to Academia). And yes, this is a discussion (at last) that is going on in the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB). See the paper by David Bridges I have attached. As I explained to Peter Kindle, I think that the reason why progressive educational researchers and theorists are more inclined to speak about commodification in education is that the process is more advanced, therefore cannot be so easily avoided. I'm thinking of writing a paper for the Journal of Philosophy of Education, the official journal of the Philosophy Society of Great Britain (PESGB), on something like "Critical Notes on Commodities and Education". It will be a critique of the PESGB conference paper by David Bridges, though it will take in other confusions, evasions and downright errors regarding what philosophers of education have to say on the commodification of education.

Best wishes

Glenn

CAN EDUCATION BE A COMMODITY?

This question hides a multitude of possible confusions. A good place to start is not with education, but with labour. Marx went beyond Ricardo in seeing that there is a crucial distinction between labour and labour-power (the capacity to labour). Furthermore, it is labour-power which is sold to the capitalist in the labour market, not labour itself. It is in the capitalist labour process that the transformation of labour-power into labour in conjunction with means of production produces commodities. In capitalist society, the labour involved in producing a commodity has a two-fold nature: the commodity represents use-value (it appears as a thing of utility) and as value. This arises from a process of real abstraction – as it is abstract labour that is the substance of value, not concrete labour.

Coming back to education, this is also a process, an encounter between teachers and students that can lead to knowledge and understanding. However, the education process, in educational institutions (schools, colleges, universities etc.), can become a labour process in capitalist society. Thus: education as an education process and education as a labour process should not be confused. In turn, this means that there is a process of the education process becoming a capitalist labour process. A real history of education could be written here (including some of the elements Peter Kindle mentions). This is an aspect of what Marx called the ‘becoming of capital’. The notion of commodification expresses this and it should be recognised that other processes (marketisation, commercialisation in particular) must go hand-in-hand with commodification in order that educational commodification results in full-bloodied capitalisation: commodities produced in educational institutions becoming embedded in the totality of capital (involving monetisation, exchange and circulation).

Secondly, in all of this, the distinction between what Marx calls the ‘two great classes of commodity’ must be kept in view, i.e. labour-power and the general class. There are two categories of commodity in capitalism: labour-power, the unique commodity that is capable of yielding more value than is required for its maintenance and reproduction; and the general class of commodities – all other known commodities (see ‘Theories of Surplus-Value – Volume 1’, Marx). This second class of commodities can be either material or immaterial. In many discussions of education as commodity, these two categories are either unrecognised in their difference, or conflated.

There are other forms of confusion, such as saying that education produces students; in which case the distinction between the labourer and their labour-power is elided. There is a difference between employers buying labourers or students in the labour market and buying their labour-power: the first points towards slavery, the second towards the notion of the ‘free’ labourer (free to sell their labour-power to different employers).

Without keeping these basic points in view philosophers of education or education theorists, and even some Marxist educational theorists are liable to say some very silly things indeed. If philosophers of education want to talk and write about commodities in education without reference to Marx (the greatest thinker on the commodity and its forms), value, abstract labour and contemporary Marxists who have written on the commodity (e.g. Postone, Kurz, Clarke, Starosta, and Neary) then it will be unsurprising if little progress is made on this topic.

Glenn   

My paper, "Misrepresentations: Critical Notes on Commodities and Education" (Draft paper, 2017) expands on some of the above points. You can view it at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/35799008/Misrepresentations_Critical_Notes_on_Commodities_and_Education

Glenn

This is a unique question.

In my own view, education is a commodity that can be bought and sold.

1. In today's world, acquiring good education is expensive.

2. Gaining employment is directly link to your educational qualifications.

3. Sometimes, employers select employees based on where they acquired their training from.

Education (a commodity) is expensive and has high earning capacity which can be monetary.

Dear Makinde

Thank you for your input.

Your view that education is a commodity is not backed up by any convincing arguments, I’m afraid. Your general point: that education is a commodity that can be bought and sold misrepresents what is going on. When parents or students pay for education they are buying access to the means of educational production, not education itself.

Secondly, commodities in education (following Marx) assume two general forms: labour-power (the capacity to labour) and the general class of commodities (e.g. turning a new research development into a patent, or producing and selling educational videos). Furthermore, regarding these general commodities, currently they are mostly only potential commodities as they have not been individually commoditised. But they could become such. For example, a private profit-making company could deliver history lectures in a basically state-serviced, financed and run university. That would be a commodity for the company, but would still only be part of the means of educational production (the education labour process) for students.

Educational process in schools, universities etc. play a part in the social production of labour-power: this is a commodity that the (potential) worker (as student) owns, and sells to employers. This commodity, labour-power, should not be confused with the production process that produced it; which, in the case we are talking about, is simultaneously an education process. Qualifications are measures of labour-power quality (but typically very weak, poor measures – as employers want to know more about work and social attitudes than qualifications reveal).

Point 1. Is not relevant to what I have said. The cost is not the point; it is that you seem to be confusing the means of educational production with the commodities that such production results in. On point 2., well, sometimes (very often in my experience) young people and adults do not gain employment directly linked to their educational qualification in terms of the content of educational courses. However, in terms of a range of factors (e.g. pay, status, and social class position etc.) then there is a general link. But you don’t say how this relates to education being a commodity. It seems to relate more to the generation of specific forms of skilled labour-power that is produced for particular niches in the capitalist labour market. Again, Point 3. Is sound, in my view, but is not related to commodification processes or particular commodities produced in educational institutions.

Glenn

Dear Glenn,

the commodification of education expresses a phenomenon peculiar to the expansionary movement of capital. Analyzing the corrosion of the boundaries between the public and the private in an immediate perspective is the mistake that many analysts make. In the National States of the capitalist periphery, commodification presents itself more perversely. Private higher education institutions offer courses with consistent quality, in addition to not developing scientific research. After the transnationalization of educational enterprises, due to financial predominance, the situation of the teachers themselves was metamorphosed, the idea is to eliminate teachers with high degree, hiring of teachers without employment bond, etc. Education is a highly profitable niche for capital. In this sense, I understand that since education is a social complex, a result of the generalisations of human labor activity, it is a public good that is allocated in the institutionalized sector. However, in the interests of capital, education is a commodity.

a commodity in economics refers to goods or services. education offers services and is therefore a commodity. according to a research carried out in Athens in 2016, university education is often considered as an investment in human capital that changes the lifetime earnings profile of people...and therefore through education as a service, meaning as a commodity, aids in such aspects.

It is not clear to me if you are arguing that it is an either or situation. If you are, I think it is a false dichotomy. A public good that can be partially commodified in some way doesn't become a commodity. Anymore than when a person flying in a jet airplane made possible by government-funded research becomes a bird.

Reply 1: To Mercy Juma

Just because a particular social phenomenon can be viewed as being a ‘service’ does not mean it is a commodity. If I was rich enough to have a couple of servants, they would be ‘in service’ to me, providing various services (cleaning shoes, housework etc.). Their labour would not be producing commodities; just personal services, for me. I would not be selling their services, as a commodity, to others. However, if I was running a company that hired out cleaning staff, then the services that they provided would take a commodity form. I would be selling service-labour to others, hoping to make a profit. In state-controlled, state-financed education, products (be they labour-power or the general class of commodities) do not generally take a commodity form as they are not sold. They are educational services (which may also be public goods). Commodification is part of the process of changing this situation: i.e. of converting educational services into capital. In itself, commodification is not enough, as the development of markets, commercialisation (advertising etc.), monetisation (pricing) and other social phenomena pertinent to the web of capitalisation (e.g. changing teachers’ work situation into a capitalist labour process), also have to take place for an educational service to be converted into a commodity.

Reply 2: To Preston MacDougal

I’m not sure whether your reply is aimed at Professor Alisson Slider do Nascimento de Paula or me. I think the former. Whatever, I think you are right to maintain that: ‘A public good that can be partially commodified in some way doesn't become a commodity.’ This is because a commodification process is at stake (linked to marketisation, monetisation etc. in the relevant web of capitalisation). Commodification is mediated through our labour. However, when all is in place (the market etc. have also been developed to a point), at a certain, critical point, the ‘service’ is transformed into a commodity – with the emergence of abstract labour, value, surplus-value, profit etc. developing as this many-headed hydra takes shape. Yet it is still incorrect to say that ‘education’ is the commodity itself, just as it is to say that labour is a commodity (when is it labour-power, the capacity to labour that is bought and sold in commodity form). Education is a process, an encounter between teachers and students, around some content, a focus, or foci. The result of this encounter will be the development of labour-power. Schools, colleges and universities do not typically ‘sell’ this commodity, this labour-power. They could do: for example, if they charged employers directly for developing labour-powers, and employers, human representatives of capital, paid them for it. Here we would have labour-power as a commodity form in itself. The phenomenon of substitute (or supply as it is known in the UK) teachers for schools is something like this. In this case, the supply teaching agencies are mainly parasitic: they sell teaching labour-power to schools, whilst putting low to zero resources into teacher development.

Glenn Rikowski, London, 10th February 2019