Markets in Education: A Theoretical Note

The development of market relations is a striking feature of education in Australia and comparable countries. Education continues to produce non-market outputs (‘use values’) as well as market outputs, but participation in schooling is being reworked as market consumption; schools, TAFE institutions and universities are now required to sell themselves, and a range of services is provided on full cost basis. This article re-theorises markets in education, drawing on political economy and social theory (including the literature on post-modernism). It defines educational markets and describe four types of commodity produced: positional goods, self goods, training goods and knowledge goods. Post-compulsory education's long-standing role, as a vast competition for scarce social position, constitutes a form of market (one ordered by both government and private interests), and is the platform on which more orthodox economic markets in training and knowledge goods are being erected.