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June 6, 2020
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June 30, 2014
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Abstract

The contemporary controversies around Polish higher education (HE) are an effect of rapid massification that the system underwent in the last decades. Academic conceptualizations of this change concentrate on the issue of marketization of HE institutions. Both proponents as well as opponents of marketization assume that the market can (for good or ill) dominate the institutional logic of the academia and completely modify the way universities work.


The aim of this paper is to present an alternative to this assumption, based on the theory of positional goods. Education is a positional good because its value for a given person is not absolute, but relative to the level of education other people attained. The competition for positional goods is characterized by three rules: firstly, it is a zero sum game, in which each person?s gain is another person?s loss; secondly, the stakes are highly valuable only when winners are few; thirdly, the competition tends to take the form of ?arms races?, where everyone?s considerable expenditures do not make anyone better off. Because of the difference between education and the goods that have absolute value, no way of providing it ? neither by market nor the state ? can satisfy the demands of all potential consumers.


The theory of positional goods allows us to understand Polish public and political debates over HE, as conflicts concerning educational prestige ? a good that may only be redistributed, but cannot be produced. The political regulation of that redistribution is not inherently more socially just than the market  one. I argue that in the Polish case, it is in the interest of dominant public and political actors to increase inequality by concentrating educational prestige in selected elite institutions. That kind of concentration can be attained only at the expense of the majority of students and alumni, which constitutes a violation of social justice.

Keywords

edukacja wyższa dobra pozycjonalne umasowienie urynkowienie higher education positional goods massification marketization

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How to Cite
Stankiewicz, Łukasz. (2014). The Debate on Higher Education in the Perspective of the Theory of Positional Goods. INSTED: Interdisciplinary Studies in Education & Society, 17(2(66), 109–130. Retrieved from https://insted-tce.pl/ojs/index.php/tce/article/view/35
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