Since the crisis of overproduction set in, capitalist interests have been scrambling to exploit any last bit of potentially exploitable territory, seeking to find some source of water amid a major drought. The arena of education, both public and private, has been one such source of profit throughout the past couple decades. Who has "made out"? Just to name a few...
-Textbook Companies: Constantly churning out new editions and taking advantage of the ever-changing fads of school reform; defining curricula and making arrangements at the state level in order to cultivate monopolies
-Testing Companies: Hugely benefiting from NCLB's mandates for frequent assessment; offering increasingly more extensive and expensive test prep services
-Private school management and charter school chains: taking advantage of the availability of public funds; in some cases, mirroring what happened in the financial sector, individuals have been able to make out like bandits while their schools fall apart.
-Private institutions of higher education: accused of marketing programs to people who are unlikely to finish, encouraging them to take out loans, not fulfilling what they have promised in their educational offerings, and then leaving them with massive debt
In fact, both private and public institutions of higher education are guilty of promoting student loans and debt, while churning out more degrees than there is a market for (and making the degrees value-less).
[The more I think about it, the more capitalism seems like a sort of weed, which ends up spreading everywhere and choking out all other life. Nothing is safe! Not even education.]
The above examples just happen to illustrate many of the primary characteristics and tendencies of capitalism:
-an endless chain of fads and perpetual obsolescence
-monopolies
-a parasitic relationship with the state
-individual gain at the expense of everyone else
-multiplication of debt
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