The dissertation aims to reveal the root causes of institutional inequality in the US higher education system. With the collapse of the “American Dream” as the realistic background, this research raises the question: How is inequality institutionally constructed, maintained, and exacerbated in a seemingly fair and widely expanded higher education system? The study focuses on the student loan system, a key node, as an institutional turning point in the national transition from public funding to private debt. It systematically examines its mechanisms in policy design, ideological discourse, and class reproduction.
In theory, the dissertation defines inequality as a structural reproduction mechanism, emphasizing that the joint action of power, institutions, and ideology forms it. Based on the "3I model" (ideas, institutions, interests), and introducing lobbying and rent-seeking theories, an analytical model for understanding institutional bias and interest solidification is constructed. In terms of methods, the dissertation combines process tracking, case study, discourse analysis, and logistic regression to conduct a multi-level analysis of the federal government's student loan policy from 2010 to 2024.
The study finds that inequality in the US higher education system is mainly reflected in four mechanisms: exclusion of public participation, ideological hegemony, class differentiation, and the institutional lock-in effects. Together, these mechanisms constitute a structural encirclement of public resources by government and capital, which conceals the true face of structural-institutional inequality. Ultimately, it points out that the inequality does not stem from the coincidental governance or policy failure; instead, it is the product of the inherent contradictions of the democratic capitalist system. To break through the institutional dilemma, the study suggests a political resistance normativity based on Marx's concept of “free and fully developed individuals” and the reconstruction of political imagination.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 What is Inequality? Definitions, Mechanisms, and Institutions
1.1 Defining Inequality: From Distribution to Structural Inequality
1.2 Mechanisms of Inequality: Structural Inequality as Institutional Reproduction
1.2.1 Classical School of Thoughts in Political Economy
1.2.2 Inequality as Functional Distributive Difference
1.2.3 A Critical Turn: Bourdieu’s Theory of Social Capital and Reproduction
1.3 Inequality and Institutional Intervention
1.4 A Brief Summary
Chapter 2 Structural-Institutional Inequalities within the US Higher Education System
2.1 Inequalities among the US Universities
2.1.1 Elite and Private Universities: Institutional Forming and Reinforcement
2.1.2 Public Universities: The Loss of Public Mission
2.1.3 Community Colleges: Structural Deprivation
2.2 Inequality across Social Class
2.3 Summary
Chapter 3 Analytical Models
3.1 The concepts of the ‘3 I’s: Interests, Ideas, and Institutions
3.1.1 Interests
3.1.2 Ideas
3.1.3 Institutions: Path Dependency
3.2 Lobbying Models
3.2.1 Lobby as an Exchange
3.2.2 Lobby as Persuasion
3.2.3 Lobby as a Legislative Subsidy
3.2.4 Counteractive Lobbying
3.2.5 Integrating the Models
3.3 Rent-Seeking Model
3.3.1 Social cost of rent-seeking results in both economic and government inefficiency
3.3.2 Governmental Costs of Rent-Seeking: Double Loss of Welfare
3.4 Synthesizing the Models: Structural-Institutional Inequality Framework
Chapter 4 Research Design
4.1 Research Objectives & Questions
4.2 Methodological Strategy: Process Tracing
4.3 Case Study
4.4 Data Collection
4.5 Operationalization
4.6 Analytical Integration
Chapter 5 Findings
5.1 Inequality in Policy Formation Stage
5.1.1 Legislative History
5.1.2 Strategic Game and Retained Benefits for Concentrated Interest
5.1.3 Stealing Behaviors from Concentrated Interest: Lobbying and Rent-seeking
5.1.4 The Forgotten Diffused Interests
5.2 Inequality in Policy Implementation Stage
5.2.1 Policy Implementation Strategy: Ideological Indoctrination
5.2.2 Policy Implementation Results on Social Class
5.3 Summary: The Logic of Governance and Path Dependency
Chapter 6 Critical Views on the Political Economy of Inequality
6.1 The Crisis of US Democratic Capitalism: Harvard vs Trump
6.2 The Principal Contradiction in the US Democratic Capitalism
6.3 Political Resistance in the Higher Education Arena
Chapter 7 Conclusion
7.1 Summary
7.2 Contributions and Limitations
7.3 Future Research
References
Objectives and Thematic Focus
This dissertation aims to reveal the root causes of institutional inequality within the US higher education system. It investigates how inequality is institutionally constructed, maintained, and exacerbated, specifically focusing on the student loan system as a key node of the government's transition from public funding to private debt, while analyzing the mechanisms of policy design, ideological discourse, and class reproduction.
- Structural-Institutional Inequality framework
- Political economy of the US student loan system
- Lobbying, rent-seeking, and interest group influence
- Ideological legitimation and discourse construction
- Disparate impacts on different social classes and path dependency
Excerpt from the Book
1.2 Mechanisms of Inequality: Structural Inequality as Institutional Reproduction
The section conducts a literature review on “what is the mechanism of inequality,” starting from the classical school of thought in political economy, the functional distributive perspective in economics, and Bourdieu’s reproductive perspective. It concludes that inequality is produced by deep institutional forces and reproduced by habitus. Inspired by Bourdieu, the thesis studies inequality in the US higher education system via institutional reproduction from political economy.
1.2.1 Classical School of Thoughts in Political Economy
In the political and economic analysis of how inequality evolves, classical thinkers contribute different understandings and reveal the endogenous disharmonious mechanism within the capitalist system. Thomas Malthus, the very first thinker in western political economy canon, proposes the famous “population trap” theory, arguing that population growth would inevitably lead to an increase in the labor supply, which in turn causes the wage level to fall to the subsistence level, and ultimately results in widespread poverty and social unrest. He advocates limiting population growth to avoid the inevitable consequence of mass suffering and revolution. Influenced by his theory, David Ricardo extended the perspective of land scarcity. Under the premise of fixed land supply, population growth leads to increasingly tight land resources, which drives up land rent and prices, allowing landowners to gradually seize an increasing share of national income. For this reason, he proposes taxing land and introducing foreign agricultural products to ease the pressure on domestic land prices.
Summary of Chapters
Introduction: This chapter introduces the "American Dream" narrative and its erosion in higher education, establishing the research question regarding how inequality is institutionally constructed.
Chapter 1 What is Inequality? Definitions, Mechanisms, and Institutions: This chapter reviews theoretical frameworks of inequality, shifting from distributive justice to structural-institutional reproduction.
Chapter 2 Structural-Institutional Inequalities within the US Higher Education System: This chapter categorizes higher education institutions and argues that inequality stems from their behavioral models and historical class stratification.
Chapter 3 Analytical Models: This chapter develops an analytical model using the "3 I's" (Interests, Ideas, Institutions), lobbying theories, and rent-seeking models to explain institutional bias.
Chapter 4 Research Design: This chapter outlines the methodological strategy, including process tracing, case study selection, and data collection, to empirically test the theoretical framework.
Chapter 5 Findings: This chapter presents empirical evidence on how interest groups influence policy formation and how implementation results differentiate outcomes by social class.
Chapter 6 Critical Views on the Political Economy of Inequality: This chapter examines the crisis of democratic capitalism in the US, using recent conflicts between Harvard and the Trump administration as a case study.
Chapter 7 Conclusion: This chapter summarizes the dissertation, discusses contributions and limitations, and suggests directions for future research.
Keywords
U.S. Higher Education, Structural-Institutional Inequality, Political Economy, Student Loan, Policy Formation, Interest Groups, Lobbying, Rent-Seeking, Bourdieu, Social Capital, Class Reproduction, Ideological Legitimation, Path Dependency, Neoliberalism, Policy Implementation
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core focus of this research?
The research explores the root causes of inequality within the US higher education system, specifically examining how institutional mechanisms and political economic factors facilitate the reproduction of social class differences.
What are the primary thematic areas covered?
The study covers the political economy of the student loan system, the influence of concentrated interest groups through lobbying, the role of ideological discourse in policy legitimation, and the structural disadvantages faced by lower-income students.
What is the central research question?
The dissertation asks: How is inequality institutionally constructed, maintained, and exacerbated in the seemingly fair and widely expanded US higher education system?
Which scientific methodology is employed?
The study adopts an interpretivist paradigm using process tracing as the core method, combined with case study analysis, discourse analysis, and logistic regression on student loan data.
What does the main body of the work address?
The work moves from theoretical definitions of inequality to the development of an analytical model (the "3 I's"), followed by empirical analysis of federal student loan policy across different political eras.
Which keywords best characterize this work?
Key terms include Structural-Institutional Inequality, Political Economy, U.S. Higher Education, Student Loan, Policy Formation, Lobbying, and Social Reproduction.
How does the "3 I's" model contribute to the analysis?
The "3 I's" model (Interests, Ideas, and Institutions) provides a structured way to analyze how policy processes are shaped by actors, framing content, and established organizational rules.
What is the role of the student loan system in this study?
The student loan system serves as the empirical case study to deconstruct how government and market forces interact to create and solidify inequality through institutional policy design.
How do "lobbying" and "rent-seeking" shape higher education?
The research demonstrates that interest groups utilize lobbying to influence policy nodes, while rent-seeking mechanisms allow these groups to extract public resources, often at the expense of students and taxpayers.
What is the significance of the "ideological legitimation" findings?
The study finds that successive U.S. administrations use specific narratives—such as "efficiency" or "individual responsibility"—to justify policy changes that naturalize inequality and depoliticize structural barriers.
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- Kexin Chen (Autor:in), 2025, Roots of Inequality. Political Economy of the US Higher Education System, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1612983
