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I would suggest two reasons why not.

First, because if education were a business enterprise its goods would be discounted according to market principles. The value of any education that pretended an F was a C would be marked down accordingly, even if one paid to raise the F to a C, relative to an education that recognized a C as a C and an F as an F.

Second, because education is not best understood as a business enterprise -- that is, a reduction entirely to exchange. As Augustine observed there are not one but two kinds of economic transactions -- "sale or gift." Education combines both. If the parents are the principals, then educators are agents for the parents in making their gifts (as Aristotle put it) of "existence, rearing, and instruction." The exchange between parents and teachers is subordinate to the parents' gift of instruction to their children.

So I think the business analogy fails on both grounds.

Thank you for your thoughtful comments.

I would ask what do you mean by the value of an education? It would seem that the value of top-ranked institutions is their ability to attract the children elites to their institutions and thereby the access to that social network. The value of a Harvard or a Stanford is not because of its academics (grade inflation is typical of top-ranked institutions) but because of type of customers (students) these schools attract.

I am also not sure whether education falls into the gift category. Surely education is a gift from the parent to their child, but it is not a gift to the teacher. The relationship between the person who pays (whether the parent or the child) and the teacher seems to me merely one of exchange and does not necessarily include any sort of gift.

Lee, While it is certainly the case that top-ranked schools suffer from grade inflation (as do almost all schools) that is no reason to adopt the position you take. It is also not the case that the only value of top-ranked institutions is the social network that it provides. Certainly you cannot seriously hold that no learning takes place at schools like Harvard. Or that such learning is of no value. Certainly part of the reason the top-ranked became top-ranked was because of the quality of the product. While they may not offer the same product today they would not remain where they are if it was simply true that all they sold was a social network.

The idea of student as customer holds but not in the way you argue. The student buys access to an education but not an education itself. In other words there is no guarantee of learning. Certainly the institution has an obligation that there is a genuine attempt to teach the student but if he fails to learn that is not simply the fault of the institution. You might buy a book from Amazon but there is no promise that you will actually understand it. You buy a ticket to a movie but not the promise that you will listen. You can't then demand a refund because you fell asleep or couldn't appreciate its merits. It is not a mere exchange relationship. There are obligations on both sides such that the customer can only profit from the transaction by fulfilling those obligations. The student, or their parents, are not buying a degree but access to the possibility of getting a degree.

I hope that your post was meant to be provocative.

Whoever pays the tuition is paying for assessment. That means that whatever grade the instructor assigns according to his/her evaluation of student progress is part of the "product" regardless of how high or low that grade might be.

If you are both correct that education requires obligations on both parties, then at what stage is this obligation made explicit? At the time when the college offers admission to the student? When the student enrolls in courses? Or when he or she receives the syllabus? My point in this blog is to raise indirectly the questions 1) what exactly are colleges providing to students; 2) can the various players who partake in a student’s education work together rather than at cross-purposes with each other; and 3) what aspects of the business model should higher education adopt to improve its own productivity and justify itself to its stakeholders? But perhaps these are questions for another post.