Roots of Inequality. Political Economy of the US Higher Education System

Master's Thesis from the year 2025 in the subject Politics - Region: USA, grade: 1,3, Free University of Berlin (John-F.-Kennedy Institute), language: English, abstract: The dissertation aims to reveal the root causes of institutional inequality in the US higher education system. With the collapse of the "e;American Dream"e; 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 "e;3I model"e; (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.