Public Good, Private Good, Positional Good: Globalization and Paradigms of Purposes in U.S. Higher Education

Higher education in the United States historically has been both a public and a private good. Recently, the notion of higher education as a positional good—one that confers status because of its exclusivity—has entered the mix. With globalization, the definitions of all have changed. The public who benefit from higher education are no longer “citizens of my nation.” The private good disproportionately focuses on employment—worldwide. Because positional good is achieved by access to language, culture, and “know-how” as well as education itself, universities in the United States that were not previously status givers now are. Also, given global university rankings, attending the most prestigious institution in a student’s home country often no longer confers elite status. Additionally, when for-profit companies and the media provide instantaneous information, what gives a university purpose and, using Marga’s (2006) term, legitimacy? Its capacity to create globalized “imaginaries” (Taylor, 2004) among its publics, and for its constituencies then to empathize (Bennett, 1998) with lives and epistemologies that differ from their own—this may be the new paradigm of purpose for U.S. higher education.