I think there's a strong case to be made that many non-elite universities are committing fraud on behalf of their institutions.

They intentionally withhold from students what their odds of success are, even though they have that information available, while lying to them about how much they'll benefit from attending. I also know that many faculty members fudge grades to maintain financial aid eligibility for students (literally financial aid fraud).

I know these behaviors are not unique to universities, but I'd be perfectly happy to see them held accountable for knowingly scamming students.

Why do you keep doing this to yourself, man?

'Man, ok so having customers pay for a product rather then receive it for free, is a failed free market experiment...?'

YES! EXACTLY!

This neoliberal commodification of education using debt and imposed market model structures corrupts the entire ethos of higher education.

It puts young people into debt and changes the incentives and values that underpin the higher education system.

Instead of being a pursuit of knowledge education becomes a crude process of people investing in and providing a commodity with the aim of gaining material wealth.

This undermines the whole value system that once was what universities were about- the pursuit of knowledge.

The great and tragic irony is that the commodification process where a market model is imposed changes the incentives to primarily economic incentives, the result is that quality of teaching and learning declines and the economic and wider societal outcomes over the long term decline also.

The point the article is trying to make which you seem to not quite understand is this. Education market was changed from the previous model where the underlying philosophy was that people with the ability and desire to gain tertiary education could gain higher skills largely at the expense of the taxpayer and would on average return that investment by delivering increased productivity.

For many decades this model had worked but it did not align with the neoliberal market forces dogma well and so the new model based on a fake free market was introduced.

The change to a 'free market' model while still largely overseen and funded by government created a different model where a market model is imposed but it is not a true free market but a fake one- one where the incentives for education providers are perverse and driven by parameters that do not serve the long term best interests of the economy because incentives rather favour providers who provide volume not quality.

The west is in decline. The education system is focused on woke and entitled identity politics. In China in contrast education is focused on the engine room of the economy- engineering. Remember when the west also celebrated engineering and science? It is the hard sciences that are the basis of economic growth and strength so what happened? The west gained hegemony over the financial system and by 'engineering' the financial system discovered 'wealth' could be created- it is fake wealth. It is the fake 'wealth' that precipitated the GFC. it is parasitic rentseeking financialisation that has bled the wests economies while China has built its mercantile-productive economic growth based on hard engineering. Most of the politburo are engineers. Most of the wests leaders are bankers, lawyers property developers or bankers nominee/lobbyists. Young westerners aspire to be bankers or property developers and so become rentseeking parasites. Young Chinese aspire to be engineers and build things. It is not just the wests universities but western culture that is corrupt and in terminal decline.