Contemporary education systems are increasingly shaped by market-oriented logics in which curricula, credentials, and learning pathways are designed, priced, and promoted as investments in future employability and social mobility. Within this configuration, critical questions arise regarding who determines what counts as valuable knowledge, who profits from its delivery, and who ultimately bears the risk when educational promises fail to translate into meaningful life and labour outcomes. This paper critically examines the political economy of education by interrogating education as a traded promise, one sold by institutions, regulated by policy frameworks, and purchased by students under conditions of profound uncertainty.

Drawing on human capital theory, critical political economy, and constructivist perspectives, the paper argues that contemporary education systems increasingly externalise risk onto learners, while decision-making power over curriculum relevance, credential value, and labour-market alignment remains concentrated among policymakers, accrediting bodies, and education providers. Students, positioned as rational consumers, are expected to invest time, debt, and aspiration without reliable knowledge of whether educational offerings will remain relevant amid rapid technological change, automation, and shifting labour markets. This asymmetry of information and power fundamentally challenges assumptions of informed choice and meritocratic reward.

The paper further explores how this risk transfer disproportionately affects learners in the Global South and marginalised contexts, where structural constraints, limited labour-market absorption, and uneven digital transformation exacerbate uncertainty. By reframing education not solely as a public good or private investment, but as a contested site of risk allocation, the study contributes to contemporary debates on marketisation, accountability, and equity in education. The paper concludes by calling for more transparent, participatory, and ethically grounded approaches to educational governance that re-centre learners not as consumers of promised futures, but as co-constructors of meaningful and socially responsive education.

Education marketisation, student risk, political economy of education, human capital theory, educational value, uncertainty, higher education governance, Global South education, policy accountability

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