- By institutionalizing education and making it compulsory, governments create the monopoly of school.
- Alternative educational institutions are discouraged as society comes to see schools and universities as the only channel through which 'real' education can be delivered.
- Schools artificially constrain choice.
- Unable to makes decisions for themselves, students become like widgets travelling down an assembly line, having education done to them.
- Grades and certificates come to replace value creation in the real world.
- See credentialism.
Ivan Illich likened school to a "magic womb" that seals students off from the real world.
While you are in school, you are cut off from social and economic reality. Nothing you create as a student is expected to be useful to you or the rest of society. Nothing you create is intended to be consumed by people facing real world constraints. The feedback you receive from teachers and professors means nothing because they are paid to give you feedback. The outputs from the menial tasks (homework, tests ...) you engage in have no value.
- Creation of a global caste system based on educational rankings.
- Creation of a societal caste system based on grades, certificates and titles.
- Since measures of success are consistently surrogated for success itself, the hierarchy created by the caste system deviates further and further from reality.