In the U.S. That is not the case in every country in the world (many have free college education) so it's not an inherent property of higher ed to be "marked-driven commodity". Therefore it's valid to criticize the U.S. implementation for being that given that it doesn't have to be.

It's notable, however, that on any ranking of the world's top universities you'll find the US absolutely dominant, holding over half of the top one hundred, two hundred, whatever... spots. This suggests there must be something going right.

And having spent time at various universities in various different countries I gotta tell you that the existence of a lot more money floating around the average US university certainly helps a lot.

That is what I was trying to highlight, how in US something like that is bound to end up on Wall-Street. Legislation will be rewritten, lobbyists and PR will be involved and it ends up trading just like real-estate, oil and other commodities.