Higher education: The ultimate winner-take-all market?

Frank describes the evolution and effects of the winner-take-all trend in higher education, where success breeds success and failure breeds failure. Pressures from the winner-take-all market have spawned a positional arms race, as universities struggle to maintain and improve their hierarchical rankings. Frank notes the high costs of the positional arms race and its effects on tuition and access to higher education. He argues that collective action by institutions must be permitted to defuse this competition and mitigate the effects of the winner-take-all market.