The Education Industry: Political Economy, Platform Capitalism, and Structural Dimensions in Türkiye (2000–2025)

Education has ceased to be solely a pedagogical enterprise and has emerged as a complex, multi-sector industrial ecosystem shaped by market mechanisms, state regulation, platform capitalism, and global competition. This conceptual article develops a multidimensional theoretical framework for the education industry, integrating political economy, institutional theory, human capital theory, platform capitalism, critical theory, and opportunity-justice perspectives. The framework defines the education industry as a state-and-privately-operated, multi-sector economic ecosystem encompassing the production, distribution, and innovation of knowledge, skills, and competencies—extending from formal schooling through educational technology, publishing, assessment, vocational production, and auxiliary services. The article identifies eight structural dimensions and traces their operation in Türkiye between 2000 and 2025. Applied to the Turkish case, the framework reveals an education industry of substantial and growing economic significance—4.9% of GDP, 1.7 million direct jobs, and USD 2.9 billion in services export revenue—constructed through deliberate state policy rather than spontaneous market evolution. Three original analytical contributions are offered: a reconceptualisation of the efficiency–equity dilemma through the lens of “opportunity justice”; a critical examination of state-operated digital platforms (MEBİ, MEBBYS) as sovereign yet datafying infrastructures; and a periodisation of Turkish marketisation that begins with the 2000–2007 structural adjustment era. The article concludes that education policy must be reconceptualised as industrial policy, and that opportunity justice—not merely structural equity—must constitute its normative foundation.