US education officials framed college rating by comparing higher education to consumer appliances.

Evidence

While the rating system is clearly oriented to would-be investors in higher education, Deputy Under Secretary of Education Jamienne Studley cast it as a consumer service: “it’s like rating a blender,” she said to a gathering of college presidents. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 449

Categorization

• XREF: A concrete instance of economization-as-rationality, echoing the chapter’s core claim about the demos being recast as investors.
• CANDY: The ‘rating a blender’ line is a darkly funny, tweetable micro-instance of neoliberal rationality applied to higher ed.