Many philosophers and education policy scholars believe that colleges and universities are required by justice to use their mobility engines to equalize opportunity or benefit badly-off social groups. When this ideal is not met, these scholars believe further that reforms properly aim to harness higher education’s mobility engine for egalitarian purposes. In this dissertation, I develop and defend a novel approach to both ideal and non-ideal theorizing about the requirements of justice for higher-educational institutions. Working within the normative framework of political liberalism, I defend a central methodological commitment of Rawlsian liberal theorists—institutionalism—and explore how this commitment should constrain our ideal theorizing about the normative obligations of colleges and universities, as well as our non-ideal theorizing about the legitimacy of justice-based political interventions to colleges and universities. Institutionalism, the view that social justice principles apply directly to institutions within the basic structure of society, but do not apply directly to the conduct of individuals or the activities of non-basic institutions, is one way that Rawlsian liberal theorists represent a central presumption of political liberalism—that justice can be fully realized in liberal-democratic societies in a manner that leaves ample space for individuals to affirm and practice a wide range of comprehensive doctrines and conceptions of the good life. I ultimately argue that Rawlsian institutionalism is incompatible with the egalitarian conception of higher education’s normative obligations described above. In the first and second chapters, I explore two cases: the first in which higher education is basic-structural, and the second in which it is not. I then present a disjunctive argument for the conclusion that even in non-ideal conditions, colleges and universities are not required by justice to directly promote the aims of equalizing opportunity or benefitting badly-off social groups. In the third and final chapter, I explore two ways in which the institutionalist commitment might be weakened for the purpose of non-ideal theorizing. I then argue that without strong institutionalism, the reforms that non-ideal theorists recommend will undermine political-liberal stability in a manner that is incompatible with the ultimate aim of Rawlsian non-ideal theorizing—the well-ordered society.