Higher education: Public good or private commodity?

Abstract

Authors who claim that higher education is a public service are often concerned about equity: they are making a normative case that like all education it should be available for everybody. Others stress the external economies: a society with large numbers of highly educated people is more efficient economically and better in many other ways. Finally there is the argument that 'knowledge' is a 'non-rivalrous' commodity; once something is known it is in principle available to all at very low cost and should be organized so that it is. Opponents argue that higher education needs resources, so someone must pay for it and it is more equitable for the costs to be borne by those who benefit most from it. Knowledge may intrinsically be free once it has been discovered, but the acquisition or creation of new knowledge is very expensive and those who acquire or create it need to be reimbursed. It is also argued that competition between independent creators and purveyors of knowledge is inherently more effective in the expansion of knowledge than monopolies of any kind, public or private. This article claims that the arguments on both sides are essentially about finance and concludes that neither public monopoly nor unrestricted market competition are by themselves ways providing the best higher education for all.