Public vs. Private in higher education

Sep 13, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
For some time now, several schools of thought present the view on whether higher education is a public good or a private good.
Altbach’s work on higher education was critical here. Bloom et al (2006) explain public good where higher education adds value to the country through educating the people and turning them into productive citizens; and private good where higher education largely provides benefits to individuals.
The argument goes something like this: that where higher education is a private good, those who are the beneficiaries must pay for that education. Conversely, where higher education is a public good, society would have a moral obligation to fund it.
People who advocate the private-good standpoint believe that the Government does not now have the capacity to fund higher education; this line of thinking has become popular, as evidenced by painful budget reductions in higher education. And today, universities constantly have to meet budget deficits through increases in tuition fees, develop into more marketable institutions, and promote market services.
Nonetheless, the private-good approach to higher education may restrict access to students from all social classes. Those students from well-to-do families would have the capacity to meet tuition costs; nevertheless, those from the lower classes surely would miss out on higher education, due to inadequate wherewithal to pay tuition fees; hence, the need for grants, scholarships, and loans.
And today, private institutions are becoming the in-thing in higher education where Altbach and Levy (2005) show that they enroll more than 50% of the students in Latin America, the Pacific Rim, and other regions.
The private-good approach also constricts the university’s core mission of teaching and research toward the new realm of income-generation. We are seeing the marketization of universities. Knowledge and disciplines with the potential to earn ‘dollars’ attract greater value and support, and those disciplines and knowledge with little potential for money-making, lose their place at the pedestal. These are significant challenges that already are adversely affecting equity. And mass higher education is fast becoming ‘not mass higher education’ anymore.
Undoubtedly, these new challenges need more complex administrative and governance structures, as Clark Kerr noted many years ago. Other concomitant requirements include enhanced accountability affecting expenditures, student achievement, faculty productivity, general performance and management of the university, etc. Institutional research becomes an essential ingredient for establishing and interpreting performance indicators, increased accountability, and in the end, efficient management.
Furthermore, globalization and internationalization continue to penetrate every aspect of the social fabric of society. Marketization rules the roost. Wolin (1981) argued that globalization, emerging from these market relations, brought in its wake the economization of society eating away at the public standpoint in higher education. And this crisis in the public standpoint and the erosion of people’s belief in higher education continue to bedevil modern university development.
Prem Misir

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Public vs. Private in higher education

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