Taxation, universities, evil
If there were a free market in higher education, students would probably deal directly with the universities. A university might offer them a loan, a bank might, or an individual who wants to invest in the student might. It seems to me that presently the government is acting as buyer on students’ behalf (sort of like how the government acts on behalf of health consumers via the pharmaceutical benefits scheme), and is setting prices to boot.
There’s a fantastic discussion going on at Andrew Leigh’s place on two main issues: (1) Is the HECS-HELP loan scheme good policy? (2) Does the government have any moral ground on which to stand in demanding we supplicate at its altar and compliantly hand over our money? Are students on solid moral ground in willfully considering not paying back their HECS debt (in protest against the above situation) in order that they might financially pressure the government to dismantle HECS?
I have previously commented on tax evasion and avoidance. The Left-wing view (whereby the government has a moral right to almost everything we own) is here, courtesy of Peter Singer.
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If there were a free market in higher education, students would probably deal directly with the universities
Also, without having done any detailed analysis, my gut instinct tells me that a free market in education would see other positive changes occur.
You would probably end up with a bigger variety of institutions, a more efficient allocation of students in highly demanded courses, and institutions having a bigger incentive to cut costs and managing their finances more wisely.
When you price education at the true market cost of providing it, and you have greater competition between more flexible and dynamic institutions, you would end up with a situation where individuals are faced with the true cost of studying a degree, which is a good thing because they are the ones best placed to decide if they value it enough or not.
Jono your full of it!
[...] is of course, in addition to the other ways of financing university without HECS. There are bound to be more ways not thought of – we won’t [...]
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