Is Free Education A Synonym For Equality?

[thorsten]

The marginal cost of a student is significant and non zero. It's a rival good because the professors time is finite. We're talking about university. Your "free education" offer via Wikipedia on the other hand is an example of a non rival good.

I can understand if you think it's a club good, I disagree, but regardless it's not a public good. You're still asking the entire populace to fund something which most directly benefits a select group. Which in the specific case of Argentina turns out to be a group of people who come from backgrounds of above average wealth. Which is what the lanacion column was about.

I never said it's a public good, I said it's not a private good - which is a difference. 100% purely non-rival goods rarely exist in practice, even Wikipedia is not an example as - to say use your examples - a server being able to handle 1000 users might not be sufficient to handle a 10 million users. Yet, if you have a server farm that can handle 10 million users, adding a single user more to the existing traffic doesn't make a significant difference. The same applies to universities.
Regarding whether higher-eduation should be private or tax-funded - that's a question society needs to decide. There are arguments for both options, and I personally prefer a system as it is in most countries in Europe, but if one chooses a system where students are required to pay tuition, I think it's not very smart to implement it in a way to charge only the students who are about to graduate, while the ones that study several years and drop out before the exam (and thus are producing similar cost as the successful students) get free tuition - that's basically an incentive for being unsuccessful in terms of finishing a university degree.

 

[steveinbsas]

Private education is synonym of inequality.

Since there is no conjunction in this sentence it is impossible to know if you believe that private education is a synonym for inequality or the synonym for inequality.

Either way, I think it would be more precise to make the broader statement that private property is the ultimate synonym of inequality. Nothing makes some people less (financially) equal to others than the exercise of private property rights.

Getting (paying for) a private education is an exercise of property rights, but property rights apply to actions and not things. Getting an education is an action.

Even if someone believes that "receiving" an education is a right and should be provided by the state for free, "equality" (of outcomes) is impossible.

And it still has to be paid for by someone.

 

[scotttswan]

Free public universities are a good thing, what's happened in the UK and Usa is a tragedy and should be sorted Asap.

Graduates pay back to the population through higher taxes due to earning more. The arts who may not earn as much give back to the population through culture.

 

[EJLarson]

Free public universities are a good thing, what's happened in the UK and Usa is a tragedy and should be sorted Asap.

Graduates pay back to the population through higher taxes due to earning more. The arts who may not earn as much give back to the population through culture.

Please don't say "free" because it's not true. As we all know, it's a euphemism for "taxpayer-funded," which means "I don't care who pays as long as it's not me!" "Good" or "bad" are personal value judgements. Someone had to give up their resources for X to go to school. Would the world be better if Y's money had stayed in her/his pocket? We'll never know.

 

[thorsten]

EJLarson, "free university", just like "free healthcare" are just common names for tax-funded and it doesn't necessarily mean "I don't care who pays for it", but might mean "it's important for a society that anyone has access to these services and thus they are tax-based". I don't say that this is the right way to do it (even so for the 2 kinds of services I'm a proponent), but like other services it's an option countries can make and there are a lot of countries where the system is working very well. Nobody thinks "I don't care who pay for police/fire men/... as long as it's not me" either.

 

[EJLarson]

EJLarson, "free university", just like "free healthcare" are just common names for tax-funded and it doesn't necessarily mean "I don't care who pays for it", but might mean "it's important for a society that anyone has access to these services and thus they are tax-based". I don't say that this is the right way to do it (even so for the 2 kinds of services I'm a proponent), but like other services it's an option countries can make and there are a lot of countries where the system is working very well. Nobody thinks "I don't care who pay for police/fire men/... as long as it's not me" either.

"Nobody?" We seem to live in different worlds. I don't remember ever hearing a new graduate thanking the taxpayers who made it all possible.

 

[thorsten]

I haven't heard anyone thanking the taxpayers for firefighters, police, army, infrastructure, ...

 

[Pensador]

Well thats all good but really anything you want to learn these days is readily available threw google and YouTube. It is even amazing how much you can learn digging around in patents which are also freely available.

 

[Pensador]

"Nobody?" We seem to live in different worlds. I don't remember ever hearing a new graduate thanking the taxpayers who made it all possible.

Ed you have it all wrong man... that is not your money that is government money. Your paying taxes is irrelevant because when you do it becomes government money and you are out of the equation. Most of the morons on this planet cannot even grasp that so well you know.

 

[nikad]

One of the reasons why humans group up, pay taxes and choose governments is that they can achieve greater goals when everybody contributes with their taxes. One of these goals is security, my guess and wish is that healthcare, education and housing are also goals for everybody living in society. A big % of the population in many places has no idea where money comes from or where it goes, this is due to poor high school education.