Is Education a Public Good or a Private Good? - Innovations - Blogs - The Chronicle of ... - 1 views
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Advocates for more generous support of students frequently bemoan what they perceive as a social shift from viewing higher education as a “public good” to viewing it as a “private good.”
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The concept of public goods is central to economic analysis of the role of government in the allocation of resources. Public goods are defined by two characteristics: 1) Non-excludability: It is not possible to exclude non-payers from consuming the good. 2) Non-rivalry in consumption: Additional people consuming the good do not diminish the benefit to others
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Advocates for more generous support of students frequently bemoan what they perceive as a social shift from viewing higher education as a “public good” to viewing it as a “private good.” What they mean is that the public gets benefits from people going to college and should not be transferring responsibility for the costs of education to students themselves.
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This is not an either/or question. The benefits of college are not all public and they are not all private. The debate should be over what fraction of the cost of postsecondary education students should bear and how large society’s subsidy to them should be. It should not be over whether education is a “public” or a “private” good.