Do we believe that the point of Higher Education is to give certain people a personal advantage in society by educating them to the point where they become knowledgeable, skilled and cultured global citizens as well as to climb the heights of the middle and upper middle classes? Or do we hold that it is there to make sure our society is equipped to survive and thrive in the 21st Century, by providing us with the skilled people we need to innovate and the professionals we need to run things?
This question is easily answered in the case of basic education – schooling is widely acknowledged as unequivocally a public good. Most contemporary societies consider it their duty to make it available to all. But Higher Education is always treated ambiguously. “Why should we pay for these pampered, privileged students”, say those on the one side, especially when it comes to those studying degrees not perceived to be ‘useful”; “they are lucky to be there”. Some even argue that we should make the whole system private.
On the other hand, we hear of how crucial university graduates are to the well-being of society itself. You cannot manage an economy in this day and age without the requisite innovators, engineers, architects, planners, doctors, accountants and the like, they say. You cannot live in the modern world without the richness of understanding and insight offered to us by artists, historians, musicians, social scientists and writers. The kinds of qualities produced by Universities are not simply personal luxuries but to the benefit of society.
Our debates about University funding are caught up in these ambiguities. If higher education is a “private good” designed to assist the individual to advance, then the state should have little to do with funding it. In fact, widespread privatization of Higher Education would seem to be the logical outcome of such thinking. This is what has happened in many parts of Africa. In some countries, private universities far outnumber public ones, and do a better job than they do in some respects.
But if higher education is a public good which will benefit all, including even those who do not attain University qualifications, then the state should fund it entirely. While the welfare states of Europe fund higher education generously many are beginning to include fees in their funding models, and most run enormous fund-raising and grant-obtaining operations as well. China and Cuba have unambiguously stuck to the public funding model.
But in fact neither of these options is entirely satisfactory. If there is no significant state funding in the University sector, the tendency will be for Higher Education to become extremely expensive and attract only the tiniest elite; and for it, in most (but not all) cases to become powerfully instrumental in what it chooses to teach – the most profitable courses being first on the menu. Only the wealthiest of private Universities – the Harvards of the world - are able to avoid these dangers.