In American education and political arenas, this question has unquestionably been front and center under the bright, spot lights and cameras during the recent presidential debates. In the P-12 scene it has also been a focal point of many contentious state and local election discussions and contests. I found the history of this hotly debated question very fascinating. This is not a new political or educational argument in America. It has been an issue for America’s schools since the 17th century.
The question “Public Education: Public or Private Good?” is very simply stated. However, it is really an extremely devious and furtive question. To begin to answer the question, we must have a firm handle on the five important concepts that comprise the heart of the question. These terms and concepts are: 1) Public; 2) Public Education; 3) Goods; 4) Public Good; and 5) Private Good. We will begin to parse these five terms in this post. Once we have a grasp on these concepts we will continue the discussion in future posts, attempting to unravel the tricky nuances that are fraught with danger. In so doing, we will immediately find that we have jumped into a snake pit of poisonous vipers, which have intricately woven themselves into a sliverly web worthy of any Indiana Jones movie.
I hope we will not be like the unsuspecting pilgrim trying to find the mother lode of inexpensive, high quality education, who comes upon a tree loaded with delicious looking Granny Smith apples. One of these green apples is especially appealing. It is hanging from a low branch, just in the reach of our intrepid seeker of truth. This potentially, prize-winning apple is crying out to the unsuspecting traveler, “Pick me; eat me. I am delicious!” However, as soon as the hand reaches out to touch the prize apple, it feels the fangs of the green snake hiding among the leaves.
Returning to consideration of our five concepts, let’s begin with the question:”What do we mean by public?” There are two primary answers to this question. The first is a more formal answer. Public refers to the collective whole, or the state. When we use the term state, we usually mean the government, whether it be at the local or national level. In the United States, we have a problem with this term since, we have divided up our land and people into a large unit which we call the country. We then subdivided that large unit into smaller units which we call states. States are further subdivided into units which are usually called counties, cities, and towns. Most of the time when we use the term public to refer to one of these units, we are referring to the governing body of that unit. The second answer is more informal. In this usage, we will refer to the people that compromise the unit as the public. How do we distinguish which definition we are using? It depends upon the context of the situation. Public law is concerned with political matters, including the powers, rights, capacities, and duties of various levels of government and government officials. A park that is owned by the state, and open for use by anyone is called a public park.
What is “Public Education”? The quick answer is that it is education under the control of and financed by the state. At the primary and secondary levels, this definition usually suffices to distinguish public from private educational entities. It is more complicated at the post-secondary level. We will work on breaking out and explaining the intricacies of this conundrum in a subsequent post. However, for the sake of this post, let us assume that we can distinguish between public and private post-secondary institutions.
“What is a good?” In economic terms, “A good is a material or service that satisfies a human need or want, or provides utility to people.” “Public Goods” are those goods which are controlled or dispensed by the general public, usually in the form of the government. “Private Goods” are those goods which are controlled or dispensed by individual, private citizens.
In trying to formalize and tighten up the analysis of the role of the government in dispensing public goods, the first economist who attempted to define “Public good” was probably Dr. Paul Samuelson, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Economics. His world famous textbook Economics was initially published in 1948. In all its various editions, it is one of the top ten best selling book of all times. It is currently in its 19th edition. When I took Economics during my sophomore year in college, my professor had selected this classic as the textbook for the course, because Samuelson had been his instructor in his college days.
An academic paper published by Samuelson in 1954 may have one of the greatest pedantic titles of all times. The title was “The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure”. The paper appeared in the Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol 36, No. 4. In his paper, Samuelson suggests that his predecessors neglected the very important point of optimal public or government expenditure in their economic analyses. To remedy their omissions, Samuelson defined two categories of goods:
- Private consumption goods: goods which are distributed according to individual preferences, primarily focusing on the consumption side, but also including the preferences of the individual producers and providers
- Collective consumption goods: “goods which all enjoy in common in the sense that each individual’s consumption of that good leads to no subtraction from any other individual’s consumption of that good,”
Subsequent economists labeled Samuelson’s “Collective consumption goods” as “Public Goods“. They broke Samuelson’s description of the definition of collective or public goods up into two distinct characteristics:
- Non-excludability: “..enjoy in common” meant that It was impossible for the government to exclude non-payers from consuming the good.
- Non-rivalrous: The “no subtraction” concept was translated into the idea that consumption by one individual does not exclude any one else from consuming the good.
Today’s economists employ national defense and clean air as two standard examples of public goods. One of the basic illustrations of the principle of non-excludability involves national defense. The federal government can’t reasonably deny an individual national protection, and adding one more individual under the protective umbrella of the military doesn’t subtract any protection from anyone else. It should be clear that pure public good and goods that are strictly private are mutually exclusive. The difficulty comes when we begin to see that there are very few pure public or private goods. This is a topic for another post.
Samuelson considered the concept of a public good as the most essential component of his economic analysis in the allocation of governmental resources, and central to his theory of an optimally functioning welfare state. He did admit that people would be “tempted” by their “selfish desires” to revert to acting on their private goods appetite, thus making it very difficult to come to a point of optimal public consumption. When he formulated this theory in the mid-20th century, he conceded that there was no “magical adding machine” that could do all of the calculations necessary to solve the mathematical, optimization problem at the heart of his theory. However, he wishfully added that huge strides were being made in the realm of computing machines, which he hoped one day would arrive at a solution. We’ve come a long way in the past 70 years in computing capabilities. However, we still haven’t found Samuelson’s silver bullet. The perfect welfare state, utopia, is still an illusion. However, on the other side of the coin, the state governed by peoples’ selfish desires is a maelstrom of gigantic proportions. Is there a solution somewhere in the middle where we live and thrive together?
Returning to the question that began this discussion: Public Education:Public or Private Good? Many commentators since Samuelson’s ground-breaking work have tried to force public education into the category of a public good. They argue that providing everyone a free education “has to advance society.” Unfortunately, public education does not meet the two uncompromising characteristics of a public or common good. Public education does meet either the non-excludabilty or the non-rivalrous criteria. Why is this the case?
An individual can be excluded from receiving an education at the public’s expense in many different ways. Some of these ways are subtle, and others are very blatant. To enter the temples of learning, you have to be an “authorized person.” What keeps people from being authorized? In one word: Discrimination. Before you go running off, crying FOUL!, there is legal and illegal discrimination. There is ethical and unethical discrimination. There is proper and improper discrimination.
Discrimination is just the process of separating things into two or more categories. When colleges admit some students and reject others, they are discriminating among students. It is an educational truth: Some students shouldn’t be accepted into some colleges. Even with an abundance of assistance, some students would not be able to do the work to succeed at Harvard University. The DoE actually encourages colleges to discriminate on the basis of academic ability. For a given student to receive federal or state financial aid, the college must demonstrate that the particular student has the ability to do college level work at that given institution, and can benefit from the degree program in which the particular student might enroll. As a student progresses through their college career, they must maintain satisfactory progress as defined by the DoE, or their given institution if the institutional criteria are stiffer than the federal criteria. There are three parts to the federal satisfactory progress criteria. The first criteria is that students must have a grade point average of at least a “C” or its equivalent by the end of their second year of enrollment. The second criteria is that students must complete their degree or certificate within a maximum time frame measured by attempted credits equal to 150 percent of the number of credits required for their primary degree program. The third criteria is that a student complete (earn) a minimum of 67 percent of the credits they attempt in order to remain eligible to receive student financial aid. If a student fails to meet any one of the above criteria, that student is denied federal and state aid. For many students, denial of federal or state aid is tantamount to dismissing the student from the institution.
Students are excluded for academic reasons from every institution of higher education, even those that label themselves “open admissions.” If a student does not have a high school diploma or its equivalent, then that student is routinely excluded. Other forms of exclusions may not be for academic reasons. Students adjudged to be a danger to themselves or others may be prohibited from enrolling. If they have already enrolled, they may be dismissed. At many public institutions, sexual offenders or sexual predators may be prohibited from enrolling, and again, if they have already enrolled, they may be dismissed.
By definition, rivalry could be considered a form of exclusion. If consumption by one individual prevents another individual from consuming the product, the second individual is excluded. College enrollment is obviously rivalrous. There are only so many spaces to be taken. When all the seats in a given class are filled, the class is closed, and no more students are permitted to enroll. This is the way that colleges have operated for many years. This has particularly been the modus operandi since the middle of the 20th century. In many states, this is a big problem. Students need certain classes to fulfill the requirements for their programs. The students believe that the college has “promised” to offer those classes, according to schedules laid out in the college catalog or advising manuals. When the students try to register for the classes, they discover that there are not enough spaces for them. What are the reasons for this form of discrimination and exclusion of students? This also will be a topic for a forth coming post.
So what do you think? What’s your definition of public good? Is there really such a thing as a public good? If so, is public education a public good? Should it be available to everyone without charge?