What I don't presume though is that if I have a malignant tumor that I should be able to make you contribute to the funding to treat it, that's not my place or jurisdiction to tell you what to do with what you own. What I can do is ask if you're willing to contribute of your own free will as a compassionate and caring human being provided I have no other means to afford the treatment myself and other less expensive options are off the table. Then I let you decide if that is what you have see as a priority with your resources.
The challenge is, however, that higher education isn't solely a private good whose value is captured solely by its recipient (the student). It's a public good that confers externalities on society through higher average SES. A more educated populace is one characterized by:
- Less crime (and its attendant public costs- insurance, incarceration, rehabilitation, victim restitution, property damage/loss, fatality and injury costs, etc.),
- Lower health insurance costs (because poverty is correlated with food insecurity and less nutrient-dense diets),
- Less unemployment (and its attendant social insurance costs),
- A lower incidence of mental health (which raises labour force participation and income earning),
- Higher tax remittances (through, on average, higher incomes)
It is all well and good to extol the virtues of private charity, but such an argument neglects the reality that education of the individual carries a social ROI that you are not accounting for. At the very least, from a purely agnostic financial perspective, it is economically rational for the state to fund public post-secondary education up to the value of the public externality enjoyed from a more educated populace.
Please note that my discussion is purely one of financial metrics, and doesn't even go into the improved service outcomes on a quality-adjusted basis that arise from a better-educated professional workforce. (e.g. better access to medical care; higher quality K-12 teachers; improved public policy formulation; safer infrastructure; more targeted and effective legislation and recourse to legal institutions; etc.)
