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.)
Aquinas, please remember that correlation does not imply causation.
- What is your source?
- Do you have studies which go beyond correlation to prove causation?
Families of recent legal immigrants from South American countries have spoken of leaving a society in which education was touted as the answer when the economy softened... leading to cities full of PhDs working as baristas... in which crime prospered, especially hold-for-ransom kidnappings and if the family could not pay, the kidnapped daughters were taken across the border and sold as sex slaves.
While one might hope that education would lead to ethics, accountability, etc, possibly it is not the academic courses themselves but the accompanying process of developing
internal locus of control which research shows to be a highly valued outcome of post-secondary education.
