Question: Yep – education should be nearly free for anyone qualified.

I would also like free or very low cost health care, food, >transportation, clothing, child care, and auto insurance… >things to which I am entitled. But I don’t get what I want because of >our government won’t provide it.

Answer: It’s not that simple. The market system works fine for most of these other goods and services, unless we are talking about the poor for which government and charitable assistance is needed to correct the fundamental inequities of a market system (hence food stamps, basic housing and medical care assistance, etc.).

Education is distinct because of what we economists call the market failure problem. First, the capital markets are imperfect. You cannot go to a bank (or issue bonds or stock in yourself) to borrow or raise venture capital investments in your education (although Casius Clay had such a group sponsoring his boxing career early on). The uncertainly, long payback (for a lifetime of returns), intangibility of the educated product, and lack of collateral in case of loan default all contribute to high interest rates or loan Thus, government guaranteed loans and grants are necessary to correct for these capital market imperfections.

Secondly, education results in “positive externalities,” social benefits the recipient cannot capture entirely, such as you added productivity, reduced chance of crime and unemployment, creativity and innovativeness, more informed voting and public participation, etc. Thus, I benefit from living in a highly educated society (one reason why a waiter or low skilled worker can earn many times what a similar worker in a poor country can). Without substantial government subsidies to education (even taxes on the uneducated to subsidize college for the wealthy), market decisions will result in underconsumption of education.
Finally, education is linked to lifetime and even intergenerational economic well-being. We don’t get to choose our parents and the environment in which we grow up. Equality of opportunity (though not of outcomes) requires government to correct for inequities of circumstance for minors.
That said, publicly-run education is not necessary to achieve any of these results. Charter schools, private colleges, real vouchers (not the GOP or religious right’s half-baked plans) could do the job entirely, or else mixed with public education. That is, government subsidies to correct market failure and inequities need not require the socialist ownership and operation of our school systems. We don’t have government produce our military equipment, build our own roads, provide most of our medical care, after all. Government lets private enterprises and non-profits do those jobs, thank goodness.

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