Just a question that hopefully doesn't offend anyone...but here goes; is free tuition a basic human right?
Whether or not it's a right, there are good arguments both ways regarding free higher education tuition. On the side for making it free, a society enjoys an economic boost through a highly educated workforce. If the economic gain is higher than the cost of providing the tuition, it makes sense to subsidise it to encourage as many as possible to study and generate further economic growth. There is also another aspect, that undertaking higher education in the short term is a cost to the student. I don't mean in the sense of fees and charges, but that for the duration of their higher education, they will be earning less (often much less) than their peers who go directly into the workforce, and may not reach the same income level for some years after graduation. Hence there is a case that if a highly educated workforce is beneficial to a society, it should support those people who choose to forego immediate economic gain.
On the other hand, in the long run those who earn a university degree enjoy considerable private gains. I don't know the current statistics, but I recall old Australian figures that suggested, in the course of a person's working life, an individual with a university education will earn roughly $1 million more than a person without (so about $20k more per year). Hence they should pay for - or at least make a contribution to the cost of - this education. Higher education is also something more commonly pursued by the middle and upper classes than the working classes, which has made some labour movements sceptical of free tertiary education. They ask whether it really delivers the gains for the poorest groups that it purports to. Australia had free uni for about 15 years across the 1970s-80s and in theory it was meant to open up the system to working class people but in practice those who benefited most were mature-age middle class people.
And then there's the wider question of whether it is even desirable to encourage wider and wider participation in higher education through schemes such as free tuition. This gets to the heart of bigger issues about what universities should teach, whether they should offer purely vocational courses, etc. I think the horse has bolted on this one; higher education is now such a large industry that as much as many people may lament "you shouldn't need a degree to get a career in X", not much is going to change.
I agree - basic education is a right, higher education is not.
I'm not sure about this, partly for reasons connected to my last paragraph above. If access to most professions (and, indeed, some trades) is now dependent on a university education when even forty years ago it was not, has university become so significant that it should be seen as a central part of education rather than an optional extra? Remember, a hundred years ago a similar view was taken about secondary school; most people left school by their early or mid-teens, with only the wealthy, academically gifted, highly motivated, and fortunate completing a secondary education. Many did not need one; if you were going to be a shearer or a potter or a blacksmith or whatever, you didn't need to stay in school, you needed to learn hands-on. Gradually secondary education came to be seen as just as essential as primary education. Is tertiary education now coming to occupy a similar importance?
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As a final thought on university funding, I think Australia's HECS system is a very elegant response. The government funds courses, but students are expected to make a contribution to the cost - they can either pay it up front and receive a discount, or defer payment until they receive the private gains that accrue from a university education, defined in this case as earning the average wage or above. The deferred cost is a loan that is indexed to inflation but on which no interest is charged, and repayment occurs through the tax system. So if you go to uni and never see any financial gain from it, you basically got your course for free.