<THREAD> There is much that is unsaid in this so-called debate. In a narrow view of what is a Samuelsonian "pure public good", education is not one. A pure public good has to be non-rival and non-excludable. Education can fail the test of non-excludability. 1/n
Hence, to begin with one cannot argue that primary education can be considered as a public good but higher education cannot be. Both cannot be considered a public good in the strictest sense. 2/n
Now, this is not a problem of education as a concept, but a problem of public goods as a concept. 3/n
The narrow way in which public goods are defined in the neoclassical tradition is incapable of allowing for education as a right, as a crucial input into the full self-realisation of the individual and as an inalienable element of the dignity of an individual. Even Samuelson…4/n
…was aware of this pitfall; when confronted with the narrowness of defining a "private consumption good" as opposed to its "polar case" of a "public consumption good", he stated: "the careful empiricist will recognise that many - though not all - of the realistic cases of… 5/n
…government activity can be fruitfully analysed as some kind of a blend of these two extreme polar cases". Samuelson further qualified it few years later stating that "my model of pure public goods has turned out to be an unrealistic polar case”. 6/n
One can stir the pot further by stating that it is an impure public good or a merit good, but that doesn't quite take us anywhere meaningful. 7/n
The point is that as long as one views education from the narrow economic lens of public goods, it will remain impossible to graft ethics or humanism into the provision of education. Or its public benefits. 8/n
Another culprit in the story is the human capital framework, which tends to see education as an investment with private returns. As we prioritize individual returns over collective returns, we see the student as an agent in the market buying a commodity called education. 9/n
To sum up, the solution has to be searched for in an alternative framework that sees public benefits and an individual's development as the starting point, and work backwards to see how best we can provide public education without excluding anyone for want of resources. 10/n
The way I have posed it immediately excludes "educational loans" as a way out, because it is an evident and proven tool for producing not knowledge, but indentured scholars. It doesn't resolve our problem, but complicates it. 11/n
Experience from across the world shows that the best way to resolve the question is to maximise affordable access to public education. Quarreling over whether education is a public good or not doesn't take us anywhere. It is a sterile debate. n/n
