The Cranky Professor

I suspect this might be one of those 'tomayto' 'tomahto' things.

If one assumes that the government has a responsibility to provide tertiary education free, then funding a scholarship would be a bit like saying taking personal responsibility for filling in the pot-holes in the main street, rather than agitating with the city council for better roading provision.

No reason why one shouldn't do the former, of course, but most people expect the government to provide some level of social service and how wide one extends the circle depends, I suppose, on prior assumptions about how 'big' government should be.

People of Bennet's and even my generation received their tertiary education free, and feel very fortunate that was the case. The private funding of tertiary education is no more self-evident to us than, say, a privately funded primary and secondary education system, or the private funding of roading or the military.

That said, I suspect that, barring a social revolution on the scale of Thatcherism, private philanthropy is the route we'll end up taking. Bennet's complaint probably reflects the birth pangs of that new order.

Methinks there is a big difference between John McCain's giving-back-to-your-country mantra and Bennett's (Obama's) pious giving back to academia line. I wonder how many socialist students benefiting from free higher education will return the favor. Some will become tenured professors -- the new illuminati -- commanding high pay for the privilege of brainwashing their "dispossessed" and lazy students.

Why, MarkP, is publicly funded university education necessarily more "socialist" than free and publicly funded elementary and high school education?

It strikes me as a difference of degree and policy rather than of fundamental principle.

The problem is that when Alan Bennett went to university, around ten per cent of the population went. Now the government is aiming for fifty per cent. That's just not sustainable if it's all funded out of the tax kitty.

Now, there is an argument that fifty per cent of people going to university is far too high and that numbers should be cut drastically, accompanied by an abolition of fees. I'm not saying I endorse that, but it at least holds together reasonably well. The problem is that most of the noisiest critics of fees also want drastically expanded access. How all this is meant to be paid for tends to be wafted over.

Yes, it is a really tough one, and I'm agnostic about what the solution is.

I suppose there's a sufficient element of common good involved to warrant some substantial public involvement.

But how and whether one disentangles that economically from the private goods of higher education is beyond me.

The American system works well (by all accounts), but it's also underpinned by a complementary culture and economic structure that would have to be developed in tandem with any educational reforms here.

It's coming, but not quite here yet. Hence the squeals of empathetic pain from those like Bennet.