Privatization of Education

Should colleges and educational institutions be allowed to make profit from students?

While governments and policy makers realize the need to decentralize and privatize education to expand its outreach, they must balance this with their responsibility to provide affordable education and prevent profiteering from this highly lucrative business associated with learning.

For every society, education is of vital importance. History bears witness to the fact that education has a liberating and elevating effect on its people. The evolution of societies in general and the advancement of humanity as a whole is concomitant with the spread and level of education, science and technology. The onus of ensuring that members of a society are empowered with basic education and provided the opportunity for advanced education lies with the government. However, not every government is equipped to fully meet the educational requirements of its people. The burgeoning demand for education is in the nature of “ ‘excess demand’, over and above what is provided by the government” (Belfield & Levin, p 29).

With the failure of communism and the global tilt towards a free market economy, education too is now being privatized largely in many countries. Many countries that controlled factors of production and determined the level of supplies of goods and services in the past have now started to privatize industries resulting in better availability and quality of goods and services. Competition and the profit motive drive producers and entrepreneurs to specialize and excel in their respective fields resulting in lower costs, better quality and higher profits. Education has found its way to this list of emerging privatized industries.

Resultantly, private players in the field of education naturally try to control and monopolies education and charge higher and higher fees for their services. This is detrimental to society and defeats the objectives of a nation state and its socialistic ideals. While on the one hand privatization of education gives educators a better worth for their expertise and knowledge, it places a higher cost for the students. Schools and colleges assume a certain power that can be and is often abused. Take for example the case of India, where in recent years the government has decentralized and liberalized the education sector and recognized many private universities.

While on the one hand the country has seen a larger outreach and a phenomenal increase in the number of graduates per year, we have also witnessed a lowering of standards and the churning of ‘educated idiots’ every year. Educational institutions become guilty of skirting norms and nepotism abounds.? Dishonest reporting and faulty evaluation criteria for both students and teachers alike slowly gain grounds. There is a lack of standardization across universities, colleges and schools in terms of syllabi, grading, and tuition fees.

It is then important to ask ourselves, what is the need for privatization of education and why the motivating factor of profit is necessary in this field. Also pertinent is to ask whether we can do without private education and whether governments of the world can meet the educational needs and aspirations of the populace.

Governments are leaders and policy makers for their countries. They are torchbearers for social and economic change. However, they are small in proportion to the large size of the populations they lead and cannot shoulder all the responsibility of execution of their policies. Many nations have witnessed improvement in health care since privatization. The private sector has helped take expertise, infrastructural growth and specialization to phenomenal heights owing the to the profit motive. Similarly, education requires the private sector and industry to firstly increase the outreach. Secondly, profit and profit motives seek to get the best talent to universities by paying them adequately well.

Furthermore, privatization assists in the marriage between industry and universities, which facilitates the transfer of newest research and technology to mainstream education programs that otherwise tend to remain outdated and devoid of practical application. World-renowned companies such as Daimler Chrysler, Bosch, Schneider, Fujitsu and several others have founded their own academic and training divisions and offer certificate courses to train new talent specifically with the knowledge base and skills accumulated and required by their own organizations for future hiring. Such interface between industry and public education not only bridges the gap between the demand and supply for relevant and updated work force, but also reduces the learning curve of the society as a whole.

?Decentralization is crucial to bring entrepreneurship and excellence into the fold of the education system, and hence its significance cannot be undermined. However, it is also important to ensure that private educators do not take advantage of and profit from unwitting students. What then could be the best solutions to balance the advantages of privatizations against its possible misuse without interfering in the creative expertise of private education institutions??????

There are several practices that governments across the world do and can employ in order to check misuse and ensure high standards. Firstly, a robust public education system comprising universities and centres of excellence should be established and strongly promoted at the primary, secondary, tertiary as well as the specialization levels. The public education system acts as the backbone around which the private sphere can revolve. This offers the students and parents a wider choice between the state-run schools and several private players, thus creating a healthy competitive environment that can check rising tuition fee and ensure standardization of academic criterion. Secondly, the teachers and professors of public schools and colleges should be paid well so as to prevent their migration to the private sector. Teachers need to be well provided for in order to ensure their interest and motivation to remain in the educational sphere and to provide their best. Thirdly, government rules and regulations should be applicable to private institutions in terms of capping of fees and maintaining of records. Further, they can fund these private institutions and reduce of private funding, as a payout or refund from the taxes paid by parents. Without micro-managing or creating hurdles, governments can thus ensure that private players “conform to minimum standards laid down by the state” (Morales).

Education, like other spheres of government policy, require cooperation of state and private players. This is the best combination to bring order and excellence. There is never a perfect solution as a perfect world does not exist. With a pragmatic and prudent approach, governments can steer entrepreneurial talent towards the fulfilment of their educational goals for society.

Works Cited

Belfield, Clive R. & Henry M. Levin. (2002) “Education Privatisation: causes, consequences and planning implications”. Paris. UNESCO: International Institute for Educational Planning.

Morales, David.? “Privatisation of Education”. Right to Education. Web. undated.

https://www.right-to-education.org/issue-page/privatisation-education

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