THE PUBLIC/PRIVATE DEBATE ABOUT EDUCATION

In considering the right of the private provider to exist, it is necessary to revisit a debate that has been going on for decades, namely whether education is a public or private good.

Labaree (1997: 39) posited that education has three goals: “democratic equality (schools should focus on preparing citizens), social efficiency (they should focus on training workers), and social mobility (they should prepare individuals to compete for social positions)”, and explained that “these goals represent, respectively, the educational perspective of the citizen, the taxpayer, and the consumer. Whereas the first two look on education as a public good, the third sees it as a private good.”

Mankiw (2012: 218) succinctly defines public goods as those that “are neither excludable nor rival in consumption”. In other words:

 Is there competition for the good or does everyone have free access to it?  Can a person be prevented or excluded from using the good in some way?

A few examples of public goods are access to water, roads and national security. These will either “not be provided or will be provided in insufficient quantities by the private sector and therefore must be provided by the state” (Dill, 2005: 2). However, wholly public goods are few and far between (Cemmel, 2002: 131), and goods that should be wholly public, such as education, may not always fit these criteria. Labaree’s (1997: 43) definition of education as a public good highlights this by stating that, in some cases such as the political ideal of democratic equality, education is a purely public good while for social efficiency, it is a public good in service to the private sector. The debate also includes the fact that education enhances social mobility for the educated and in this sense, it is a “private good for personal consumption”. A further nuance is added by Jonathan (2006: 17) who identifies higher education as a social good in terms of its benefits to society, and the individuals who have the opportunity to access it, and a positional good, whose value depends on its “desirability in comparison to substitutes” (Ichilov, 2009: 19). So what are the implications of this in South Africa? The discussion below reveals that only school education in the General Education

and Training (GET) Band of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) can truly be classified as a public good.

School education can be classified as a public good because no child can be excluded from attending school on any grounds. Education is compulsory for all children in South Africa between the ages of 7 and 15, or from grade 1 to 9 (South African Human Rights Commission, n.d: 5). There are still access problems at schools that charge school fees, notwithstanding that children may not be discriminated against if their parents are not able to pay. There are a number of “no-fee” schools meant to accommodate the poor (Department of Education, KZN, 2006: n.p.) as well as a large number of private schools. The many private schools that exist in South Africa are evidence that private education flourishes at this level (UMALUSI, 2011: n.p.), although it remains a matter of parental choice. To some extent, these are “private goods in service to the public sector” (Dill, 2005: 3). The present research does not include this sector.

The situation is markedly different in post-school education and training, which is usually not compulsory, as is the case in South Africa. Ideally, it should be the state’s responsibility to provide such education since the private sector cannot provide for the needs of every citizen (Bergan, 2011: 12). Altbach, Reisberg, and Rumbley (2009: iv) support this view by maintaining that post-secondary or higher education is usually regarded as a public good in that it contributes to society by educating citizens, improving human capital, encouraging civil involvement and boosting economic development. However, Altbach, et al. (2009: iv) and Dalrymple (2007: 2) state that for several decades, higher education has increasingly been seen as a private good, largely benefiting individuals, with the implication that academic institutions, and their students, should pay a significant part of the cost of such education. Massification, with its accompanying funding shortages, has also meant that higher education institutions have to generate their own streams of revenue to ensure that they remain sustainable. Universities, for example, charge tuition and accommodation fees (both often the cause of student unrest) and seek grants from private foundations in order to fund their research programmes.

Consequently, it is argued that public higher education cannot properly be classified as a “wholly public good” because for every place available at a university, there is more than one applicant (thereby diminishing the use of the good by another person) and only certain students can gain access. In other words, some students can be prevented from using the

good because their matriculation results are not good enough, or they do not have the necessary fees, or there are simply insufficient spaces to accommodate them. In early 2012, there were long queues at campuses when universities started enrolling students for the academic year, with some students sleeping on the pavements for days in order to be first in the queue (Makamba, 2012: n.p.; Moodley & Tshabalala, 2012: n.p.). Reports of stampedes and complete hysteria were rife as students feared that they would not get a place, to the extent that the mother of one student was trampled to death outside the University of Johannesburg (Germaner & Molosankwe, 2012: n.p.). This is a prima facie indication of the lack of the capacity of the state (in South Africa, at least) to provide everyone with tertiary education.

Part of the problem is that diplomas and degrees have become requirements for employment, as opposed to education being an end in itself. This was called “diploma disease” by Dore (1976: 27) and was defined as an obsession with obtaining as many as possible educational credentials, at the highest possible level. With high rates of unemployment, this is understandable.

Higher education is not available to all who desire it, which begs the question of whether higher education is a public good. It adds weight to the argument that the private provider can contribute in a significant way to education in South Africa. It should be noted that in the South African context, private providers are regarded somewhat charily by the regulatory authorities (Coughlan, 2012: n.p.). Be that as it may, South Africa has in recent decades seen the establishment of a number of Private Higher Education Institutions (PHEIs). As a result, there are more PHEIs than public higher education institutions, although the PHEIs tend to be smaller (Blom, 2011: 8).

The problems with public provision of education have intensified due to:  the financial challenges posed by massification;

 greater global emphasis on privatisation of services traditionally provided by the state.

3.3 THE IMPACT OF GLOBALISATION, INTERNATIONALISATION AND