The Public Good and Public Goods in

Higher Education

Presented to IFE 2020 Senior Seminar

East-West Center, 6 September 2006

Deane Neubauer

Origins of Public Good

Elements of European Absolutist State Formation Territorial integration

Central and disinterested bureaucracy

Coherent legal system permitting “uniform” administration of law

Ruler as stipulator of the “public” interest

Public defined as a subject population within a coherent territorial assignment subject to a common law

Elements of the Liberal Formulation of the Public and Its Interest (s)

Liberalism as a reaction to absolutism

Shift in locus of sovereignty (Locke)

Invention of rights discourse (Locke, French Revolution)

Government as a derived set of powers

Constitutionalism

Rationality

The Liberal Public Good

The market formulation in Adam Smith

Indivisibility of the benefit

The possibility that a good did not necessarily have to be wholly public or private, e.g. roads, canals, etc, whereas some goods remained inherently public, e.g. national currency, national defense, standards of time, weights and measures, etc.

Class Transformations and the Emergence of a Public

Invention of bourgeois social institutions: the novel, leisure press, growth of literacy, extension of education to middle-classes

Emergence of a Capitalist class to challenge land owning class

Emergence of “informed publics” with particularized interests and their participation in the formation of the “public interest” and goods.

Public Goods

Development of the concept in mainstream economics--late 19th century onwards.

Essential elements of non-divisibility and non-rivalry

Elements of the Private Sector

Rights and privileges of capital

Role of the market in creating patterns of exchange, accumulation and aggregations of capital

The rivalry of large capital accumulations--individual and corporate--with the goals and interests of the public sector

The long history of regulatory movements and the shifting boundaries between public and private sectors

Liberal political systems as “interest based contests”

Democracy, Education and the Public Good

19th century activity to create an informed citizenry

Spread of compulsory public education

Relationship of educational provision and state forms, e.g. unitary vs decentralized systems (privileging of national vs local). Relevance to: curricula, who gets to teach? Who controls financing? Who governs and sets agendas?

Rise in the status of science and notions of an improved nation through the pursuit and application of education

The presumption of economic benefit from public education

Early tensions between “liberal education” and “vocational education”

Public Good and Higher Education

US-Establishment of Land Grant Universities--ensuring at least one per state

Liberalism and the free market place of ideas

The rise of the “scientific research university, organized professions, public standards and academic freedom

Academic freedom as a check on the “direct democratic politicization of higher education”

Linking private universities to the public good through the state authorized public trustee mechanism

The commitments of general education

Challenges to Liberal Education and the Public Good

Changing population dynamics and the “outcomes” intended for education

Increased professionalization of higher education in post-war decades

Negative experiences of “science” under totalitarian regimes--challenges to the free market place of ideas

Opting Out--the Privatization of Education (by class, religion, particularity of interest, etc.)

Asian Inversions of Public/Private

Different traditions of absolutism

Absence of sovereignty assignment to “the people”

Ideas of “public” inseparable from government

Strong tradition of invested governmental bureaucracies

Higher education’s purpose to meet needs of the state, e.g. Meiji Restoration

Complex history of colonialism, imperialism and subsequent institutional creations of both public and private sectors

Sense that “the duties, rights and privileges” of the private sector have been delegated from governmental authority

Neo-liberal Challenges to Public Higher Education

Declining public budgetary support-cost shifting and user charges

Managerialism and academic capitalism as tools for running universities

The alignment issue: how do university outcomes align with economic needs?

Pressures to “vocationalize” the curriculum

Differential internal financing--shorting non-economic aligned disciplines

Shift in discourses away from those of the liberal tradition.

Global Public Goods

The meaning of a global public good in terms of non-excludability and non-rivalry, and questions of externalities

Who is the “public” in global public goods? Issues of state sovereignty and the problematization of governance

Analogies of the “global” with “public” when associated with a good

Ideas of a “pure” and “partial” global public good

The idea of a paramount global public good--e.g. planetary sustainability

Some Questions to Pursue

Can there be some irreducible meaning to “the public good” that might be associated with higher education? What would it be?

Can we derive essential elements of public and private sectors that cover the range of differences between Asian and non-Asian experiences?

Is neo-liberalism a particular form of “privatization” as it is applied to higher education? Are there significant differences between the emergence of neo-liberal regimes in the west and the eclectic borrowings of neo-liberal elements in Asia? Is there going to be neo-liberalism after the global recession?

Does public higher education always contribute to “the public good”? Under what circumstances might it be viewed as non-contributory?