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The Liberal Party has announced that it will bring down the cost of post-secondary education by offering a tax free grant of $4 000 to every student that wants to attend University, College, or CEGEP. The Liberals will also give $1 500 or $6 000 a year for four years to students from low income families. The concept I suppose is to ensure income mobility and create a more skilled labour force. But the ultimate result of this policy would be to destroy the value of education.
Consider the basic economics of this education policy. Education is a product that students purchase from teachers or institutions. Like any product, if you artificially reduce the price you will increase the demand to unnatural heights. The over-demand will create shortages. In the case of educational institutions, they would have to respond by either raising the minimum entry requirements or take on more students than their facilities can handle. That is, they will either restrict supply or reduce quality.
Considering that governments give extra incentives for post-secondary educational institutions to take on more students, I suspect that most will respond by reducing the quality of education. Access to libraries, professors, and other facilities would become a lot more limited, thus diminishing the value of the education.
Now let us look at it from a slightly different angle. At least part of what students purchase is a certification that they have a certain set of skills. This certification allows them to market themselves to potential employers.
An employer might justly doubt the certification if he realizes that there has been a decline in the quality of the education. Even if the employer isn’t aware of any quality issues he will still be inundated with an abundance of applicants with the exact same qualifications.
The oversupply of educated workers would mean that many people would be forced to take jobs that are beneath their skill level. Suddenly getting a post-secondary education is not a pathway to getting a good job. It does not help with either income mobility or creating the skilled labour that the economy needs.
There is a reason that education is priced so high, it is because it is valuable. By artificially lowing the price you will ultimately destroy its value.
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9 comments:
Yeah, but socialists don't understand economics. I mean, how many time does this have to be shown before the general public gets it. It also a patently unethical policy because it assumes ownership of corporate profits. An ethical person would consider that theft.
In any case, according to that massive intellectual, Doctor Ignatieff, if we don't shower students with money Harper is going to throw them all in jail. So, really, what choice do we have?
It's either the economic illiteracy of an unethical Liberal or it's locking up all our children.
Hey, wait a second. Don't they get free education in jail?
As you say advanced education should only be for the wealthy.
If every one had an opportuinty for higher education who could we get to serve our coffee, take care of or kids well we are on vacation,
mow our lawns etc. at low cost.
You are right education should only be available to the upper class elite which we all know are conservatives. Us!
Sounds like a smart young person would go into a trade under that policy instead of University. Consider, if more and more people go for the post secondary education, that means there's less and less going into trades. All those highly educated Starbuck's barristas are going to need someone to unclog their drains, fix their Smartcars, and wire up their wind turbines.
Yup. I'd recommend a young person wanting a lucrative career should consider becoming a tradesperson under Iggy's "education for all" policy.
More kids will not be going to university. There is not enough infrastructure or profs. to teach more kids. The universities are already overcrowded.
The Lib plan is just flushing more cash into a program (RESP) that already exists.
Bottom line; The minimum acceptance grades will have to go up slightly as perhaps a few more young people apply for the same positions.
The other obvious flaw is that nothing (save provincial-level tuition caps) will prevent universities from simply jacking up tuition $1000/year to skim off all that extra money for themselves.
For all Ignatieff's supposed intelligence he sure doesn't seem to think anything through.
Great...I have always told my daughter (17) how important post-secondary education is. I have also told her that education is expensive but worth it in the long run. I have told her that nothing valuable in life is free, and that she needs to make priorities and WORK towards paying her education. Now here comes the Libs. telling young people that educations IS free. Next they'll be giving money towards cars so the kids can get there. Thanks Iggy for showing young people that they need not rely on themselves and work hard....personal responsibility is so yesterday.
Absolutley bang on. Great post.
I would also point out that not only will the quality of the education go down as more and more students are crammed into classes, but the value of the education will also go down as more and more companies increase their hiring requirements to weed out people with "only" a university degree.
America's government already pumps gazillions of dollars into the pst-sec system and it just hugely inflates the cost. Higher Education Bubble as Reason called it.
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