Rethinking the Welfare State: The prospects for ... - e-Library

Notes 259
19 This lack of flexibility is perhaps most evident in relation to the relatively poor response of
public universities to the growing needs of mature and part-time students. Whereas only 27
percent of US college students were 25 or older in 1970, by 1991 this segment of the student
body had risen to constitute 45 percent of students. Entrepreneurial private institutions in the
United States that cater to mature and part-time students through an array of online
correspondence and other materials have begun to fill the void left by slowly moving public
and well-established private institutions. New opportunities will arise as technology becomes
more reliable, more interactive and more ubiquitous. However, it is not clear that public
institutions have been nearly as responsive to these needs.
20 Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1980), pp. 176–7.
21 An alternate explanation may be that high tuition rates dissuade high-risk students from
attending universities with high tuition. Instead high-risk students prefer to attend where they
can make a lower-valued investment in their post-secondary education (and therefore have
less to lose in the case of abandonment).
22 Commission of Inquiry on Canadian University Education, Report (Ottawa: AUCC, 1991),
p. 105.
23 Ibid., p. 106.
24 Dave Guerin, “Entitlements in education: empowering student demand,” Education
Directions Ltd (August 1997), p. 43, available at: http://www.ed.co.nz/docs/entitle.pdf.
25 Ibid.
26 Ben Jongbloed and Jos Koelman, “Vouchers for higher education? A survey of the literature
commissioned by the Hong Kong University Grants Committee” (2000) Center for Higher
Education Policy Studies, p. 36.
27 Guerin, supra note 24, p. 44.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Kate Galbraith, “Britain’s sinking fleet of universities,” Chronicle of Higher Education
(March 21, 2003). See also: “Who pays to study?,” The Economist (January 22, 2004).
31 Chapman and Greenaway, supra note 16, p. 15.
32 Ibid., p. 16.
33 Guerin, supra note 24, p. 45.
34 Ibid.
35 Chapman and Greenaway, supra note 16, p. 16.
36 Ibid.
37 House of Commons Education and Skills Committee, “The future of higher education”
(London: The Stationery Office, 2003), p. 5, available at: http://www.parliament.thestationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmeduski/425/425.pdf.
38 Ibid., p. 85.
39 See Kate Galbraith, “Bill to increase tuition in Britain passes its first test, narrowly,”
Chronide of Higher Education (February 6, 2004).
40 Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,
1962), p. 105.
41 Unsurprisingly, many commentators have argued that the threatened or actual entry of
private post-secondary institutions creates competitive pressures that spur public suppliers to
improve. Roger Geiger, “The private alternative in higher education,” European Journal of
Education, 20(4) (1985), p. 397.
42 Dieter Dohmen, “Vouchers in higher education—a practical approach,” paper presented at
the Education and Socio-economical Research and Consulting Conference 2000 (September,
2000), p. 24, available at: http://www.ceserc.com/forum_004.pdf.
43 Jongbloed and Koelman, supra note 26, p. 12.