Freedom, Society, and State - Ludwig von Mises Institute

ment expert has no incentive to really care about his
'clients,' as he is paid regardless, whereas the private
expert has every conceivable incentive to look out
for his elientts interest."(30)
Not 0 n I y dol i be r tar ians believethat compet i t ion
among schools would raise the quality of education,
they believe it would also force the schools to operate
more efficiently, thereby reducing the cost of education.
Increasing government funding has placed public
school ing in a virtual monopolistic position vis-a-vis
private educational institutions. It is not surprising
t hat pub 1 i esc h 0 0 1 s h a v e per formedin the rna nne r 0 f
other protected monopolies: costs have risen while service
has deteriorated. Between 1972 and 1977, costs
per pupil rose by 58 percent; professional staff
increased by 8 percent. Our ing the same time, the
number of students declined by four percent. And in
terms of quality, as measured by standardized tests,
the de c lin e in" e due a t iona lou t put U wa s fa r g rea t e r •
Thus, the increasing monopolization and centralization
of the education industry has produced increasing inputs
and declining outputs.(31)
Lib e r tar ian s a Iso not e t hat i tis p rima r i I Y the
chi Idren of upper and middle income families who attend
pUblic universities and colleges. Children of poor
parents tend to enter the work force. Since they begin
paying taxes, part of which goes to subsidize public
e d u cat ion, thereisan e t t ran s fer tota x mo n e y from
the poor to the rich. To make matters worse, college
graduates tend to earn more in their lifetime than noncollege
graduates. Thus, the low-sk i lIed poor are
taxed to pay for the training of the wealthy, who are
then able to use this training to perpetuate their posit
ion i nth e soc i 0 - e con om i chi era r c hy . ( 32 ) For t his
reason libertarians feel that while reducing overall
costs for everyone commercial education would be especially
beneficial for the poor. But what if the family
were still too poor to provide for a child's education?
Wollstein points out that
There are numerous possible solutions to such
a problem which do not involve coercion: [1]
the parents could take out a lon.g-term loan,
[ 2] fro m h i g h s c h 0 a I on, the son co u I d wo r k
part-time, [3] schools might take the boyan
as a charity case (as private physicians took
on poor patients as charity cases before
Medicare), [4] the boy mIght sign a contract
286