1. Aristotle gave us rather specific NON-FINANCIAL-ECONOMIC definitions of the good or virtue. Via St. Thomas Aquinas' interpretation of Aristotelian philosophy in his Summa Theologica, a contract is good if it satisfies one of three virtues: (1) PROMISE-KEEPING which is related to reason, will and ordering human relations such that the promisor is bound to the limits of his intention to the promisee, (2) COMMUTATIVE JUSTICE, which can be either GEOMETRIC which means that distribution is in accordance with hierarchical groupings of society or ARITHMETIC, which means that as a matter of bilateral exchange adjustments can be made to achieve a relatively fair balance of distribution between the two parties; and (3) LIBERALIITY, that the exchange is materially unilateral (uni-directional) with no expectation of return and therefore, no reciprocal obligation on the receiving party. Importantly, much of what we would consider is the good of a contract is bound up with its ends. And having determined its ends, we can work backwards to determine the good of its means. Please don't rely on my word on what St Thomas says about these matters or what I think Aristotle might have said. I'd recommend strongly that you see for yourselves.
2. In England, the new Tory-led-co-opted-Liberal coalition with its tortured sense of quack-economics, has decided to raise tuition fees for university students, giving them the "right" (notice the torturous use of art) to pay for the "duty" of universities providing education for value. The new limit is £9k per year from an old limit of say £3.5k. Students who take advantage of their new rights will be required to start paying back only when they start earning a certain level of income, and there are a number of ways which a university may mitigate the higher tuition fees. For example, Universities can act like good used car salesmen and offer cash rebates to students. Reminds me of a rather ribald ad I heard in the US, "Bring your ass in and get a clean wiper!" It's easy to see that the market value equilibrium will be just the (aggregate average nominal price of the advertised less the discount cash offer) divided by the (discount rate for the average number of years for collection). So, this means, Universities offering the BIGGEST DISCOUNTS will get the most students, so for these FACTORY MODEL STACK EM HIGH universities, the decision will simply be based on a commoditised price (elastic demand curve). For other world-class brand named institutions, no discounts need be provided, and in fact, they could charge a lot more because of their perceived inelastic demand. This means we still have at least a two-tier or three-tier university educational system. The widest spectrum is de facto, from institutions gaining little or no return (high discount providers) to premium brands ("I paid a million bucks for my Patek Philippe degree and it doesn't talk back.") Permit me to give you an example from the unregulated postgraduate degree market.
3. London Business School holds the world's top ranking for its MBA and its Masters in Finance courses. Guess how many applications it receives each year for 2,000 places. About 250,000! If it could sell its database of rejections it could probably make £15 million per year. That's approximately the same gross amount that my University's business school makes for all its undergrad programmes. And these two Universities are only a 5 minute walk from each other.
4. Coming back to Aristotle. Is the tuition fee rise a good thing? In terms of promise-keeping, no. The broken promises of Nick Clegg Liberals to not raise tuition fees make them laughing stock liars and totally untrustworthy. Imagine Nick Clegg saying something like, "I promise NOT to bomb Syria," -- there'd be a war in 24 minutes.
5. How about under commutative justice? I'd argue that the tuition raise does nothing for geometric or arithmetic justice, and if anything makes injustice worse on both counts. For geometric or social level of distribution, students coming from lower income or deprived backgrounds will perceive a relatively higher risk in paying for an education, and therefore, are more likely to not participate, while students from relatively higher income brackets will feel no difference since their rich mums and dads will pay for their way anyway. So, on the geometric measure of justice, the tuition rise fails. With regard to the arithmetic, there is a close argument that the student will now be more discriminating, and therefore, move towards courses which offer the value which the student desires. But again, for a relatively poor student, he or she may still be priced out of the market and therefore, be unable to practically participate in "arithmetical justice."
6. Finally, how about liberality? How about it? Well, frankly, no. No freebies to University students.
7. There you have it. Under all three Aristotelian-Aquinian criteria for adjudging the moral goodness of the tuition fee hike rule, the rule takes a hike.
No comments:
Post a Comment