The apparent conundrum of fees in higher education – that free higher education ends up subsidising the privileged, while introducing fees further excludes the less privileged – can be seen in a different light if we move away from viewing universities primarily or exclusively in terms of private returns. An investment in higher education is not just a gift for the individual students who are lucky enough to study there, but additionally a benefit for the whole of society. In this way, we can reconceptualise the repayment that graduates make for the investment that has been made in them in terms of their contribution to public good.
Instead of repaying a monetary loan (one that may – depending on the system – debilitate them financially, never be repaid, deter them from studying at university in the first place, or provide distortions in relation to choice of area of study), the graduate would repay society through their subsequent work in the public benefit. A number of countries (e.g.
Nigeria and Ghana) have institutionalised public service schemes of this type, through which graduates are obliged to one or more years after completion of their studies working
HigHer education PatHways
in a publicly beneficial area. South Africa has also adopted this for certain health sciences professions (e.g. doctors, nurses and physiotherapists). However, it is not of course at all straight forward to assess what the economic and public benefits of higher education are (Allais, 2017) and how they might be better aligned. A public service work requirement immediately after graduation might provide some amelioration of this but alternatively might simply lead to some South African students leaving the country on graduation and others dragging their families into further poverty.
There are a range of questions which are still unanswered by this chapter and which regrettably we do not have space to fully engage with. These include the relationship between perspectives from the North and South: the extent to which conceptions of public good are culturally specific is a complex one, and further analyses would be needed to tease out, politically and epistemologically, what kinds of divergence there might be. There is also Dill’s (2011) argument that any kind of higher education institution can promote the public good, even if it is for-profit. In the context of some higher education systems it is difficult to untangle the fact that, as in the USA, where Dill is based, for-profit and not-for-profit both end up with significant public funds. It seems highly likely, as argued by Marginson (2011), that any kind of HEI can produce both public and private goods, sometimes from the same programme (given the varying proportions of medics or dentists, for example, who go into the public compared with the private sector in different countries, including South Africa). Nevertheless, while private institutions can produce some public goods, the ability of for-profit ones to do so is inevitably curtailed by their requirements for making profit in cases of tensions or trade-offs.
Furthermore, just assuming that public universities do prioritise and promote the public good is contestable. Even where this is so, there is almost certainly more that can be done to promote notions of public good in teaching through a more inclusive curriculum, and develop students’
exposure to the public sphere in classes, in student societies and in extra-curricular activities such as volunteering, even prior to graduation.
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