Role Of Government In Education Research Articles

Rethinking the role of government in education: Private education tuition waivers and public education

This study evaluates the different impacts of public education and private education tuition waivers on human capital growth, fertility rates, and income inequality using an overlapping generations model with a child quality–quantity tradeoff. Numerous studies have confirmed that private (public) education facilitates higher (lower) human capital growth and lower (higher) fertility rates but widens (narrows) the income gap. We reveal that these findings only hold in the short term, while the opposite may be true in the long term. Regarding the latter, public education may eventually crowd out private education and increase the fertility rates of poor households. In addition, private educational disparity may be passed down intergenerationally and thus reinforced, increasing income inequality. Conversely, private education subsidies may reduce income inequality. Therefore, based on per capita utility, the government should improve population quantity through public education in the short term and population quality through private education subsidies in the long term.*

The experience of adults who were “unschooled” during their youth: A phenomenological approach

Abstract To better understand the experience of unschooling, non-directive in-depth interviews with five Quebec adults who had experienced it were conducted according to a phenomenological approach, revealing their perceptions of their educational experiences and their families, as well as their views of the world. Certain aspects of the testimonies corroborate the results of previous studies concerning self-directed learning, use of information technology, development of interests, and participation in a support group; others reveal limits when it comes to learning perseverance, pursuit of complex learning goals, school integration, and evaluation. The participants also spoke of family conflicts, parental control, negligence, and the influence of this experience on their views of society, work, the school system, and the role of government in education.

Education: War and Peace

Low-cost private schools are ubiquitous across the developing world. This book explores their nature and extent in some of the world’s most difficult places: Liberia, Sierra Leone, and South Sudan. The accepted wisdom of international agencies on education in conflict-affected states acknowledges that some kinds of low-cost private schools emerge during conflict. However, it also holds that private schools can only be tolerated as a temporary expedient, to be replaced by universal government education. Our research supports the accepted wisdom in terms of the existence of low-cost private schools. While this paper clearly supports the accepted wisdom about the emergence of low-cost private schooling, it challenges the assumption that such private education should only be a temporary expedient. In conflict-affected countries, low-cost private schools should be celebrated, and seen as major contributors to providing quality educational opportunities. Reducing the role of government in education has many potential advantages. The recent history of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and South Sudan shows how government education policies were major factors in provoking the conflicts. Reducing the temptation for governments to use education for their own ends would be very positive. Moving education outside government control could help reduce corruption and help bring about a better educated populace, which would act as a bulwark against states oppressing their people. Currently, international agencies tend to focus on creating, improving, and expanding the remit of ministries of education as their way of improving education. Our research suggests an alternative approach: a major underlying aim of any involvement should be to increasingly move educational provision away from government. Every effort should be taken to ensure that any initiative takes the potential for private delivery into account. Regulations can be adapted to allow for the flourishing of low-cost private education. Private-sector curriculum initiatives should be encouraged, to avoid government monopoly in areas that kindle conflict. Funding might only be required as targeted assistance for the most vulnerable groups who are not currently served well by private schools. Any such funding should go only to the families, to help supplement their income, not to schools. Provision of schooling by government is not required given the appetite and enthusiasm of educational entrepreneurs to provide schools where they are needed.

Liberals, Libertarians and Educational Theory

The utopianism of the new right concerning markets certainly has influenced their views about how to organise the governance of education, ever since Milton Friedman’s 1955 essay “The role of government in education”. But privatisation of the kind that Friedman wanted has rarely in fact been tried, the notable exception being the attempt in Chile under Pinochet, and even there fewer than one half of students were in private schools one decade after the reforms (Friedman, 1955; Ladd, 2002; Hsi...

The changing roles of local government in education

This article explores the ongoing debate about the changing roles of local government in education in Britain. It focuses on research evidence from Scotland, especially issues associated with devolving management to schools and reorganising local government. These findings are compared with the debate and evidence about the changing role of local government in education in England and Wales during the past decade. It is suggested that while there has been substantial reform of education and local government throughout Britain, the policies have differed in nature and outcomes north and south of the border.

WELFARE EFFECTS OF GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION IN EDUCATION

Distortive effects of government intervention, especially in international trade, have received considerable attention. But not much literature exists on similar effects of public policies toward education. This paper provides a review of government intervention in education and its likely effects on economic growth and equity. Although governments may act with good intentions, educational policies often have adverse effects on social welfare. Less government involvement in education might actually lead to greater and more equally distributed real income, especially in developing countries.Section I of this paper identifies and documents the extent of government‐induced distortions directly or indirectly related to education. Section II assesses the likely effect of such distortions on social welfare. The final section discusses the role of government in education.

Federal Financial Aid Policy: The Case of the Pell Grant Quality Control Study

Financial aid is the major federal legislative program for postsecondary education. Administration of the program has become increasingly complex as the accompanying law has changed. A major study (“The QC Report”) was undertaken to determine the extent of fraud and mismanagement in the program. The Report, detailing allegations of “substantial dollar error,” was widely cited by the Administration as evidence for an overhauling of the program. This article examines carefully the allegations and methodology of the Report, and concludes that the errors alleged were insubstantial and that the Report was used as a semantic tool in the larger policy debate over the role of government in education.

Direct Funding to Users: A Schematic Analysis

Direct funding to users, or student-choice programs, are usually referred to as 'voucher schemes' in the literature. The literature, however, has little to say about vouchers in the context of post-secondary education. A voucher scheme at the elementary or secondary school level operates in an environment of com- pulsory attendance and makes vouchers available to all school-age children who use them to buy education at the school of their choice. At the post-secondary level, where attendance is not compulsory, a voucher scheme would have to take into account (among other things) how many vouchers to make available, how much they should be worth, and who would receive them. In this respect vouchers resemble scholarships. They could, of course, be made available to all students admitted to an accredited post-secondary institution; on the other hand, if the supply of vouchers were limited, they could be rationed on the basis of academic achievement, family income, athletic ability, competi- tive examinations, etc. The term 'voucher schemes' has become synonymous with systems that emphasize student choice in determining the allocation of resources to and within education. The coinage of the term is generally attributed to Milton Friedman, who used it in his 1955 essay, 'The Role of Government in Education'.1 In 1980 Friedman re-examined and reaffirmed the concept in a much-publicized book he wrote in collaboration with Rose Friedman, 'Free to Choose'.2 More recently still John Holland and Saeed Quazi,3 in a study done for the Secretary of State, reviewed the voucher literature and proposed a scheme that incorporates a financial aid component with a means test. Generally speaking, the reasons put forward for adopting a voucher scheme are these: greater social equity, improved institutional efficiency, enhanced federal visibility in funding of post-secondary education, and promotion of specific fields of study.

Introduction of Secretary Bell

These are very controversial times, and much is being debated, but I think we can all agree that the Reagan administration has succeeded in raising some very basic questions about government. One issue is surely the role of the federal government in education. Unfortunately, I would be among the first to confess that when educators like myself talk about that federal role, we always seem to agree that the proper federal role is whatever maximizes our income and minimizes external interference. That position may be good enough for your ordinary trade lobby, but it is not good enough for a self-respecting university. Therefore, I welcome this conference, and am particularly pleased that Secretary T. H. Bell agreed to come.

The Role of the Federal Government in Education

The Role of the Federal Government in Education

Education and the State: A Study in Political Economy

Education and the State first appeared in 1965 and was immediately hailed as one of the century's most important works on education. In the thirty years that have followed, the questions this book raised concerning state-run education have grown immeasurably in urgency and intensity. Education and the State re-examines the role of government in education and challenges the fundamental statist assumption that the state is best able to provide an education for the general population. West explores the views on education of the nineteenth-century British reformers and classical economists who argued the necessity of state education. He demonstrates that by the Foster Act of 1870 the state system of education was superimposed upon successful private efforts, thereby suppressing an emerging and increasingly robust structure of private, voluntary, and competitive education funded by families, churches, and philanthropies. This new and expanded edition of Education and the State addresses the American situation in education, applying the lessons learned from the study of British institutions. It also broadens their application from education to the conduct of democracy as a political system.

The Financing and Administration of Education

Defining the functions of the state is a favorite pastime of economists. Where we place the frontier between the public and the private sectors depends in part on our analytical tools, in part on our value judgments-some would say, our prejudices-and in part on our practical judgments regarding the actual performance of market processes and political processes in particular countries and at particular times. John Stuart Mill for example, held that the government of what we would today call an underdeveloped country would do well to undertake functions he preferred to see discharged by private enterprise in the Britain of his day.' There is nothing sacrosanct about a given assignment of functions. There is a tendency, none the less, for public opinion to regard any assignment of a function to the public sector as irreversible. You can't turn the clock back. Yet the whole development of the last generation represents in many respects a turning of the clock back to the mercantilist period. If we are not to drift into some sort of unwanted totalitarianism all of us, economists and noneconomists alike, should be constantly re-examining the frontier to make sure that the boundary line reflects our present values and our present economic and political techniques. No function should be immune from re-examination-not even education. In fact, that is what we propose to do in this paper. Why should the state be any more concerned with education than it is with religion ? If it should be, should the concern be limited to subsidizing education, or should it take the form of administering it as well? Up to what level should the support extend? Is the responsibility, if any, primarily federal or primarily local? Assuming that there is a public responsibility, how are we to know when it has been adequately discharged? strictly economic arguments in favor of public support of education are known. Education is both a consumer good and a capital good. It is called into existence by demand. Private demand will be adequate if it attracts resources into the field up to the point at which the last dollar invested yields no more and no less than the last dollar invested in all other alternatives. This is our economic test of adequacy. It rests on the belief that decisions reached by dollar votes cast in the market place are as worthy of respect as those cast in the quiet of the voting booth. It assumes that people who vote their dollars stupidly are apt to do the same with their political votes. Yet there are a number of reasons why the dollar votes for education may fall so far short of the number required under this test of adequacy as to justify use of the political process, imperfect as it may be, to make good the deficiency. Education is an acquired taste. Left to themselves, many children will demand very little of it. Up to a certain point it must be forced upon them. But this does not prove that the state must do the forcing. basic consumer unit in a free society, as Frank Knight has so often pointed out, is not the individual but the family, and within the family the decision making function is exercised by the head of the family. It is up to him to exercise the compulsion. (We shall not enter into the delicate question as to who, in fact, is the head of the family.) But if the head of the family is not educated he may not appreciate the need for educating 'The ideas presented in this paper are obviously not original. To anyone familiar with the literature in this field it will be apparent that we have borrowed freely from many sources, particularly from John Stuart Mill and from two men separated more in time than in approach-Adam Smith and Milton Friedman. See Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk. V, Ch. 1, Art. 2, and Milton Friedman, The Role of Government in Education, in Robert A. Solo, ed., Economics and the Public Interest (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1955). Anyone who has read the unpublished paper given at a 1958 meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in Switzerland, or the excerpts from it which appeared in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal (May 4 and May 8, 1959), will also realize the extent of the author's indebtedness to his colleague, Dean Benjamin A. Rogge.