Competitive Private Education and the Poor

A great area for analysis under this resolution will occur in the education sector. Should schools be allowed to compete for profit in a privatized system or should parents, teachers, and students cooperate according to government standards in public schools?

One of the rather popular arguments against the competitive private education model is that the poor will suffer because eduation will become too unaffordable. The reasoning for this usually goes something like this: if the schools try to operate on a "for-profit" basis, their prices will be simply to high for the poor to afford to educate their children. Therefore, public schools are better because they provide "free" education for the poor. (Remember, "free" always means funded by taxpayer money or inflationary printing.)

However, fairly recent (but not commonly known) research by James Tooley refutes this argument rather solidly, giving us an argument for the competitive private education model. Tooley has conducted research in very poor regions of Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, China, and India. In each of these countries, he found that the private, "for-profit" education schools boasted students who always scored significantly higher than students from the government schools. Additionally, the parents who sent their kids to these private schools far preferred the quality of education that was provided compared to the public schools. Moreover, almost all of these parents were very materially poor. Yet, these schools, based on a competitive, market based economic model, were by far more superior to the public schools in these countries.

So, if one uses Tooley's research, it seems that an argument in favor of a competitive private education model might be a decent one for the affirmative.

To read the full article about Tooley's research, click here.