Is Higher Education a Public or a Private Good?

This is an interesting opener:

As state legislatures around the country start cutting budgets, they face a puzzler—what is the proper subsidy (if any) for higher education?

The answer to this question may hinge on another: whether higher education can be considered a “public good.” Two writers for the Chronicle of Higher Education recently weighed in on the issue. Sandy Baum, an economist, and Michael McPherson, a former college president, say that education is partly a route to a job and to personal satisfaction and therefore a private good, something that most individuals should pay for themselves. But they argue that it is also a public good—they do not want state legislatures to shirk their responsibility to support education.

I have a rather iconoclastic take on this question, one that I shared recently in an article in Independent Review. Perhaps higher education, as currently provided, is indeed a public good—but a bad one.

The CSU and UC systems have raised tuition each year, and sometimes even mid-year, much higher than the rate of inflation. When they do, students in those systems raise quite the stink--acting as if they're entitled to a low-cost education. I'm willing to listen to arguments that say that California's master plan for education, now 50 years old, could use some adjustments.