As a first year, I was assigned to live in Gooch-Dillard, suite-style dorms that are located on the outer edge of Grounds. I recall being extremely annoyed by this assignment and complaining about the walk to classes pretty much constantly. I specifically remember a situation in which I asked my RA why first year dorms were both randomly assigned and uniformly priced. In my mind, it did not make sense that I, in Gooch, could be paying the same amount as someone centrally located in Kent-Dabney. Furthermore, I was sure that there were people who may have preferred to live in Gooch because of the suite-style layout. When reading Tiebout, I was reminded of my initial arguments for why the assignment of first year dorms should be treated as a free market in order to maximize utility.
Tiebout argues that with no costs of moving, full information, and heterogeneous localities (among other assumptions), people will reveal their preferences for the allocation of public goods by their choice to move somewhere. In my scenario, I am treating UVA as the federal government, the dorm buildings as localities, and the cost of housing as the taxes paid to the localities. The public goods provided from those taxes would be specific to each locality. For example, Gooch-Dillard would provide larger rooms and Kent-Dabney would provide a central location. Furthermore, taxes would be lower in places such as Dunglison in which AC is not provided as a public good. In the current system, UVA is allocating these public goods from a “federal” level and having uniform taxes. This current system is inefficient and utility would be maximized by focusing on the local level (the dorms) and creating heterogeneity between them.
1 comment:
I think you pointed out a very commonly-acknowledged problem that many of us have thought of and complained about in our first years. I think this raises a very interesting discussion of what should the school really do to maximize equity and fairness of our “society." Basing on Tiebout’s theory of local expenditure, you are recommending that all dorms should be open to voluntary selection, and prices/tax associated with each dorm should be different. I would agree with you if we live in an ideal world where all assumptions of Tiebout’s theory are met, while that is unfortunately not the case. One of the assumptions that is not met and will be hard to meet realistically is #5: there exists no externalities between communities. Inherently, if new dorms are charged at a higher price, students from higher socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to choose to live in new dorms, whereas students who cannot afford to live there would deviate to live in motels and the farther unrenovated dorms with the benefit of paying less. Since everyone coexist in this college town, the public service/public goods offered to all communities significantly overlap. For example, since McCormick dorms/new dorms are closer to central grounds, their residents will have higher average access to front seats in lecture halls due to shorter commuting time (walkable distance, easier and frequent access to transit services) and potentially better experience of learning. The competitive nature of the public services offered to each of these communities creates a negative externality that is detrimental to selective communities and reinforces systemic inequity. In addition, assumption 6 and 7 are also hard to meet, since there is a preexisting number of communities and their sizes are mostly pre-determined due to the inflexibility to add new residential buildings or to expand them in size. This creates a barrier for students to choose their community freely because these communities lack the ability to freely expand and reduce in size. Even if our school does have the incentive to reach an optimum size for every community, this process will requires years of preference studies and testing that involves remodeling and relocation of student buildings, which may greatly reduce the quality of living for students who have to undergo this testing period. Without saying i have a best alternative solution, I remain skeptical that this model is the most fitted for our college community.
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