A "Bad" Public Good?

In the study of Public Choice, the theme of public goods and their implications on the role of government often cause much dispute. This article discusses the idea of higher education as a public good, however it refers to it as a "bad public good."

"But education may also make you a better citizen and enable you to work more cooperatively with other people and produce and even invent products that create opportunities for others. To the extent that it benefits the public in general, your education is a public good."

Shaw's analysis of higher education as a public good is slightly flawed. Firstly, she failed to define a public good in the true economic sense as something that is (1) non-rivaled in consumption and (2) infeasible to exclude. Any student enrolled in a college or university may be quick to argue that his application process what anything BUT competitive, and the fact that their is a need for an application implies that colleges can be selective in acceptance, disproving both (1) and (2). While knowledge may be a public good, higher education fails to hold up to these two standards.

Another issue in Shaw's discussion is her reference to there being a "bad public good." As we talked about in class, Buchanan said that goods do not have to be purely private or purely public, rather they exist on a continuum between the two, therefore it is very likely that, in this case, the good is somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. It is true that others may benefit from another's higher education, however the idea that the benefits from a person's education is distributed as equally among society as national defense (possibly the closest thing to a pure public good) seems a bit defective.