Part V: Education Policy

Present Trends in Public Secondary Education in Western Europe
Education, Credentialling, and the Labor Market in the European Community: An Agenda for Research
The Study of Education as a Pariority
'Goodbye, Mr. Chips': A Proposal for the Abolition of the Lifetime Classroom Teacher
Academia in Anarchy
Private Education
OECD Reviews of Educational Policy
Education for Development
The Utility of Country Case Studies for Educational Planning
Educational Financing and Policy Goals

Source: Harold J. Noah, review of
Daniel C. Levy, Ed., Private Education:
Studies in Choice and Public Policy.
Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press,
1986, in Journal of Comparative Economics 
12 (1988): 129-131.  Reprinted by permission of
Academic Press, Inc.

PRIVATE EDUCATION

This collection of papers produced under the auspices of the Program on Nonprofit Organizations, Yale University, makes an important contribution to the literature on alternatives for public policy toward private education in the United States. Contributors include Daniel Levy, the editor, who in an introductory essay provides an overview of the issues involved in establishing a public policy toward private education, as well as a closely argued chapter on the ambiguities inherent in the terms "public" and "private" applied to educational institutions; Donald Erickson, on the factors affecting the supply of and the demand for private schooling; Roger Geiger, who describes the complex diversity of American private higher education; Mary-Michelle Hirschoff, who builds the implications for public policy of assuming that the desire to enhance parental choice is the major justification for fostering private education; Estelle James, with a close analysis of the financing of schools in The Netherlands, and a second contribution analyzing the consequences of the subsidization of graduate education from the surpluses generated by undergraduate enrollments; Mark Kutner, Joel Sherman, and Mary Williams, who trace the history of Federal government financial assistance to private schooling since 1965; and Richard Murnane, who in two chapters critiques the methods and inferences of the Coleman, Hoffer, and Kilgore comparison of the academic effectiveness of public and nonpublic secondary schools in the United States.

The authors are authorities in their fields. They write clearly, document their claims well, and they are at pains to draw the implications for public policy of the stories they are telling. The volume is well edited, and is to be thoroughly recommended to all interested in the questions raised by the existence of private education alongside publicly financed and publicly provided schools, colleges, and universities, and in the intriguing questions for public policy raised by the fact that in many countries, not least the United States, public money finds its way to private institutions and private money goes to public ones.

Of special interest to readers of this journal will be the extensive use of data drawn from other countries to illuminate the choices open to government and educational institutions in the United States. School finance and educational policy studies in this country have very rarely looked beyond the borders of the United States. The reasons for this parochialism are not difficult to find. Fifty distinct state school systems within the border of the United States have offered a wide array of school policy and financing arrangements. No need therefore to look abroad for alternative ways of doing things. Important, too, is the conviction that each nation is sui generis in these matters; it is a widely held view (not without justification, either) that differences among the several nations' history and governmental institutions make it very difficult to apply fruitfully any of the lessons to be learned from study of foreign examples. Admitting these problems, the editor nevertheless urges close attention to foreigners' ways of dealing with the public/private presence in education: "international policies can help raise ideas, debunk myths of either inevitable or impossible ramifications, and provide clues as to what to do - and what to avoid" (p. 11). In this spirit, much attention is paid to The Netherlands, which provides public money evenhandedly to private (which, in the Netherlands' context, as in other countries, means church related) and public schools. However, what the non-state schools gain in terms of equal treatment they pay for in detailed regulation and supervision by the public authorities of their curricula, teachers' qualifications, and financial affairs. There has been a good deal of discussion in the United States about the possibility that channeling tax dollars to private schools via tuition tax credits or vouchers might lead to substantial limitation of the present broad discretion of private schools in the United States to manage their own affairs. The evidence produced by James would seem to justify such apprehensions, and might well temper the enthusiasm of many in the private school lobby who are currently pressing for the introduction of public subsidies to private elementary and secondary schools.

Comparative study of higher education provides less clear guidance, it seems. Nevertheless, a most informative comparative chapter by Levy is entitled "Alternative Private-Public Blends in Higher-Education Finance: International Patterns." Levy identifies five major patterns of structure and funding of the higher education sector. The most common pattern provides for a single, homogeneous university sector, enjoying little institutional autonomy and with most of the money coming from the state. This pattern is found in the communist countries, Sweden, France (with a few exceptions), the former French colonies, the Federal Republic of Germany, Burma, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka. The second pattern is a variant of the first, providing significantly greater institutional autonomy, usually with some, now eroded, history of reliance on private funds. British universities are squarely of this pattern, over 90% of their receipts coming either directly or indirectly, via payments to students to cover their tuition fees, from the public purse. The general theme of this volume is that eventually he who pays the piper will call the tune in private education, so it is worth noting that even the Thatcher administration, rhetorically committed as it may be to shrinking the impact of government on British society, is now promoting very large inroads into the cherished traditional autonomy of the universities.

The third of Levy's patterns has two distinct university sectors, public and private, enjoying broadly similar funding opportunities. There are only a few examples of this pattern; he cites Chile, Belgium, The Netherlands and, marginally, Canada. Patterns IV and V cover those nations that have chosen distinctly dual systems: the public universities are supported by the taxpayer directly, and private institutions find their funds from a mixture of tuition fees, endowment income, contract work, and government funds. Pattern IV is typified by the dominance of the public sector. Examples are many of the Latin American countries, a number of whom have moved to pattern III as their private institutions could no longer survive without substantial public funding; pattern V is characterized by the dominance of the private sector, as in Japan, India, and The Philippines. The moral of this comparative excursus is that while the variety of structures and financing in higher education is exceptionally large, "lamentably, international analysis does not offer clear and attractive alternatives that could be neatly copied in U.S. higher education" (p. 210). This is a lesson that applies as much in comparative economic study as it does in comparative education.