A study in hypocrisy

Is ‘buying’ good quality education for my children like buying a luxury car? There are a number of providers of luxury cars: I can pick the one that comes closest to what I want. If, like a luxury car, education is a private good, the car-shopping model is fine. I do not ask the car seller to lower the price of their car. I buy or not buy, depending on what I want and what I can afford. The seller prices her pitch where she maximises her returns.

Recently, however, there has been some debate arguing for price controls on the tuition fees that private schools can charge. This came in the wake of tuition fee hikes. The state seems to have bought the argument and has not only rolled back recent increases, it has announced that future hikes will have to be justified and will be tightly controlled as well as monitored.

So, buying education is not like buying a car. But why not? Once a school year starts, it is difficult to shift a child to another school: most schools do not take children during a school year, changing schools upsets children, schools might be using different books/curricula as well. However, this serves as an argument for the Competition Commission to step in and tell schools to a) not increase fees during an academic year, b) announce fee hikes at the end of the year and well in advance of the start of the new year, and c) not surprise parents with extra levies. This is not an argument for fee caps.

Schools charge lots of other fees at the time of admission: admission fee, security and other levies and even advance fees for a few months. This bulky and fixed/sunk expenditure can act as a formidable barrier to moving children from one school to another, even if there is keen competition among a number of private schools in the vicinity. But, again, the Competition Commission could stipulate a) which fixed fees can be charged, b) which ones (security deposit) should be refunded to parents when a child leaves the school, and c) what are the limits on advance payments that schools could ask for.

Only when fees are going beyond the reach of middle-income groups do we hear calls for regulation

The Competition Law already forbids bundling activities: for example, schools telling parents that if their children are enrolled in their school, they have to purchase school supplies of any sort from them. But it is not being implemented. Again, the Competition Commission has to ensure that existing laws are implemented.

But all of the above still do not imply that the state should be telling the schools where their fees are to be capped. We can tell car manufacturers that they have to live by certain safety, environmental and quality standards but it will be odd if we tell Mercedes that they are not allowed to charge beyond a certain level for their car. The latter should be a market decision. The entrepreneur has to decide, given market demand, what the optimal price is that she should be charging.

Many people, when they read the above, will be up in arms and more than happy to criticise me: how can he see getting an education as being the same as buying automobiles? Education is not just a private good (of benefit to the recipient and her household); it has a public good (benefit to society at large) element to it as well. Our Constitution, the basic document setting the contract between the Pakistani state and the citizen, has also recognised education as a basic right of every child between five and 16 years old. Can these considerations not be a basis for arguments for ensuring access to quality education for all children?

They definitely can be a basis, and a strong basis at that. But the issue is different. Why do the same arguments not apply on behalf of the 25 million-odd children who are currently out of school? Why do these arguments not apply on behalf of the 55pc or so of our children who are currently enrolled in public schools given that most public schools provide a relatively poorer quality of education? And why did the middle- and higher-income classes not think of these arguments when they were exiting from public schools and enrolling their children in elite private schools while leaving the children of poorer parents to fend for themselves? Would they have bought the argument for low or no fee on the basis of what the poorest parents of the country could afford? Would they even now?

The recent hue and cry over fee hikes has exposed the very hypocritical position that the middle and upper classes of the country have been taking on education: their children should have access to quality education because they could afford it and so through the 1990s and 2000s the argument of education as a private good won. And, those who could not afford to pay, suffered. And now, when fees are going beyond the reach of middle-income groups, we have the cry for regulation. Will protesting parents be willing to protest for the rights of all children?

The state has also come out looking very bad in this discussion. Within days of the protests starting the state announced rollbacks and fee freezes and even new ordinances. The children of the poor do not matter in this country. Is it too late for the state to remedy the situation and work for all children and all citizens of the country?

Education, private or public, should be regulated. But this does not make a case for fee capping. We could go towards fee capping if we accept the public good element and rights basis of education but then it should, by definition, be for all. Is it too late to argue for that?

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives and an associate professor of economics at LUMS, Lahore.