James Stanfield is based at the EG West Centre in the School of Education at Newcastle University, dedicated to developing a better understanding of the role of choice, competition and entrepreneurship in education.
With this book James Stanfield explores the question of the role of the state in funding education. The title alludes to 'The Broken Window' an essay by Frederic Bastiat that ironically demonstrates the economic benefit that would arise from a boy smashing the window of a baker's shop. The onlookers make the argument that the need to repair the window, and knock on consequences, creates an economic stimulus. But of course one can see the fallacy of such thinking when it becomes apparent that as a result of having to pay for the window the baker must go without a new pair of shoes.
For Stanfield this is illustrative because it makes the point that we do not really see what is going on in economic terms until we recognise what is not seen by making it visible. He advises his readers to 'assume nothing – question everything' and alludes to the unintended consequences of policies that do not include the whole picture with a reference to Chairman Mao's injunction that all sparrows be killed in order to stop them eating rice. What he had not seen was that the insect population would explode and eat its way not only through the rice but all other crops also.
This distinction between 'what is seen' and 'what is not seen' becomes a main motif and organising device through the 100 page analysis that follows. A short chapter is dedicated to 'What is Seen in Higher Education', namely the purported national economic benefits of state investment in universities, which Stanfield characterises as the prevailing consensus. This is then contrasted with a 75 page chapter detailing 'What is not Seen in Higher Education' namely: the questionable justification for subsidies; the illusion of costless education; the undermining of educational independence; the crowding out of philanthropic donations; the conflation of academic, professional and vocational education; the distortion of tuition fee caps; the crowding out of entrepreneurial talent; the restriction on innovation and the problem of qualification inflation.
Such a list in no way does justice to the arguments which Stanfield makes which are both convincing in themselves and backed up by recent data. Moreover the book is well written and peppered with insights that in their own right deserve a mention, such as the fact that 'the government makes no money of its own' or that taxpayers might of their own volition decide that donating money to prevent cruelty to children is more important than the economic growth and wealth creation by which expert policy makers are obsessed or that the legal status of universities as independent bodies is ambiguous.
Stanfield charts the origin of state subsidies to universities from 1889 when a £15,000 transfer was made from tax money to a group of influential colleges; within 30 years it became £1M and today has reached £14.3 BN. This is contrasted with the various private or better said, independent institutions (such as Buckingham University and BPP college) that, against the odds, have recently come into being. The contemporary picture he paints of universities as unresponsive dysfunctional monopolies is bleak but in many respects rings true. The social justice argument he puts forward for changing today's funding arrangements is strong, particularly when he points out the principle behind subsidies, drawing from Bastiat: 'A cabinet minister has his table more lavishly set, it is true; but a farmer has his field less well drained, and this is just as true.' He deftly identifies the problematic subsidy culture that ensues when institutions become government facing and he points out that this happens at the expense of innovation and student focus.
In its own right this is a readable and worthwhile book that covers a neglected area among educationalists. Its relevance today should place it on the top of the reading list for those concerned with directing universities and formulating government policy. And yet according to the author 'the publication was received with silence from academic circles which was only to be expected'.
The overlaps and the distinctions with an associative point of view make Stanfield's analysis worthy of attention. His analysis is keen and he highlights the need for separation of state and university, educational independence, student focus and culture not to be driven by an economic logic, all of which fit with an associative view.
The differences derive from the fact that the solution Stanfield offers is a marketised approach in which 'tuition fees should be playing the same role in higher education that prices play in the rest of the economy' (presumably to create behaviour) and where 'all forms of adult learning, whether formal and structured, or informal and unstructured, are personal and private activities, where the aims and ambitions of individuals are supreme'. The implication is that the societal benefit brought by education is incidental, it is not a public good but a private one and therefore the mode of its financing will be privately conceived. While this invites an exploration of the real reference of the terms public and private, the policy implication is that young people, if their parents are not wealthy, will need to indebt themselves to buy an education.
Having said that, the door is left open to another approach when Stanfield humorously recommends that those who demand 'public subsidies' should collect those sums themselves on the doorsteps of taxpayers rather than relying on the state to do the dirty work in coercively forcing taxes out of people. He then invites the prospect of third party donation (such as Freeing the Circling Stars[1] implies) when he says:
'If universities are correct in their claims that they provide such widespread and remarkable public benefits, then as long as they can provide the necessary evidence, those collecting the money on the doorstep can look forward to a warm and generous response.'
Arthur Edwards
[1] Dr. Christopher Houghton Budd: Freeing the Circling Stars - Pre-funded Education, New Economy Publications, 2004
