Tax-funded education is not ‘freeness’

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I was appalled to read a report in the media, in which a local research group scorned what they described as free education at the tertiary level that was provided to Jamaicans between the 1970s to 1980s. Among the comment was: “What should have been foreseen to be unviable solutions?” To this, the answer was: “Free tertiary education was one of them because free tertiary education ultimately resulted in The University of the West Indies (UWI) not getting the resources it needed to sustain and reproduce itself – and the quality nosedived. The bottomline is that the argument is not, ‘How can it be free?’, it’s really, ‘Who is paying for it?’”

It is reported that the UWI ranks among the top three per cent universities in the world, so I would challenge the assertion that their “quality nosedived”. Further, the notion that people do not pay for their education simply because the payment is not made at the point of receiving the service, is a fallacy. Poor people pay taxes, too. It is these taxes they pay that allow, sometimes, one person from their family to get government-funded tertiary education. This often results in lifting the entire family out of poverty.

What makes us think that tertiary education benefits a few, but pre-primary, primary and secondary education do not? Thankfully, there was enough insight in some of our leaders of the past generation, who saw the difference tertiary education could make to Jamaica. More importantly, they made education accessible to the masses, thereby allowing us to see ordinary Jamaican black people reaching the pinnacle of success in their own country, and in the world.

Other countries have provided tax-funded education to their people up to the tertiary level without it being seen as ‘freeness’. Among them are Barbados and Germany. I wonder if that might be part of the reason why not many of their citizens resort to scamming. Perhaps there is a lesson we can learn here.

MOSES MIGHTY