Which is not a public commodity, is often times misinterpreted as a purely public commodity because ideally the government should be able to provide education tort everyone. A commodity is considered as a pure pubic good it it is unmanageable to exclude non-payers from consuming the good or if the good is not reduced upon consumption of superciliousness. Although It Is heartbreaking to know, higher education Is not a purely public commodity since non-payers can easily be excluded in having educational benefits. In fact, we can even feel this situation in The University of the Philippines.
Students cannot register for the next semester If they have an unsettled account. Since It is already established that education is a commodity, we can compute for its elasticity. In this case, the students are considered as the consumers and the ratio between the percent change In enrollment and percent change in tuition fee are the two determining factors of the elasticity for education. Nowadays, it is already well-known that the demand for education Is very Inelastic. The students evidently react to the decrease or Increase in price of tuition fee.
On other words, when the tuition fee increases the revenue creases and when the tuition fee decreases the revenue Increases. Addressing the disparity between the rich and the poor Is really Important because It somehow compensate for the idea that education is onto purely public commodity One way to address the disparity between the tool terms of education and its elasticity is the bracketing system. It is really effective even though it is quite ironic deprecating, which in definition includes labeling and separating individuals to groups, convolve the difference between the rich and the poor.
It is effective because everyone pays heir tuition based on their income. By doing so, it becomes fair to those students who are less fortunate because they will likely manage to pay for the tuition fee that is assigned to their bracket. On the other hand, the rich will compensate for the other fees that they can afford. Another way to address the disparity between the rich and the poor is by providing services with no extra charge to everyone who is already in the system or who is already enrolled.
Providing free consultation for those students who are enrolled In a subject regardless of their bracket is one example of this scenario. Assuming a wealthy student and an underprivileged student are not coping up with a certain subject and extra services In the school are not free, the wealthy student can easily avail an extra help from a tutor or a professor while the underprivileged student will remain ignorant in that subject since that student cannot afford those extra services. If the extra service Is free, the disparity In this case is solved.
If I were the president of a prestigious university, will reserve ten percent of the admission quota for wealthy students who could donate significant sums to the school to compensate tort the poor students. Assuming that the operation of the school depends greatly on the tuition fee of the students and that my university is using the bracketing system, the money from the wealthy ten percent will be able to pay tort a significant amount tot operation cost and will therefore cause my administration to accommodate more underprivileged students.
Ten percent is not that high compared to the ninety percent available slots of the admission quota SO I will not entirely lemma t ten toner consumers to avail ten common let, winch In t case is higher education. In relation to the elasticity of the demand in higher education which involves the revenue and tuition fee, if the ten percent wealthy students will be able to pay for a significant amount of the operation cost, my university will decrease its tuition fee and will increase its revenue.
Unfortunately, education violates the two conditions that define a pure public commodity so it is not considered as one. Since it is a commodity, the sensitivity of its demand, which is inelastic, is already established. We cannot ignore that there is a disparity between the rich and the poor since it is quite evident. Addressing the disparity can optimize the benefit of education everyone.
