September 2000 Fraser Forum: The Benefits of Private University Vouchers
The pursuit of a university degree in the humanities or sciences is universally perceived as a noble decision. In Canada, this pursuit has been restricted to a one-tier higher education system of publicly-funded universities for over a century. There are a few accredited private religious universities in Canada, but no private secular universities to speak of. Thus, students who choose to remain in this country to obtain a post-secondary education are restricted by a fundamental lack of education choice.
What options do Canadians have to change this tilted playing field in higher education? One possibility is to establish private university vouchers. While some people believe this is a new radical proposal designed to break down public education, they couldn’t be further from the truth.
The growth of vouchers in the US
Milton Friedman promoted the need for educational vouchers in a 1955 paper entitled "The Role of Government in Education" (Two Lucky People, p. 347).1 Noting that a minimal amount of education was important to promote ideas such as literacy, knowledge, and good values, but realizing that secondary and post-secondary education was heavily subsidized by the government, he proposed an alternative method.
Professor Friedman stated that "governments could require a minimum level of schooling financed by giving parents vouchers redeemable for a specified maximum sum per child per year if spent on ‘approved’ educational services" (Capitalism and Freedom, p. 89). In this system, parents would be free to spend both the voucher sum and their own money to purchase educational services. These services could be operated by private companies in the profit and not-for-profit sectors, and the government’s role would be limited to making sure that schools met minimum educational standards. Milton Friedman’s proposal was not the first time that US parents had been exposed to education vouchers. Voucher programs have been available in a few US secondary schools for more than a century. Amity Shales has pointed out that New England educators and philanthropists in the early 1800s established academies in various rural areas. But when public schools were eventually built, the towns saw no need to duplicate their work, and instead worked out a voucher agreement with the academies called "tuitioning out." (Shlaes, p. 29).
Ms. Shales profiled the St. Johnsbury Academy in Vermont, which has operated under a voucher system for over 100 years. Blissfully free from teachers’ unions and government interference, the academy charges a lower tuition fee than the average cost of educating a student in Vermont public schools, takes in disabled and special education students, sends more high school seniors off to higher education than any public school in the state, and opens up its private facilities—such as a gymnasium and swimming pool—to the township (Shales, p. 27-31).
Educational vouchers in recent times
Today, educational vouchers have been gaining recognition in the US at the secondary school level. These education tools are specifically designed as an aid for lower-income families to help their children get educated in private and religious institutions of all denominations. As J. Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio’s secretary of state and founding member of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, put it, "regardless of ethnicity or skin colour, all of our children should be provided equal and exceptional educational opportunities" (Blackwell, p. A28).
J. Patrick Rooney, chairman of the Golden Rule Insurance Co. and an early advocate of vouchers, often stated that this strategy was a "hand up, not a hand out" (Meyerson, p. 21). In other words, parents who have to work hard to pay tuition fees will perceive education to be an investment in their children’s future. And children will undoubtedly take their schooling more seriously when they realize the financial burden that their parents have taken on to give them a better education.
Claudia Rebanks Hepburn has explained how other countries, including New Zealand, Sweden and Denmark, have created their own systems of educational vouchers (The Case for School Choice). Each of these countries understands the need for school choice in the system, and promotes the need for parental responsibility in educational matters.
Why Canada should consider vouchers
A form of public educational vouchers have been available in British Columbia for nearly two decades, as well as in alberta and Saskatchewan. However, discussions of private university vouchers have barely reached a whisper. The lone political comment on this issue that I have been able to trace is from former Reform Party leader Preston Manning, who made a speech in 1992 calling for advanced education vouchers for students attending universities and community colleges.
Private university vouchers have the potential to provide a valuable service in this country. First, they would promote higher education choice, thus enabling students from low-income families to acquire the proper funds to consider a university (or a community college) degree as part of their educational development. And second, they would promote enhanced school choice by decreasing the geographical restrictions students face, giving them the opportunity to attend a university either in their home town, or in another city or province.
Conclusion
I believe that the evidence strongly favours the creation of a balanced, two-tiered system of public and private universities for Canada. Certainly, newly created private universities across the world, including the UK’s Buckingham University and Australia’s Bond University, not to mention the multitude of outstanding US examples, are already proven financial and educational successes.
There needs to be much more discussion about the need for educational vouchers in our universities. The Fraser Institute has already taken the lead in this policy debate, as evidenced by Claudia Rebanks Hepburn’s excellent work on the need for school choice in the K-12 public education system. Now it is time to explore the higher education system.
Note
1This paper was slightly revised a few years later, and became the sixth chapter of Friedman’s classic book, Capitalism and Freedom.Bibliography
Blackwell, J. Kenneth (2000). "It’s For Civil Rights: School Vouchers Mean Opportunity For Black Children." Investor’s Business Daily. July 31.
Friedman, Milton (1962). Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Friedman, Milton and Rose D. (1998). Two Lucky People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hepburn, Claudia Rebanks (1999). The Case for School Choice: Models from the United States, New Zealand, Denmark, and Sweden. Fraser Institute Critical Issues Bulletin, September.
Manning, Preston (1992). "Proposal for an Advanced Education Voucher System," January.
Meyerson, Adam (1999). "A Model of Cultural Citizenship." Policy Review, January-February.
Shales, Amity (1999). "School choice isn’t a new idea." Wall Street Journal. October 1, 1998. Reprinted in Hoover Digest, Winter 1999, No. 1.
Michael Taube is a public affairs analyst and commentator and a columnist for the Moncton Times & Transcript. He holds a Master’s degree in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics in England.
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