Is education a public good? Does education have external benefits? If so, what are some of those public benefits? In your opinion are the external benefits large or small? Why? What should government do to promote products that have external benefits? 

 

Is education a public good?

Education is a moral right, but not a public good, since it has its own costs and complicated formalities and regulations. 

Education, since it comes with exclusion, is not a public good. It implies that there is a fee for education, even though access to education may be much smaller. In addition, there is a restricted number of seats, so the admission of one student to seek education restricts the ability for others to obtain education.

 Does education have external benefits? If so, what are some of those public benefits? In your opinion are the external benefits large or small? 

In terms of reducing illiteracy and poverty and crime rates, education has a significant degree of positive externality. 

This is why trained people should pursue some academic work, bring imagination and produce new goods that can be used by many individuals in society or around the world. This allows the benefits to be distributed. The first public benefit, then is the contribution to science that is used for its own benefit by others.

The second advantage is that other individuals often seek education, since a trained person becomes a role model. This encourages human capital development. The third advantage is the enhancement of people's livelihoods in society, and the level of poverty decreases as more people are educated. Therefore these external benefits are large in nature, since it turns the entire production of human resources, workers' expertise and the economy's talent pool to its competitive advantage.

 What should government do to promote products that have external benefits? 

In promoting education as a fundamental right, government must ensure productivity by inducing its availability, affordability and accessibility to proliferate and generate large external benefits, such as job creation that sledgehammers economic development. The first step should be to subsidize education by supplying institutions with grants and funds. It would increase the amount of education, and more people, children and others will access lower-cost education. So it is possible to maximize the benefits of schooling. The second initiative is to provide people who seek education and/or send their children to education with grants, tax credits or other benefits. It raises the market for education, and more people will be trained as they are rewarded without paying excess fees. The third plan is to make education policies more structured and less burdensome for citizens to create more motivation to seek education.