Markets, Education, and Community

• In Event: Democracy and Ethics

Abstract

The use of markets in education is a significant educational policy issue. I aim to contribute to the moral assessment of markets in education. I do so by identifying a factor that bears significantly on whether it’s morally permissible to use markets in education but that has not been adequately discussed in the extant educational-justice literature. I argue that a morally valuable kind of community is realized when educational relationships have a certain character—namely, when educators are directly responsive to their students’ need for educational goods—and that markets in education necessarily compromise that kind of community. That argument’s upshot is that there is a moral factor that robustly counts against the moral permissibility of using markets in education.

Author

• David O'Brien, University of Wisconsin - Madison