Last week's column left two readers thinking me oblivious to Jamaica's economic, financial and budgetary strictures.

More careful reading of the column should have dispelled this idea but the headline - the title 'Education should be free' - as journalism students learn, has un- or subconscious impact on the reader. Actually, I wrote: ''Funding Education: Are we really on to something?' in response to The Gleaner's editorial: "Prime Minister Bruce Golding is clearly on to something". I didn't think he was. But the one thing these columns leave almost entirely to Financial Gleaner editors' discretion is titles. They are good at their job, indeed much better than I could ever hope to be. In only one previous instance has a title clearly misrepresented the central thrust of a column. That instance, on trade policy, led to a quite interesting and perceptive response from a Scottish professor, I believe, a David Ricardo scholar taking me to task on his website. Last week's presents another.

Education as a 'free good'

Undoubtedly, the title chosen was precipitated by, apart from invocation of controversy, one sentence in the piece: "Ideally, given all our circumstances [I know this will be disputed but this is an investment by society in itself, in its own sustainable existence], education should be delivered as a 'free good'". But we don't, and perhaps never shall, live in an ideal world!

I had planned in any case, because of the complexity of the matter, to do a follow-up. But this revealed potential for misinterpretation makes me do it sooner. The state's role is one of eternal debate - just look at the disarray in which the Republican Party finds itself in responding to President Obama's policies which they dub 'socialism', etc. Consider also our own debates in the 1970s as we embarked on democratic socialism. Slogans and guiding ideologies often get in the way of thorough understanding of the issues and often too, cause debate generating so much more heat than the little light shed. Yet the issue still concerns us. We consider health care, public transport, funding for security forces and the like. Education is but one big demand upon budgetary resources government commands.

Education, the word, comes from the Latin educo, educare: meaning to bring up. As new humans are born into, introduced to society, parents' responsibility is to bring them up. We see this classically, among a range of primates particularly but also in many other species. Children are nurtured and socialised in the family, the extended family, church, neighbourhood, community, school and so on. The state has no business whatsoever in several of these institutional environments.

Humans also, in the process of natural selection, in the choice of a mate, and thereafter in reproduction and development of members in what becomes a particular family unit, as parents [I know there are issues of absentee fathers etc. we can't explore here] seek to deliver optimal conditions for their offspring. They educate them according to prevailing norms and what they consider advantageous for their future well-being and progress. Yet primary education has been thought to be of such fundamental importance to the maintenance of society that the state makes it compulsory - by legislation and sanctions. Just as the law is thought of as the glue holding society together, without basic education there would be no functionally viable parts for the glue to hold on to!

Funding tertiary education

Wilberne Persaud, Financial Gleaner Columnist

So preamble aside, what to do about funding tertiary education? Should we have an "overhaul of the criteria for lending by the Students' Loan Bureau (SLB)" such as the PM intends to give preferential treatment to student borrowers who wish to study in areas thought to be in 'national demand'? No. This seems to bean unwise and unwarranted solution. For if the areas are in national demand then normal market forces should drive students toward such choices.

Subsidy for these areas will only further discriminate against the humanities when there is no need to do so and, more important, cannot immediately increase qualified aspirants to the pursuit of tertiary education. The fact is that the 'technological' areas, math, sciences, are under represented at tertiary level because they are neither nurtured nor properly provided for, indeed not even emphasized at the earlier levels.

This has been a problem from inception of the University College of the West Indies [UCWI] in 1948 and subsequent creation of the Faculty of Natural Sciences. This accounts for the establishment of the initially controversial N1 [lower level matriculation] programme in the sciences at Mona. Some other contributing territories had ample potential entrants with 'A' levels in the sciences when proportionately, Jamaica did not. We have to date, never successfully tackled that problem.

This is what needs fixing immediately.

On the question of free education as a long-term goal, it is held that people tend to value something more if it involves a cost - sacrifice. There appears to be some truth to this generalisation. On pure practicality the clear conclusion is that Jamaica cannot now afford 'free' tertiary level education.

If we wished to move in that direction it should be based on individual performance plus an array of goals linked to the education enterprise generally. Norms for length of time to graduation, level of accomplishment and area of specialisation could all be included in the set of criteria determining the range and degree of subsidy.

Preferential loan subsidy

But preferential loan subsidy specifically to technologically oriented study appears to be an unwise intervention that shall not deliver its implied intended consequences - indeed it might deliver others. I should point out: despite this view, the process of technological change and development is for me an area of deep interest - Dr T.P. Lecky should be on our currency and I am, elsewhere, an ardent champion and crusader for technologically oriented education in all its ramifications. That goal cannot be won by what is contemplated.

wilbe65@yahoo.com