Notes

Strikingly, to win the argument for a marketised higher education system, arguments supporting the higher education as a public good tend to be downplayed. Policy decisions therefore focus on ‘cost-sharing’ measures, invoking the assumption that public funding disadvantages lower earners because the (participating) middle classes must be effectively subsidised by the (non-participating) working classes. What this analysis of BSA data shows is that popular support for higher education expansion is not always dulled by such self-interest. Comparisons could be made with popular support in the United Kingdom for the National Health Service, which is not necessarily predicated on self-interest (i.e. whether the respondent is in need of treatment) but rather reflects a broader sense of communal good.