Question

Evaluate whether increasing opportunities for higher education can reduce income inequality.

Answer 1

Higher education has long been promoted as a response to social inequality. Having an education was a way to get out of poverty, land a decent job and make a comfortable living.

Between the end of WW2 and the late 1990s, UK university tuition fees were charged by the government, allowing thousands of students who, despite their socio-economic backgrounds, should never have attended university to join some of the country's best institutions. Similarly in the US, war veterans' free tuition allowed troops, many of whom would be known as 'working classes,' to obtain higher education upon return. This resulted in an unparalleled degree of social mobility, and a powerful middle class growth.

Training decreases the income share of top earners and raises the bottom earner share. In Africa, education has been especially effective at reducing inequality. Secondary education tends to have a greater impact than primary education, although that result is not always robust.

Governments invest in primary education in a populist way to address inequality; this also decreases the political demand for increased investment in higher education.

Given that access to higher education is primarily restricted to high earners, higher education expansion could potentially worsen inequality.