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Comment by richmarr | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely agree. Markets are great when they meet the conditions for proper competition; and privatisations frequently occurs in sectors that don't meet those conditions; e.g railways.

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Markets are also problematic where customer feedback (money) is not rewarding quality increase (e.g. when teachers are rewarded when setting artificially good grades).

That's balanced by the fact that the certificate of learning will be valued less. If that doesn't happen, you should reconsider whether people are actually purchasing an education, even if that's what it looks like.

The balancing may work if you have a degree from a university known for inflated grades, but consider a system where your highschool degree of a certain type automatically qualifies you for university education. Grades do not matter anymore but the students with inflated grades may have had a worse preparation for higher education.

Edit: in my example the university could change from accepting all students with correct diploma to doing admission tests to resolve. I know nothing of the feasibility of this though.

Grades do not matter anymore but the students with inflated grades may have had a worse preparation for higher education.

Then people will choose their high school depending on whether they need that extra preparation, and those schools will have more students or be able to charge more.

Indeed the waiting lists for good schools are long. Depending on government the bad schools may cost the same though, and there may be enought students (parents) not knowledgeable enough to fully populate the other schools. Market opportunity there of course, if one can recruit enough good teachers.

cough enterprise software cough

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