The Externalities of Education - Essay Example

The Externalities of Education Externality refers to the loss and benefit of consuming goods and services affects the people who are actually not actually consuming the same. Therefore, externalities can be positive or negative. Education is one of the most important services in the service industry. There are two types of education service providers in the society. One is public institutions run by government and other is private institutions. Both public and private education has positive or negative externalities.

Three major positive externalities of public education are educated workforce, socio cultural diversity and higher income level. Educational organizations pose a highly educated workforce and it lies in both public institutions. This workforce produces a quality education which develops future workforce with much higher quality for both the organizations. Therefore, quality education helps the people to be equipped to handle multitasking job through being expert in multiple areas. Higher income level in the society is another important positive externality of public institutions.

Public education basically helps students from lower income family to get educated by much less educational cost. If a student has eager to learn then he or she can be highly educated from public education and earn good amount of money in future. It helps the student from lower income family to financially support their family members in near future. Higher income means less people need government’s assistance in terms of monetary benefit and subsidies to the lower income level people in the society.

Higher income especially in the families of lower income currently result overall development in an economy. Per capita income will grow easily, more job opportunities will come and people will easily get job and the organizations can easily access efficient expertise according their requirements. Socio cultural diversity in the society is the third positive externality of public education. In public educational places, there are people from different races, cultures and backgrounds etc. Kids and youths learn in the public education environment how to coexist with their classmates.

This learning from the education environment will carry into the organizations where they have to work with people from different culture, different attitude and behavior also and even from people from different countries. Therefore, a person learn tolerant and understanding of different people around hem even in the education places or may be in the society and the workplaces (Sharp, Register & Grimes, 2010).In public education systems or public educational institutions, education is provided for free of cost for all people in the society.

Therefore, it is one of the major advantages of public schooling than that of public schooling. Quality education and socio cultural diversity can be achieved in public schools in a different ways than that of other type private education systems like online school, virtual school and home school etc. There may be many choices of course curriculum and varieties of subjects but student can get similar quality education as of private education in much lower cost. Recently, online schooling and virtual schooling has been started by many public schools.

ReferenceSharp, A., Register, C., & Grimes, P. (2010). ECO 405: Economics of social issues: 2010 customedition (19th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.