Monday, October 16, 2006

Should Market Forces be the Strongest Forces in The Universe?

I share the dismay of Peter McGrath about the proposed closure of the Physics Department at Reading University.

It's this kind of issue that reminds me that market forces are good servants but unpleasant masters...

1 comment:

  1. Although the market in higher education is far from a perfect market, its hardly functioning at all...

    A functioning market can respond to demand and allocate resources far more efficiently than any other mechanism, and I feel the results of a failure are less bad than a state failure, although sometimes the state can step in to fix markets.

    Higher education is a mess though, the budget is not high enough, the pressure to get more and more into higher education is taking its toll...

    Perhaps we should be moving towards a model of more specialist institutions in some cases...

    The loss of a physics department doesn't bode well though, I think there is a case for some sort of intervention to ensure a high level of science and technology education...

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