Issue analysis on three prespectives Research Paper

Issue analysis on three prespectives - Research Paper Example As a means of understanding the question from these three distinctly different points of view, the author hopes to provide a level of insight into some of the motivating factors surrounding the seemingly endless public and governmental debates concerning tuition fee hikes and the effects that these necessitate on the government, private citizen, university employee, and student. Moreover, by analyzing such determinants, it is the hope of this author that the strengths and inherent weaknesses and flaws of each of these vantage points will be adequately represented to the reader. With respect to the first vantage point, that of the neoclassical conservative one, this is an economic point of view that is almost solely concerned with the maximization of utility. In other words, the equilibrium of supply and demand economics is one in which the utility of the shareholder is most appropriately met where the supply and demand curves intersect. E. Roy Weintraub, a prominent economist, noted that the three main determinates of the neoclassical economic understanding were as follows: the understanding and belief that people have rational preferences among outcomes that can be identified and associated with a value, the belief that individuals maximize utility and firms maximize profits, and the belief that people act independently on the basis of full and relevant information (Weintraub, 2011). With each of these determinants, it is readily noted that the main underlying purpose is concentric around the elements of supply and demand fulfilling their purpose of finding the integration point at which the desire of suppliers to provide themselves with the maximal profit and the desire of the consumer to pay the least amount possible is met at the equilibrium point. This neoclassical and/or conservative approach is one which has defined the free market for the better part of 100 years; and indeed the very same approach that the current Keynesian system currently operates wit hin. However, such an approach is found wanting with respect to the degree that it factors in the need to educate the populace or other social goods. The fact of the matter is that although supply and demand/neoclassical understandings of economics help to appreciate the nuances of many other markets, the market for education is something unique due to the residual and societal good that it generates as a function of its impartation. For this fact, the proceeding views with regards to the way that the market for education should be provided to the end consumer have sought to deviate from the traditional or neoclassical approach that has hitherto been detailed. Moreover, such an approach necessarily relies on the laissez faire concept of economics whereby a tuition increase would merely be seen as something that the market would have to accommodate without enlisting any government or tertiary influence into the matter. This understanding of the marketplace as something that requires little to any interference is a hallmark of the neoclassical system. A fundamental difference that develops within the mixed/liberal approach as compared to the neoclassical appr