Vijay:

It depends on your context. In my developing country of Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, our education sector is heavily subsidized by the government (with oil-based economy), especially higher education thru a GATE programme. The latter makes it more accessible to all students in our country.

Many thanks,

Debra

In olden days the aim of education is to gain knowledge but now a days due to commercialization the aim of education becomes aiming at earnings which is bad to the modern world.

One comment I would make is that without education, business activity would soon degrade and even disappear. Especially in the new global economy, where people compete more than they used to. As the older workers in a country's economy retire, if qualified younger workers are not in the pipeline, you have a problem.

But your question seems to also ask about cost of education? Cost becomes too high for the average person?

I think the answer to that question has to do with the structure of the "education industry," compared with many other industries that make up the country's economy. Education remains mostly as labor-intensive as it has always been. Many other segments of the economy are not. They have gradually been increasing "productivity," by exploiting new technologies. Education has perhaps not been exploiting new technologies specifically to reduce their labor costs, as much as other industries.

There are new schemes starting to make headway, such as online courses and online degrees. This might help keep costs in check. Government subsidies sort of solve the problem, but the government has to raise taxes for that to be viable. So that drags down the economy, to an extent.

I think the medical industry has much the same problem. There too, new technologies have definitely been exploited to improve medical care, but not so much to reduce costs (labor, mostly). So medical costs also keep rising. Especially medical costs for procedures that require much labor. (Some procedures, such as blood tests, have probably benefitted more than others. It doesn't even take a visit to the doctor's office to get some blood tests done, these days. Just mail the specimen to a lab.)

Education is purely a business activity, International students have become victims directly and indirectly. Some universities application fees are 100 USD upward and students applications are rejected for no given reasons. Should universities be collecting application fees from students? many are call few are chosen, what will happened to the money of the many that were not chosen. It doesn't stop there, the few that were chosen will pay another fee called acceptance fees and followed by registration fees. 

Now, let's move on to the maintenance of campus facilities, sports, internet, library, service charge and all kinds of fees. then followed by the semester fees which is not going to be less than 2,000 USD per semester, thesis submission fees, graduation fees and after all the fees students graduate to be unemployed. 

Since  the world is facing many global and technical challenges, companies and industries need people with specific skills. For this huge market, universities are becoming business-oriented and shifting  from Fundamental (WHY?) to Applied research (HOW?). Many universities are accepting the shift because of the money needed to balance their budget.

I can empathize with Oluwaseyi's response as I was once an international student. What is even more ironic is that in some universities the curriculum does not accommodate for the international students' countries to be represented in the curriculum content but mostly host-based, so you feel invisible in the classroom after paying almost three times the cost of a local student in tuition fees. See my journal articles attached for more elaboration.

Debra

Data Curriculum Inclusiveness Challenge: Responding to Multicultu...

Data Generation I: International and invisible in a workforce edu...

Article Workforce Education and Development (WED): Graduate Students...

Dear Scholars,

I appreciate different perspectives highlighted  by different scholars on this forum. But I am impressed with Albert Menfredi's  deep insight he exhibited in extremely analytic sense. Please add more discussions on the issue.

Now a days education is completely in the hands of businessmen and politicians. Politicians being businessman, many educational institutions are in the hands of these people. Hence government is unable to control the education becoming a business.  Because politicians are part of governance. Engineering Education in Andhra Pradesh / Telangana is best of its example.  More over, the GoI is very keen to establish more private universities in India to promote Higher Education. Many reports , earlier in the past, felt that promotion of higher education is possible only through by encouraging private universities to come up.

In this context, it is very difficult to stop higher education becoming a  business activity.

Dissemination of higher education to the economically and socially backward classes  is possible only through public universities being governed by the Federl/State Govts. 

Universities already had become business-driven, and they should agree and focus on improving their operation as applying business concepts. Moreover, higher education is seen as a budget area that, unlike other government services, can compensate for cuts in-state expenditures. A common and not incorrect assumption is that public colleges and universities have sources of funds, especially students and the tuitions they pay, that are not available to other government services. This assumption makes higher education vulnerable to cuts during tough budgetary times, when policymakers tend to focus on solving short-term issues rather than on addressing long-term needs.