Existing Economic Research on Benefits and Opportunities of Public Term Paper

Existing Economic Research on Benefits and Opportunities of Public Education - Term Paper Example The paper focuses on the benefits and opportunities of public education with optimal policy suggestions for improvement. Summaries The article, Identity and Schooling: Some Lessons of the Economics of Education written by Akerlof and Kranton describes the identity generation of the students in several educational institutions. The pupils attending the privately managed schools generally tend to emerge from more socio-economically advanced backgrounds and the pupils from weak financial background opt for a public school education. In other words there lies a socio-economic stratification of the students attending publicly and privately managed schools. Identity generation is the prime motive in both types of educational institutions. For the development of identity, the economists often focus on the social interactions of the pupils in schools. The quality of the school is an important parameter in establishing the way in which the students fit themselves in a school’s social s etting. Again, the academic achievement is also a prime variable for the development of the identity of a student. ... selves to some social categories or groups with varied racial and ethnic designations which are found in the instances of the words used such as jock and nerds. Remaining within a social group, stereotypical physical attributes are developed within the individuals and the utility loss and gain are simultaneously related with low or high status respectively1. Educational achievement of the students also depends on the internalization of the school values among the students. Comer has demonstrated the disciplinary process with the case of an angry fifth grader attacking a small child with his belt. The teacher instead of punishing him helped the child to write a letter to his father who has been denied a pass from the jail for the Christmas. The teacher made the child understand that he could not take out his anger over other children in the school. The teacher taught him how to obey the rules. This internalization of moral values as entrusted upon the students by the school authoritie s should help the students in achieving success in their future life2. In the article, Competition between Private and Public Schools, Vouchers and Peer-Group Effects written by Epple and Romano, the competitive strategies adopted in the private schools and the public school are described. An overall preexisting notion is that the public schools are more or less tax free institutions. On the other hand the private schools are basically known to be institutions which are tax financed and the students studying in those schools have to pay tuition fees. Similarly there is also a pre-existing notion about the social positioning of the students studying in public school and the private schools. Various measures of reforms in the educational system have been encountered in the past decades. One