Problems of the public good in higher education: building the common amid sovereign individualism, capital and the state

Anglophone societies in which the sovereign individual is primary vis and vis social relations, and policy focuses on economic competition and consumption in education, find it hard to grasp non-pecuniary outcomes in higher education. These include the self-formation of students as persons and collective goods like knowledge, technological capability, social inclusion, political connectedness, tolerance and global understanding. While other cultures generate insights into non-pecuniary outcomes, the paper focuses critically on meanings of ‘public’ in English: (1) public as state, (2) public good as universal well-being, (3) public as inclusive-communicative as in ‘public opinion’, (4) public and private goods in economics. None of these meanings of ‘public’ enables the resolution of the non-pecuniary outcomes of higher education. The paper tackles four central questions. First, why is there an undue emphasis on the individual and individualised pecuniary benefits, vis a vis social relations, in Euro-American and especially Anglophone societies? Second, can these societies strengthen public or common goods by augmenting the state in higher education? Third, what other practices of public and common might advance non-pecuniary outcomes? Fourth, how to advance collective outcomes beyond the nation-state? The paper finds that while Anglophone public good is constrained by the state in capitalist society, higher education’s role in the production and distribution of common good through primarily local networks, while also pressuring central states to provide support, offers a promising way forward.