An article published in The Australian today ‘Push for universities to share students‘ discussed some of my views regarding the lessons we have learnt from deregulating the schools sector and the consequential impact on the ‘market’ dynamics of educational institutions (i.e. how universities behave).  One of the myths put forward as a reason for deregulating fees within the higher education sector in Australia is the (misguided) belief that competition in student fees will lead to institutional diversity.  However, when it comes to experience goods in education, student (parent) risk aversion leads to a strong preference for universities (schools) to offer the largest range of subjects possible given available funds.  This leads to the crowding of efficiencies from specialization and potentially sacrifices educational quality if the competition is intense.

The main driver of student (parent) risk aversion is the high switching costs associated with changing misinformed choices.  This happens a lot with experience goods where there is little opportunity to repeatedly test choices.  Choices in education are completely different to consumer purchases of milk or bread for example.  Where a bad choice is low cost and easily rectified.  I’m probably a good example of this.  I originally enrolled at the ANU (Australian National University) to do an Accounting degree but subsequently ended up graduating with a BSc and BA.  (the irony is that I became an accounting CPA anyway..) Consequently, there is a strong incentive for universities (schools) to offer as broader range of subjects as possible to increase the expected likelihood of a good match for students.  Where switching costs within an institution are much lower than switching costs across institutions (there is a strong profit incentive to keep these inter-university switching costs high).