COMMENT | The costs of financing education and risk of elite capture

COMMENT | This piece responds to the recent furore regarding fee-paying MRSMs and, using some back-of-envelope calculations, discusses whether I think there’s a business case for government-funded private schools.

Spoiler alert: I think that on the balance of pros and cons, there really isn’t and we should be spending our limited budget for capital expenditure elsewhere. I offer my opinion just as an ordinary, concerned citizen whose field of study is education.

Introduction

More recently, there has been public discussion about the prospect of creating a special fee-paying Mara Junior Science Colleges (MRSM), ostensibly in response to demand by wealthy parents whose children cannot enrol due to limited places and preference given to children from lower-income backgrounds (or “B40” as we call it here). This was announced by the chairperson of Mara himself and sparked some debate.

Or in Malaysia, more likely a Facebook comments and TikTok storm.

For background...