Advancing Postsecondary Policy Ethics

Abstract

In recent years, debates around postsecondary funding have taken more space over the airwaves and around dinner tables across the country. But when representatives debate a policy or when we debrief a news story with friends and family, we do not rely on economic evidence and political strategy alone. Our positions are also guided by our ethical and moral commitments. Choosing any given policy may involve, for instance, some conception of what postsecondary education is and should achieve, whether it is a right or merely a privilege, what just access to it entails, and so on. Philosophy is an excellent companion for pulling these commitments into the foreground, helping us clarify or even change our ethical understandings of postsecondary policy, and aiding us in better unlocking and understanding each other’s differing views. However, American philosophy of education has largely abstained from these policy questions, particularly as they arise within the constraints of modern economic and political life.

My dissertation takes some initial steps forward within this much broader project of re-engagement. Across all three articles, I draw extensively from existing sociological and economic literature on financial aid and college access, while also engaging with existing philosophy of higher education writ large. In doing so, I aim to offer three open accounts of different aspects of the public postsecondary debate that both are normatively interesting to philosophers and where philosophy can be interesting and action-guiding to practitioners and empirical researchers who share the aim of improving college access and affordability (Dotson, 2012). Put differently, this dissertation does not seek to definitively resolve or make a final conclusion about this debate, but rather hopes to begin a dialogue with existing empirical work for us to aid us in understanding and finding common ground in each other’s hopes for what postsecondary education can do.