Interrogating the public good versus private good dichotomy: ‘black tax’ as a higher education public good

ABSTRACT

The perceived dichotomy between public or private benefits to higher education remains of growing interest in higher education research and policy. In this paper, I borrow from the African philosophy of Ubuntu as a conceptual lens to interrogate this binary within the South African context using the ‘black tax’ phenomenon. Gleaning secondary evidence from online sources, I posit that while black tax is being misused and abused by some beneficiaries, the experiences of majority of black professional graduates within their nuclear and extended families suggest a public good value of higher education beyond the suggested private benefit of earnings and social mobility. I argue using core components of ‘Ubuntu’ that understanding the benefits of higher education in a context such as South Africa demands a nuance approach beyond the current dichotomy. I conclude that black tax blurs the lines and serves a public good function within a private good.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• black tax
• Ubuntu
• South Africa
• public good
• private good

Acknowledgments

The paper was initially presented at the 2018 Comparative andInternational Education Society conference. I acknowledge comments on the draft paper fromcolleagues within the Education and Skills Development unit at the HSRC and the two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Recent documentary titled ‘HE and the new global economic war’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu8EfHRnPcE.

2. While Statistics South Africa defines Black to include: Africans, Coloureds and Indians. Black, in this paper, will refer to Black Africans. Since both concepts of Ubuntu and Black tax are African concepts, the discussion in the paper refers mostly to Africans and is not necessarily inclusive of coloureds and Indians, who might, nevertheless, have a similar experience.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded through the Newton Fund: a partnership between the Economic and Social Research Council and the National Research Foundation [Grant Number 105368].