market failure that is institutionalised education

Despite the pandemic completely corrupts the learning experience for students, universities have declined to refund the mounting tuition fees - with some even increasing it. Efforts to quantify the social losses have been done, with UCL Student Union found out the majority of students reported depression and financial hardship. Almost 4 in 5 students feeling that Covid has had a negative impact on their university experience. Petition for refunding tuition fees has been signed by more than 100,000 students all across the country. Still, the university declines on the basis of they are having too many expenses. The government? They refuse to take part and simply demand universities 'to maintain quality and academic standards' and that the students can 'raise their concerns with their provider'. The government clearly sees the interaction between university and students as nothing more than a market transaction, concluding that rights to a refund will solely depend on the 'specific contractual arrangements between the provider and student.' So, when universities have officially stated they will not refund the fees - this looks nothing more than an elaborated, politely-debated-but-resulted-to-nowhere joke that leaves students to scramble on their own - with some evicted from their rents, chased by debt collectors, or having to queue for hours at night for a small amount of food.

What an irony is that I am studying economics at the moment, being shoved the concepts of market failure, social cost-benefit analysis, from the very institution that has denied its implementation when it may not play monetary favourably to them. Did not you just mention that education is a public good? Or that we should fix market failure when a transaction is clearly reducing social welfare? I feel extreme discomfort like something is clearly wrong but we proceed as if nothing is. A dizzying sickness looking at these slides, glorifying that 'the purpose of social-cost benefit analysis is to 'include viewpoints of society as whole', while as a matter of fact, we know that more than 100,000 student voices have been ignored. How could you preach, teach, that 'externalities need to be internalised' when at the same time you refuse to acknowledge that 1 in 4 students seriously considering dropping out during this academic year? We know that pure economic logic has little purchase on distributional issues - that is to say, we put a blindfold on who benefits and who loses. Isn't it convenient to discuss these matters when you are not directly impacted by them? 

We often point fingers at big corporations for exploiting capitalism and denying the rights of others. Little did I know, or expected at all, that the same thing can be done by institutionalised education. Or even worse.