Commentary on The Right to Higher Education

Abstract

Martin’s argument for the right to higher education is an exercise in ideal theory, which specifically distances itself from the familiar failings of compulsory education. I argue that even using sufficientarian criteria for admission to higher education would perpetuate non-ideal patterns of inequality and that reasonable forms of selectivity would still limit access to autonomy-promoting higher education. Martin’s case should prompt us to think about arbitrary divisions between compulsory and post-compulsory education in an autonomy-oriented system.