Public goods are both non-rivalrous and non-excludable. This is an important distinction. We fund public goods as a society because they are very difficult to f

Public goods are both non-rivalrous and non-excludable. This is an important distinction. We fund public goods as a society because they are very difficult to fund otherwise since you can't exclude the people who don't pay. Education is easy to fund privately. It should be funded publicly to the extend that society benefits from it. Most of the benefits of an education accrue to the student.