Individuals should pay for their higher education.
个人应当为高等教育买单。
A university education is of huge and direct benefit to the individual. Graduates earn more than non-graduates. Meanwhile, social mobility is ever more dependent on having a degree. However, only some people have it. So the individual, not the taxpayers, should pay for it. There are pressing calls on the resources of the government. Using taxpayers’ money to help a small number of people to earn high incomes in the future is not one of them.
大学教育对个人具有显著而直接的益处，大学毕业生比非大学毕业生收入高。与此同时，社会流动性越来越依赖于学位。然而，只有一些人拥有大学教育。因此，个人而不是纳税人应当为此买单。对于政府资源有迫切要求，然而用纳税人的钱来帮助少数人在未来获得高收入，不在其列。
Full government funding is not very good for universities. Adam Smith worked in a Scottish university whose teachers lived off student fees. He knew and looked down upon 18th-century Oxford, where the academics lived comfortably off the income received from the government. Guaranteed salaries, Smith argued, were the enemy of hard work; and when the academics were lazy and incompetent, the students were similarly lazy.
政府全额拨款对大学并不是很有益。亚当·史密斯在苏格兰大学工作，那的老师靠学生学费维持生活。他了解并看不起18世纪的牛津大学，那时的学者依靠政府获取收入过着舒适的生活。史密斯认为，有保障的收入是努力工作的敌人；当学者们懒惰无能时，学生们也会同样懒惰。
If students have to pay for their education, they not only work harder, but also demand more from their teachers. And their teachers have to keep them satisfied. If that means taking teaching seriously, and giving less time to their own research interests, that is surely something to celebrate.
如果学生必须为教育买单，那他们就会更加努力，而且对老师的要求也会更高，老师必须让他们满意。如果这意味着认真对待教学，减少自己研究兴趣的时间，那肯定是值得庆祝的。
Many people believe that higher education should be free because it is good for the economy. Many graduates clearly do contribute to national wealth, but so do all the businesses that invest and create jobs. If you believe that the government should pay for higher education because graduates are economically productive, you should also believe that the government should pay part of business costs. Anyone promising to create jobs should receive a gift of capital from the government to invest. Therefore, it is the individual, not the government, who should pay for their university education.
很多人认为高等教育应当免费，因为这有利于经济。显然，许多大学毕业生确实为国家财富做出了贡献，但是所有投资并创造就业机会的企业也是如此。如果你认为政府应该为高等教育买单，因为大学毕业生对经济有利，那么你也应该相信政府应该支付部分企业成本。任何承诺创造就业机会的人都应该从政府那里得到一笔投资资金。因此，是个人，而不是政府，应当为他们的大学教育买单。