Summary Of The Objective Basis Of Morality

In Thomas Nagel’s essay titled “The Objective Basis of Morality”, Nagel claims that “[t]he basis of morality is a belief that good and harm to particular people (or animals) is good or bad not just from their point of view, but from a more general point of view, which every thinking person can understand” (Nagel 124). When applying this theory to the immorality of the price of higher education, it can be argued that making college so expensive is immoral because any thinking person can see it is bad. Peter Singer’s segment in the film examined life can also be used as a proof because as he points out, the money that we spend on expensive shoes can go to UNICEF and feed a kid or even more. Now let’s imagine how many kids students could feed
with all the money that they spend for college. A whole country could live off the price of tuition.
It can be argued that if America wants their country to the best, then shouldn’t they make education easily accessible to all people? That would not only be the moral thing to do, but it would benefit society as a whole. Robert Samuels talks about how the inclusion of free higher education can dramatically improve a country in his book, “Why Public Higher Education Should Be Free: How to Decrease Cost and Increase Quality at American Universities." In Chapter 9, Samuels talks about how Finland went from being middle ranked out of all the developed countries international test scores to having their students with the highest test scores in math and science forty years later (Samuels 115). One of the main reasons why Finland was able to do this was because they decided to make education free for all.