What is equality of opportunity in education?

There is widespread disagreement about what equality of opportunity in education requires. For some it is that each child is legally permitted to go to school. For others it is that each child receives the same educational resources. Further interpretations abound. This fact presents a problem: when politicians or academics claim they are in favour of equality of opportunity in education, it is unclear what they mean and debate is hindered by mutual misunderstanding. In this article, I introduce a framework to ameliorate this problem. More specifically, I develop an important but neglected framework for the concept of equality of opportunity and apply it to examine particular conceptions of equality of opportunity in education. In doing this, I hope to produce a piece of applied conceptual analysis that can both help clarify existing positions within the equality of opportunity in education debate and allow those seeking to produce new positions to express them more clearly

Permissible secrets

This article offers an account of the information condition on morally valid consent in the context of sexual relations. The account is grounded in rights. It holds that a person has a sufficient amount of information to give morally valid consent if, and only if, she has all the information to which she has a claim-right. A person has a claim-right to a piece of information if, and only if, a. it concerns a deal-breaker for her; b. it does not concern something that her partner has a strong interest in protecting from scrutiny, sufficient to generate a privilege-right; c.i. her partner is aware of the information to which her deal-breaker applies; or c.ii. her partner ought to be held responsible for the fact that he is not aware of the information to which her deal-breaker applies; and finally, d. she has not waived or forfeited her claim-right. Although we present this account in the context of sexual relations, we believe a virtue of the account is that it can be easily translated into other contexts

Hypothetical Insurance and Higher Education

What level of government subsidy of higher education is justified, in what form, and for what reasons? We answer these questions by applying the hypothetical insurance approach, originally developed by Ronald Dworkin in his work on distributive justice. On this approach, when asking how to fund and deliver public services in a particular domain, we should seek to model what would be the outcome of a hypothetical insurance market: we stipulate that participants lack knowledge about their specific resources and risks, and ask what insurance contracts they would take out to secure different types of benefit and protection in the domain in question. The great benefit of the hypothetical insurance approach is that it allows us to take apparently intractable questions about interpersonal distribution and transform them into questions about intrapersonal distributions: that is, questions about how an individual would choose to distribute risks and resources across the various lives that they might end up living, in light of their individual ambitions and preferences. Applying this approach to higher education, we argue that the UK model of higher education funding in which the costs of an individual's higher education are shared between general taxation and the individual herself, with the latter element to be paid retrospectively through an income-contingent state-backed loan, is vindicated as just. In particular, we argue that it is more just than alternatives such as a graduate tax, full funding through general taxation, and full privatisation

Is age special? Justice, complete lives and the Prudential Lifespan Account

This article explores the problem of justice between age-groups. Specifically, it presents a challenge to a leading theory in this field, Norman Daniels' Prudential Lifespan Account. The challenge relates to a key assumption that underlies this theory, namely the assumption that all individuals live complete lives of equal length. Having identified the roles that this assumption plays, the article argues that the justifications Daniels offers for it are unsatisfactory and that this threatens the foundation of his position, undermining his claim that ‘the fact that we all age’ makes age a special problem of distributive justice. This shows that the problem of justice between age-groups is not special in the way Daniels proposes; rather it involves the same irreducibly interpersonal distributive decisions as other problems of justice. The consequences of this argument are several-fold. Most importantly, it shows that the Rawlsian account of justice to which Daniels hopes to attach his theory to requires significantly greater benefits to be conferred on those in earlier age-groups relative to those in later age-group, not a distribution similar to simultaneous equality as Daniels proposes

Luck, risk and the market

his paper explores how luck egalitarianism fares in capturing our intuitions about the fairness of market-generated outcomes. Critics of luck egalitarianism have argued that it places no restrictions on what outcomes are acceptable, at least when all agents are equally situated before entering the market, and that this gives us a reason to reject it as an account of fairness. I will argue that luck egalitarianism does make specific judgements about which market-generated outcomes are compatible with maintaining a fair distribution. In addition, I will argue that luck egalitarian prescriptions accord with our pre-theoretical intuitions about the (un)fairness of certain market-generated outcomes. Securing these points both speaks in favour of luck egalitarianism as an ethical principle and provides a framework within which to analyze the fairness of practical, real world cases

Broome on fairness and lotteries

John Broome argues that when all claims cannot be perfectly fairly satisfied in outcome the contribution to fairness from entering claims into a lottery, and so providing them some surrogate satisfaction, ought to be weighed against, and can outweigh, what fairness can be achieved directly in outcome. I argue that this is a mistake. Instead, I suggest that any contribution to fairness from entering claims into a lottery is lexically posterior to fairness in outcome

A conception of equality of opportunity

This thesis defends a conception of equality of opportunity. It comes in two parts. The first part elaborates the conception. It begins by clarifying the concept of equality of opportunity, showing it to be made up of four basic elements: a distributive pattern, a set of subjects, an opportunity obstacle and a distributive object. The conception I build from these elements explains the value of the distributive pattern, equality, in terms of a concern for fairness, takes persons as its subject and takes well-being as its object. The conception presented is partial, rather than comprehensive, in that it does not include a detailed account of an opportunity obstacle. The conception of equality of opportunity that I present can also be characterised as a luck egalitarian principle. My aim in elaborating the conception is to show that it has intuitive appeal; it constitutes a pro tanto moral principle. The second part of the thesis examines the implications of luck egalitarianism in two contexts. It begins by examining the context of gifts, arguing that although luck egalitarianism is highly restrictive with respect to the freedom to give this only confirms that it is a merely pro tanto moral principle. It continues by examining the context of markets, arguing that luck egalitarianism makes intuitively correct judgments in several specified cases. My aim in applying luck egalitarianism is to show that its implications do not give us reason to reject its initial intuitive appeal. I examine luck egalitarianism generally, rather then the partial conception I elaborate, to allow for the possibility that my earlier arguments are wrong in some respect. Overall, I hope the arguments presented provide reasons to accept the conception presented as morally valuable.</p

Discrimination and the personal sphere

No abstract available

A conception of equality of opportunity

This thesis defends a conception of equality of opportunity. It comes in two parts. The first part elaborates the conception. It begins by clarifying the concept of equality of opportunity, showing it to be made up of four basic elements: a distributive pattern, a set of subjects, an opportunity obstacle and a distributive object. The conception I build from these elements explains the value of the distributive pattern, equality, in terms of a concern for fairness, takes persons as its subject and takes well-being as its object. The conception presented is partial, rather than comprehensive, in that it does not include a detailed account of an opportunity obstacle. The conception of equality of opportunity that I present can also be characterised as a luck egalitarian principle. My aim in elaborating the conception is to show that it has intuitive appeal; it constitutes a pro tanto moral principle. The second part of the thesis examines the implications of luck egalitarianism in two contexts. It begins by examining the context of gifts, arguing that although luck egalitarianism is highly restrictive with respect to the freedom to give this only confirms that it is a merely pro tanto moral principle. It continues by examining the context of markets, arguing that luck egalitarianism makes intuitively correct judgments in several specified cases. My aim in applying luck egalitarianism is to show that its implications do not give us reason to reject its initial intuitive appeal. I examine luck egalitarianism generally, rather then the partial conception I elaborate, to allow for the possibility that my earlier arguments are wrong in some respect. Overall, I hope the arguments presented provide reasons to accept the conception presented as morally valuable

Modelluntersuchungen von Streckenvortrieben zu deren Optimalgestaltung

Available from the library of Berlin Technische Univ. (DE) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman