This study will provide a critique of John Rawls' and Robert Nozick's theories of justice as applied to the question of how an affluent society, such as the United States, should finance higher education for its citizens. The study will argue that Rawls' theory is just and that Nozick's is not just.
Rawls takes a practical and rational, rather than idealistic or utopian, approach to the problem. Importantly, Rawls includes the factor of "minimal morality" and argues that this morality in achieving social justice can only be successfully applied to any problem, including funding higher education, if we apply the "ignorance principle." This principles says that
the contract makers are to act as if they did not know their place in society. Such ignorance guarantees impartiality and prevents us from arguing on selfish rather than general grounds. This veil of ignorance would exclude knowledge of one's class position or social status, one's fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, one's intelligence (89-90).
Rawls correctly assumes that every individual, without such a veil of ignorance, would only agree to a contract which addresses that individual's own self-interest, without much if any concern for the general social morality or justice involved. What the veil of ignorance creates is a situation in which every individual, fearing that he or she would be among the "least well-off" (90), would only agree to a contract in which the least well-off were afforded equal opportunity to achieve such social rewards as a higher education.
For a society in which everyone were poor, or for a society in which everyone was rich, such an ignorance principle would not be required, because the self-interest of every individual would coincide with a social contract providing every citizen with equal opportunity. In a poor society, a contract would result in which funding for a higher education were provided---as far as p...