Equity in Financing and Access to Higher Education

Abstract

As higher education has evolved in the highly developed countries from being elitist and reserved to a relatively small minority of the relevant age cohort to a mass form of education, the problem of how to finance it has become very pressing. In Europe in particular, since higher education has traditionally trained the cadres who govern and administer the state, it has seemed normal that the state should finance higher education. Now that it is a mass affair, other interests are profiting from the results, particularly private enterprise and the individual graduate. It therefore seems fair that enterprises and individuals should pay a correspondingly larger share of the costs of higher education than has been the case in the past, the principle being that the ultimate beneficiaries of higher education should pay for it. The question of equity in the cases of persons from modest socio‐economic backgrounds remains, and ways of assisting such persons are proposed along with the reminder that inequalities with regard to future educational attainment begin before children reach the age of university matriculation. Various proposals for the financing of higher education are proposed.