Analysing policies to increase graduate population: do tuition fees matter?

ABSTRACT

Although broadening equal access to higher education has been an objective public policy for decades, little is known about the effectiveness of alternative means for achieving this goal. Moreover, it has raised a need of explaining the heterogeneity in Higher Education attainment across European countries, where high level of graduate population can be observed both in the presence of high- and low-levels of fees. This paper surveys the extant literature providing some background on the economic concepts of higher education market, and reviews key determinants of demand and supply. A theoretical and empirical model of aggregate demand and supply of higher education is derived, with the aim to facilitate the understanding of the challenges in today’s higher education systems, as well as the opportunities for development. The model is validated on some exemplary case studies describing different relationships between the level of public investment and levels of graduate population.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• tuition fees
• graduates
• higher education policies

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• A2
• I25
• I28
• H52
• H75

Acknowledgements

We want to thank Professor Catalano for his outstanding discussion at the XXIX AiIG annual scientific Meeting. Moreover, we acknowledge the support by the Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research through the PRIN 2015 ‘Comparing Governance Regime Changes in Higher Education’.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Cattaneo Mattia is Assistant professor of Business Economics and Organization at the Department of Management, Information and Production Engineering, University of Bergamo and member of the CisAlpino Institute for Comparative Studies in Europe (CCSE), University of Bergamo and University of Augsburg. He is also a member of the International Center for Competitiveness Studies in the Aviation Industry (ICCSAI). His research interest includes air transportation and higher education.

Alice Civera is post-doc Research Fellow at the Department of Economics and Technology Management, University of Bergamo, and member of the CisAlpino Institute for Comparative Studies in Europe (CCSE), University of Bergamo and University of Augsburg. Her research interest includes higher education and academic entrepreneurship.

Michele Meoli is Associate Professor of Corporate Finance at the Department of Economics and Technology Management, University of Bergamo, and a member of the CisAlpino Institute for Comparative Studies in Europe (CCSE), University of Bergamo and University of Augsburg, where he coordinates the Research Group on Higher Education. His research interests include corporate governance, academic entrepreneurship, higher education, and science policy.

Stefano Paleari is Full Professor of Finance at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Bergamo. He was Rector of the University of Bergamo from 2009 to 2015. He was Secretary-General of the CRUI (the Italian Council of the Rectors of Italian Universities) from 2011 to 2013 and President of the CRUI from 2013 to 2015. Since 2013, he is Board Member of the EUA (European University Association). He is President of the CISAlpino Institute for Comparative Studies in Europe (CCSE), a joint research centre of University of Bergamo and University of Augsburg (Germany), where he directs the Research Group on Higher Education (HERE). He is also Scientific Director of the ICCSAI (International Center for Competitiveness Studies in the Aviation Industry) since 2006.

ORCID

Mattia Cattaneo http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4400-089X

Alice Civera http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1611-7073

Michele Meoli http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9438-0782

Notes

1 http://www.bbc.com/news/education-36856026

2 As far as international students are concerned, the theoretical framework for exploring the patterns of international students’ purchasing behaviour is the push–pull model (Mazzarol and Soutar 2002; Wilkins, Shams, and Huisman 2013). Push factors operate within a source country to initiate the student’s decision to study overseas (e.g. higher tuition fees in the UK) and a set of pull factors operate in the host country to attract students to that particular country over others (e.g. no tuition fees and courses taught in English in Finland). In this study, by contrast, we focus on the effects of policies on internal population.

3 Despite revealing the fact that student choice is a complex concept influenced by a variety of factors, the multiple step approach to decision-making is beyond the scope of this study as we focus instead on key factors that influence students, with a focus on the role of tuition fees.

4 The countries included in the analysis are Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.

5 Best and Keppo (2014) used the Higher Education Price index (HEPI) with the aim of measuring the rise in tuition caused by an increase in the cost for the same basket of goods purchased by schools. Unfortunately, for European Union HEPI does not exist and we rely on customer price index.