scholarly journals Financing higher education: the case for a graduate tax

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-102
Author(s):  
Peter Dietsch

The debate whether university education should be “free” seems misconstrued. Even in a system without tuition fees, someone will have to foot the bill. This paper argues that from the viewpoint of justice, a strong case can be made in higher education for adopting the beneficiary pays principle, and for institutionalising it in the form of a graduate tax. My evaluation from the perspective of justice will focus on the comparison between a “free” university system funded through the general tax system on the one hand, and one financed through a graduate tax on the other. On the beneficiary pays principle defended here, the regressive nature of the general-tax-funded higher education system renders it unjust. Furthermore, I believe we have three reasons to favour a graduate tax in practice. First, I will suggest that it does a better job at implementing the beneficiary pays principle. Second, I will argue that even though the distributive outcome of a corrected general-tax-funded education may be just, it is unlikely to be perceived to be just. A third point of comparison between the two approaches to fund higher education will be international mobility, which will reinforce the case for a graduate tax from the viewpoint of justice.

2002 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 85-109
Author(s):  
Linda Quirke ◽  
Scott Davies

Recent increases in university tuition fees are part of a new entrepre- neurial trend in higher education in which institutions are expected to generate more of their own revenue. We examine the effects of this trend on access to universities for students of lower socioeconomic origins, and identify a series of cross cutting pressures. On the one hand, tuition fees pose an obvious financial barrier for these students, whom researchers have shown to be relatively cost-sensitive and debt-averse. On the other hand, the demand for university education among youth from all backgrounds remains buoyant, and student cultures may be increasingly resigned to accepting large debts to finance their schooling. We then examine empirical evidence from two surveys from the University of Guelph, along with some supplementary sources. We find that the representation of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds fell substantially during a decade of rising tuition costs. In discussing this finding, we link the phenomena of higher and de-regulated tuition to the new entrepreneurship, and argue that it has the potential to increasingly stratify Canadian higher education.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 456-480
Author(s):  
R.B. Galeeva

Subject .This article discusses the need to bring into line with the future activities of specialists the content of their preparation, the formation of a system model of higher education, which takes into account today's and prospective requirements of the labor market. Objectives. The article aims to research the labor market in four regions of the Volga Federal District of the Russian Federation: the Republic of Tatarstan, Mari El Republic, Chuvash Republic, and the Ulyanovsk oblast, as well as discuss problems and prospects of interaction of universities with enterprises and organizations of these regions. Methods. For the study, I used the methods of logical and statistical analyses, and in-depth expert survey. Results. The article analyzes the state of regional labor markets, presents the results of the expert survey of labor market representatives and heads of the regional education system, and it defines possible ways of harmonizing the interaction of universities with the labor market. Conclusions. The article notes that although the number of employed with higher education is growing, at the same time there is a shortage of highly qualified personnel in certain professions, on the one hand, and unskilled workers, on the other. Also, the article says that the universities do not prepare the necessary for the regions specialists in a number of professions or they provide a set of competencies different from the requirements of the labor market, so it is necessary to form and develop effective directions of cooperation between educational institutions and employers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7673
Author(s):  
Tarquino Sánchez-Almeida ◽  
David Naranjo ◽  
Raquel Gilar-Corbi ◽  
Jessica Reina

In Ecuador, affirmative action policies enable students from vulnerable groups to preferentially enter universities. However, these policies are limited to admission and do not include academic or socio-economic support mechanisms that, according to the literature, promote student insertion in the higher education system. In this study, the effects of socio-academic intervention on the academic performance of vulnerable students are presented. For this, 41 students were selected among 164 vulnerable students entering the Escuela Politécnica Nacional in the second term of 2019. The 41 students attended a socio-academic intervention course for one term, while the remaining 123 attended the Escuela Politécnica Nacional levelling course directly. Once both groups of students finished the levelling course, their performance in each of the course subjects was compared. The results showed that the academic performance of the students in the intervention was significantly higher in mathematics and geometry compared to the students who had no intervention. These results show that the socio-academic intervention promotes the real insertion of vulnerable students in the university system.


Author(s):  
Hisham Kuhail ◽  
Arthur M. Hauptman

Despite great obstacles over its relatively short threedecade history, Palestinian higher education has helped to meet the rising demand for further education, providing access in West Bank/Gaza to those who had been forcibly deprived of the chance to study abroad. But longstanding demographic and fiscal pressures, coupled with inadequately defined priorities and chronic economic and political problems only heightened by the recent turbulence, have led to a higher education system in fundamental need of repair. In recognition of these facts, the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has decided to develop a financing strategy for the purpose of creating a more effective, accessible, efficient, and accountable higher education system.


2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 110-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheryl Clark ◽  
Anna Mountford-Zimdars ◽  
Becky Francis

Rising tuition fees in England have been accompanied by a policy mandate for universities to widen participation by attracting students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. This article focuses on one such group of high achieving students and their responses to rising tuition fees within the context of their participation in an outreach scheme at a research-intensive university in the UK. Our findings suggest that rather than being deterred from attending university as a result of fee increases, these young people demonstrated a detailed and fairly sophisticated understanding of higher education provision as a stratified and marketised system and justified fees within a discourse of ‘private good.’ Our analysis situates their ‘risk’ responses within the discursive tensions of the fees/widening participation mandate. We suggest that this tension highlights an intensified commodification of the relationship between higher education institutions and potential students from disadvantaged backgrounds in which widening participation agendas have shifted towards recruitment exercises. We argue that an ongoing effect of this shift has resulted in increased instrumentalism and a narrowing of choices for young people faced with the task of seeking out ‘value for money’ in their degrees whilst concurrently engaging in a number of personalised strategies aimed at compensating for social disadvantage in a system beset by structural inequalities.


THE BULLETIN ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (390) ◽  
pp. 50-57
Author(s):  
Iryna Kalenyuk ◽  
Olena Grishnova ◽  
Liudmyla Tsymbal ◽  
Deniss Djakons

The key role of the education system in the formation of a knowledge society is raising the issue of improving its financing. In the face of new challenges and aggravation of global competition, the mechanism for financing the higher education system is being transformed. The need to increase funding is manifested in expanding financial sources and improving the management of various financial flows. Increasing the effectiveness of public funding is becoming an important issue, which remains the main source of financial revenues for institutions of higher education in countries of the world. A promising practice in the world is the use of funding based on the results of activity, which is becoming more widespread in various areas of economic activity. The purpose of this article is to study the current world-wide practice of applying results-based financing of higher education and defining promising directions for its implementation in Ukraine. The essence and features of RBF - Result Based Financing (RBF) method, including in the system of higher education, are revealed. The existing approaches to financing higher education institutions in the world based on results are systematized, the main criteria for their definition are identified: on the basis of inputs, process, output, output. The world practice of using higher education institutions financing based on the results, positive and negative consequences of its implementation is highlighted and summarized. The necessity of using RBF funding in the system of native education is proved, the main directions and areas of its use are determined. The application of a two-tier model of financing higher education institutions in Ukraine is proposed, which combines the traditional cost-oriented approach and funding based on the results of the activity.


Telos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 754-775 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Valdés Montecinos

Year after year the number of students in higher education increases worldwide, and particularly in the virtual mode. In the face of this reality, a series of phenomena combine that have driven university institutions to reinvent themselves. The objective of this work is to analyze the influence of globalization and internationalization on the curriculum of university education, with particular emphasis on Latin American virtual education. The methodology used is the review of both literature specialized in the subject and official documents of the agencies involved. The results reveal that: 1) multilateral agencies have been made efforts to establish two-way academic partnership and cooperation agreements, on the one hand, to promote the mobility of students and teachers, as well as the realization of joint projects; on the other hand, to promote the processes of quality control and internationalization of the curriculum. 2) Regarding virtual education in the region, the need to ensure and demonstrate the quality of its programs has been set, with the Latin American and Caribbean Institute of Quality in Distance Higher Education (CALED) being one of the main references regarding guidelines and instruments for evaluation and advice to universities on quality assessment and accreditation processes. It is concluded that the internationalization of the curriculum in virtual university education in Latin America faces the challenge of taking the step towards comprehensive internationalization, that is, the one that comprehensively impacts the curriculum from a conceptual and cultural structure including interdisciplinary studies and multiculturalism.


Author(s):  
Ирина Ивановна Широкорад ◽  
Олеся Михайловна Фадеева ◽  
Елена Геннадьевна Пафнутова

Система высшего образования развивается не в изоляции. Она находится в непосредственной зависимости от школьной системы и от рынка труда. С одной стороны, образовательные результаты, полученные в университете, зависят от уровня знаний и навыков, которые получили студенты на предыдущем этапе образования, с другой стороны, ожидаемое высокое качество жизни, которое является ключевой мотивацией для поступления в вуз для большинства населения, определяется состоянием и структурой рынка труда. Именно наличие спроса на продуктивную рабочую силу определяет результативность системы высшего образования. The higher education system does not develop in isolation. It is directly dependent on the school system and the labor market. On the one hand, the educational results obtained at the University depend on the level of knowledge and skills that students received at the previous stage of education, on the other hand, the expected high quality of life, which is a key motivation for entering the University for the majority of the population, is determined by the state and structure of the labor market. It is the demand for productive labor that determines the effectiveness of the higher education system.


2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akilagpa Sawyerr

Abstract:With notable exceptions, modern university education in Africa is a phenomenon of the last half century. Universities were established either immediately before or within a decade after political independence in most African countries. Since then, both the number of institutions and enrollment have expanded rapidly and continuously across the continent. The coverage of university education, nevertheless, remains inadequate for the needs of the knowledge society. With the relative decline of state support during the severe economic crisis of the 1980s, Africa's universities suffered substantial deterioration: overcrowding, infrastructure deficiencies, and inadequate access to international knowledge resources. These deficiencies led to problems of access, equity, quality, and relevance, and to an aging faculty. At the same time, higher education systems were complicated by the diversification of categories of student, types of institutions, and the kinds of knowledge demanded. In the resulting situation of institutional complexity and policy dynamism, Africa's universities were compelled to develop strategies for coping and innovation. The result has been a halt in the decline in many instances, and revival and growth in several others. Accompanying these positive results, however, have been new forms of social exclusion as well as a loss of focus on the public purpose of universities as institutions concentrate mainly on increasing institutional incomes and producing graduates for the labor market. To address these and other problems, it is necessary to insist on the irreducible responsibility of the state for the maintenance of the higher education system and the need for a proper focus on the public purposes of higher education. Systems-level policy frameworks need to be negotiated and established to guide the strategic choices that have to be made by all players in the education sector.


Complexity ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Pablo Medina ◽  
Natalia Ariza ◽  
Pablo Navas ◽  
Fernando Rojas ◽  
Gina Parody ◽  
...  

In this paper, we show an unintended effect of the program Ser Pilo Paga (SPP) that was a flagship program of the Colombian government between 2014 and 2018. It was designed as an intervention in the Colombian Higher Education System (CHES) by awarding, in the steady state, individual funding to about 40,000 students. Every year, 10,000 new students were chosen from the best applicants in the top decile of the population in the entrance exam to higher education in Colombia that also came from families that live under the level of poverty according to a national survey. Our approach, based on an intensive study of the changes in the statistical distributions of the exam scores during these four years, provides evidence of student performance improvements not only of the beneficiaries of the program, but also of the whole student population. This shows that the program opened similar opportunities for all the students, especially for the poorest ones. The program drove a reduction in the gap between students of the upper strata of the population and those of the lowest strata that usually did not access a high quality institution of higher education due to the lack of funding. This result has opened a debate about the optimal way of funding higher education.


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