D. Bruce Johnstone

Tuition fee policies in a comparative perspective: Theoretical and political rationales

As governments are increasingly turning to cost sharing in order to meet the growing demand for, and decreasing government investment in, public higher education, the choice among different tuition fee policies becomes of great importance. Tuition fee policies and the financial assistance policies that accompany them are critical both for the very considerable revenue at stake and for the potential impact on higher education accessibility and the implications for equity and social justice. This paper looks at tuition fees in an international comparative perspective in the context of this rich mixture of finance, ideology and politics.

Higher Educational Cost-Sharing, Dual-Track Tuition Fees, and Higher Educational Access: The East African Experience

Three universal demands characterize higher education globally: the demand for higher quality, for increased access, and for greater equity. In East Africa, where resources are highly constrained, no nation has been able to meet these demands on the basis of public expenditures alone. Instead countries have had to increase resources from nonpublic sources, including tuition fees. In countries with strong resistance to tuition fees and where the difficulty of taxation is combined with a daunting queue of competing public sector needs, a dual-track tuition policy is especially popular whereby the most capable applicants are financed from public resources and other qualified students are allowed admission on a fee-paying basis. This article studies dual-track policies in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. We find that although rewarding ability, the dual-track policies did little to offer opportunities for the poor.

Tuition Fees, Student Loans, and Other Manifestations of Cost Sharing: Variations and Misconceptions

Higher education finance in any single country, and vastly more so in international comparative perspective, is an enormously complex topic. The reliance in any country on tuition fees to bear part of the rising costs of public higher education is influenced in part by the particular histories, cultures, and dominant political and ideological currents of the country and the moment. But higher education—regardless of ideology or political system and regardless of the presumed mix of public and private benefits—is everywhere expensive. Virtually all countries are struggling with these surging costs, the volatile politics of tuition fees, the competing needs for scarce governmental revenues, and the complexity of student loans, along with the need to reconcile the economic and social imperative for quality higher education with the political and moral needs to increase higher educational participation.