PANEL: Covid-19 and the politics of tuition
- Lorraine Dearden, UCL Institute of Education
- Brian Pusser, University of Virginia
- Jussi Välimaa, Finnish Institute for Educational Research
- CHAIR: Simon Marginson, CGHE Director & University of Oxford
There are few issues more important in higher education than the politics of tuition. Is higher education primarily a private good or a public good? Should students pay during or after their degree because it generates lifelong benefits for them as individuals? Or is higher education better provided on the basis of no cost and universal access, like elementary education in many countries and health services in some? What about the tuition loan system where graduates repay the cost of their education when their income reaches a threshold level? What are the effects of tuition fees on access? Does market competition between institutions raise or lower the quality of higher education overall? These are ongoing issues in many countries. Over many years students in Germany and Mexico have successfully resisted a tuition fee system. In Finland and Denmark tuition is free for local students but international students must pay. Higher education in China charges fees but also applies public subsidies, with students in elite institutions receiving more government support than others. Australia and the UK moved from free higher education to income contingent tuition loans repaid from later earnings. In the United States a market model applies, with sharply varying levels of tuition according to status of institution, but there are also subsidies for some students in high cost institutions.
Now the Covid-19 pandemic is shaking up the politics of educational participation and student tuition everywhere. When unemployment is high the opportunity cost of enrolment in education is reduced, suggesting this is the best time to do a degree, but many do not see it that way. Because students have less opportunities to work they have less capacity to support themselves while studying. In fee paying countries where the only option is online education there is pressure to discount tuition charges, though institutional costs may not have fallen much. In high tuition countries enrolment could fall dramatically and students from lower income families will be worst affected. In free education countries, given the state of public finances, graduate unemployment and the need to fund social and economic recovery, there will be renewed pressure from economic ministries to levy fees on local as well as foreign students. Will the pandemic lead to a reassertion of the role of higher education as a resource for social development and economic renewal? Or will higher education become politically marginalised and pushed towards higher tuition and social polarisation between those who can afford to invest and those who are excluded?
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Lorraine is Professor of Economics and Social Statistics in the Department of Social Science at the Institute of Education, University College London and a Research Fellow in the Education Sector at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. She has a PhD in Economics from UCL (1995). Her research focuses on the impact of education and training on labour market outcomes and company performance; evaluation of education and labour market policies; impact of month of birth on childhood and adult outcomes; income support for students; the evaluation of childcare, home learning environment and early years policies on children’s and parents’ outcomes; ethnic inequality and discrimination; the determinants of the demand for different types of schooling; wage determination and the labour market; higher education funding issues; intergenerational income and education mobility; and programme evaluation issues and methods.
Brian Pusser is Associate Professor of Higher Education at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on postsecondary policy, international and comparative higher education, political theories of higher education, and the organization and governance of postsecondary institutions in comparative perspective.
Dr. Jussi Välimaa is Professor in Educational Studies and Director of the Finnish Institute for Educational Research at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Being trained as a historian and social scientist professor Välimaa has expertise in social and historical studies on higher education and education. His research profile is shaped by academic interest in the relationship between higher education and society. Dr. Välimaa also has studied the internal dynamics of higher education institutions from cultural, historical and sociological perspectives. Dr. Välimaa’s latest book is ‘A History of Finnish Higher Education from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-first Century’ (Springer, 2019).
Simon Marginson is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, Director of the ESRC/OFSRE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), Joint Editor-in-Chief of Higher Education, and Lead Researcher with Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Simon’s research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, the contributions of higher education and higher education as a public and common good, and higher education and social inequality. At Oxford he leads the MSc (Education) subject on ‘Global higher education’. His recent books include Higher Education in Federal Countries, edited with Martin Carnoy, Isak Froumin and Oleg Leshukov (Sage, 2018) and High Participation Systems of Higher Education, edited with Brendan Cantwell and Anna Smolentseva (Oxford University Press, 2018).