Financing Higher Education

Higher education matters. No longer the exclusive province of a small intellectual elite, it is a key element in national economic performance. A modern economy needs a high-quality university system, and needs to make it accessible to everyone who can benefit. But mass higher education is expensive, and competes for public funds with pensions and health care, to say nothing of nursery education and schools. How to pay for higher education has thus become a central issue. This book tells the story of the UK debate, illustrating a head-on collision between the economic imperatives of student loans and regulated market forces and the political imperative of "free" higher education. It also tells the story of the partnership of an economist and a political professional. The first part of the book contains selected writing from the late 1980s about two key elements in the puzzle: the proper design of student loans (writing which was picked up and promptly implemented in other countries), and the role of regulated market forces, an area which remains a political minefield in most countries. The book traces those twin elements through the 1990s and into the 2000s, culminating in important - and perhaps path-breaking - legislation in 2004. Both sets of policies are rooted in the economics of information, and thus have technical roots not ideological ones. The only ideological element (a major preoccupation of both authors) is to widen access to higher education. The book offers lessons both about policy design and about the politics of reform of particular relevance to countries which have not yet addressed the issue, including many OECD countries, the more advanced post-communistreforming countries and, increasingly to middle-income developing countries. More generally, the policies are suitable for any country which has the administrative capacity to collect income tax.

Nicholas Barr is Professor of Public Economics at the LSE and the author of books and articles including The Economics of the Welfare State. He has spent periods of leave at the World Bank, working on the post-communist transition countries, and at the IMF. Since the late 1980s, he has been active in the debate on higher education, advising government in a range of countries including England, Australia, New Zealand and Hungary. Iain Crawford is a former Parliamentary Candidate and former Head of Public Relations at the London School of Economics. He has been active in the UK debate on higher education since the late 1980s and has advised the Hungarian government on the design of a student loan scheme.

1. Higher Education in Britain: The Story from 1987-2004 Part 1: Introducing Student Loans 2. Income-Contingent Loans: A Central Theme 3. Setting Universities Free from Central Planning: A Second Central Theme 4. A Specific Loan Proposal 5. The 1990 Government Loan Scheme: A Critique 6. Pulling the Arguments Together Part 2: The Chickens Come Home to Roost: The Dearing Report 7. Alternative Funding Sources for Higher Education 8. Education and the Life Cycle 9. The Game Resumes: Evidence to the Dearing Committee 10. The Dearing Report and Government Response: A Critique 11. An International View Part 3: The 2004 Legislation 12. The Benefits of Education: What We Know and What We Don't 13. Evidence to the Education Select Committee 1 14. Evidence to the Education Select Committee 15. The Higher Education White Paper: A Critique Epilogue 16. Onwards and Outwards