Cost Sharing in Higher Education: Tuition, Financial Assistance, and Accessibility

Abstract: Cost sharing in higher education is the assumption by parents and students of a portion of the costs of higher education – costs that in many na-tions, at least until recently, have been borne predominantly or even exclusively by governments, or taxpayers. The author presents empirical evidence of, and various theoretical justifications for, increasing cost sharing throughout the world in the forms of tuitions and fees, the diminishing real value of student maintenance grants, and an increasing reliance on private forms of higher education. Resistance to cost sharing, both ideological and strategic, is also analysed. The author discusses policy alternatives such as grants versus loans and the criteria for an appropriate tuition level, as well as the impact of cost shar-ing on enrolment behaviour. He concludes that increased cost sharing is proba-bly inevitable, less on the basis of the classical neoliberal economic claim for greater equity and efficiency than on the basis of the sheer need for revenue and the increasing priority of alternative claims on public treasuries. Sociologický časopis/Czech Sociological Review, 2003, Vol. 39, No. 3: 351–374 Cost sharing in higher education refers to a shift in the burden of higher education costs from being borne exclusively or predominately by government, or taxpayers, to being shared with parents and students. This cost sharing, as articulated in Johnstone [1986, 1992, 1993b, 2002, 2003], may take the form of tuition, either be-ing introduced where it did not hitherto exist or being rapidly increased where it al-ready did, or of public institutions charging more nearly break-even, or full, cost fees for room, board, books, and other costs of student living that may formerly have been covered mainly by the government. A shift of the cost burden from the gov-ernment to student and family may also come in the form of a reduction or even a freezing (especially in inflationary times) of student grants. Similarly, it may come in the form of a reduction of the effective grants represented by student loan subsidies