An empirical analysis of borrowing behaviour of higher education students in the Netherlands

Many higher education students combine their study with a job on the side instead of taking up a loan. This paper examines the factors underlying this apparently myopic behaviour. We find that standard economic factors explain observed borrowing decisions to some extent. Students with easier access to financial resources borrow less often. Students with good earnings prospects and/or a high discount rate borrow more often, as do students who are prepared to take risks. An important non-standard factor affecting borrowing choices is debt aversion. We also find that a reduction in working hours will only have a limited positive impact on the time spend on studying.     

Funding higher education and wage uncertainty: Income contingent loan versus mortgage loan

We propose a simple theoretical model which shows how the combined effect of wage uncertainty and risk aversion can modify the individual willingness to pay for a HE system financed by an ICL or a ML. We calibrate our model using real data from the 1970 British Cohort Survey together with the features of the English HE financing system. We allow for individual heterogeneity by considering different family backgrounds and occupations. We find that graduates from poor families, males and graduates working in the private sector are more willing to pay to switch to an ICL. Using the UK Labour Force Survey we evaluate the distributive effects of our model. We compute the repayment burdens and taxpayer subsidies for average, low and high earnings graduates. The results confirm the important insurance benefits of an ICL compared to a ML, with lower burdens and higher subsidies for poorer graduates.     

The effects of accountability on higher education

This paper analyzes the effects of a higher education accountability system in Brazil. For each discipline, colleges were assigned a grade that depended on the scores of their students on the ENC, an annual mandatory exam. These grades were then disclosed to the public and colleges were rewarded or penalized based on them. I find that the ENC had a positive effect on the education and the proportion of full-time faculty and that it increased the number of vacancies offered, applicants and enrollments. Colleges were affected differently depending on grades, ownership and academic organization, changing the distribution of students among them.     

The economic value of higher teacher quality

Most analyses of teacher quality end without any assessment of the economic value of altered teacher quality. This paper combines information about teacher effectiveness with the economic impact of higher achievement. It begins with an overview of what is known about the relationship between teacher quality and student achievement. This provides the basis for consideration of the derived demand for teachers that comes from their impact on economic outcomes. Alternative valuation methods are based on the impact of increased achievement on individual earnings and on the impact of low teacher effectiveness on economic growth through aggregate achievement. A teacher one standard deviation above the mean effectiveness annually generates marginal gains of over $400,000 in present value of student future earnings with a class size of 20 and proportionately higher with larger class sizes. Alternatively, replacing the bottom 5-8 percent of teachers with average teachers could move the U.S. near the top of international math and science rankings with a present value of $100 trillion.     

Financing public higher education in developing countries

The financing of education has emerged as a major topic of discussion among policy makers in recent years. There is evidence that in many developing countries, governments can no longer continue to increase spending on education at the high rates characteristic in the 1960s and 1970s. The macroeconomic environment has worsened, and there is keen intersectoral competition for public funds. Thus unless educational development moves away from its present heavy dependence on public funds, the expansion of education would be frustrated. One policy option is to increase the private financing of education. In this paper, we evaluate the potential effectiveness of loans schemes as a cost recovery instrument in higher education. Essentially, loans permit students to finance the cost of their education from future income. So the effectiveness of loans would depend on the relation between costs and students' future income. It also depends on the incidence of repetition, dropout, and default, as well as on whether or not a grace period is incorporated in the loan scheme. Our simulations show that in Asia and Latin America, the potential rate of cost recovery is substantial under what appears to be bearable terms of repayment. In Francophone Africa and Anglophone Africa, however, loans schemes are unlikely to perform as well, but they would still permit a shift toward greater private financing of higher education.     

A multi-disciplinary collaborative project developing public health higher education in four higher education institutes in Africa and Europe

The HEI-ICI project involves cooperation between the University of Eastern Finland (UEF) and three African partners. The main aim of the project, now in its fourth year, has been to develop education in health sciences and to improve the quality of teaching. The target has been to develop the skills of selected junior faculty from the Public Health departments, library and IT centres at partner universities. The data was collected during the project in 2010–2014. Written and visual material was analysed using deductive content analysis. The main obstacles researchers were faced with while working in the project have been cultural: the project encouraged different cultures – not only European and African but also pan-African – to meet and work together. This novel approach to learning and teaching is based on the concept of cooperation, collaboration and trust between all of the participating partners; its foundation is the full ownership by the less developed Southern partner institutions.     

公立高校与政府、个人委托代理关系及其问题分析

随着高教体制改革的深入,厘清公立高校所涉及的委托代理关系,分析和解决其存在的委托代理问题迫在眉睫。公有产权下解决委托代理问题的关键,是设计激励、约束和竞争制度来排斥信息效率低下和激励不相容问题。     

Fairness in education: The Italian university before and after the reform

In 2001 the Italian tertiary education system embarked in a broad process of reform. The main novelty brought by the reform was a reduction of the length of study to get a first level degree together with the introduction of a two-years, second level, master degree. This paper aims at studying the effects of the reform in terms of fairness. To this end, we first define fairness criteria following a well developed theory of equality of opportunity, we then discuss existing inequality measures consistent with these criteria, we show their relationship, and adapt them to the educational framework. We finally employ this set of measures to show the evolution of fairness in the access to university in Italy before and after the reform. Although not all fairness measures we estimated show a higher degree of fairness after the reform, the large majority does, suggesting a positive effect of the reform under a vast range of possible definitions of fairness.     

World Bank okays public interest in higher education

This essay review discusses the report of TheTask Force on Higher Education and Society(TFHES), convened in 1998 by the World Bank butindependently financed and staffed incollaboration with UNESCO and severalfoundations. Peril and Promise marks anhistoric turning point in the framework forpostsecondary educational planning. Rate-of-return analysis has been de-emphasized,while promotion of the public interest hasmoved front and center. The report of theTFHES, published in 2000 by the World Bank, hasreceived deserved attention in some parts ofthe world and has even developed an associatedwebsite (http://www.tfhe.net). As we explainbelow, the framework advocated by the TFHES isalready being used in official policy documentsof the World Bank, whose position will surelymultiply the influence of the Task Forcethrough its effect on other development banksas well as on programs of bilateral nationalassistance. And yet, despite its seminalimportance, the TFHES report has yet to befully appreciated by many researchers of highereducation. With this essay review, we hope tobroaden the discussion of the Task Force, and to offer a preliminary assessment of its impactin the 2002 World Bank policy document, and toconnect its arguments to questions that arecentral in the scholarly literature of ourfield.     

The distributional effects of public higher education: A comment

This paper argues that the evidence presented in the currently available studies does not allow any conclusions to be drawn regarding the distributional effects of public higher education. The source of the problem lies in the use of one year as a sampling frame. It is shown that valid inferences may not be drawn from such a sample. The evaluation of the distributional effects of public higher education must be based on lifetime income and tax streams.     

The cost structure of higher education in further education colleges in England

This paper examines the cost of the increased provision of higher education courses within further education colleges in England. We believe this to be the first attempt to fit a cost function specifically to the further education sector. Cost functions for a sample of 96 colleges over a 2-year period, from 2000 to 2002, are fitted using a panel data methodology as well as stochastic frontier analysis. We compare and contrast our findings with a sample of 959 US colleges. Our findings indicate that most further education colleges are able to benefit from economies of scale. Results from both methodologies suggest the presence of product-specific economies of scale, substantial ray economies of scale and indicate that higher education classroom-based courses, such as business studies, as well as vocational courses display substantial economies of scope.     

The gender difference of peer influence in higher education

Investigations of the existence of residential peer effects in higher education has shown mixed results. Using data from a Chinese college, we find no evidence of robust residential peer effects. Using the same data we find evidence that females respond to peer influences, whereas males do not, consistent with social psychology theories that females are more influenced by peers.     

The public/private divide in higher education: A global revision

Our common understandings of the public/private distinction in higher education are drawn from neo-classical economics and/or statist political philosophy. However, the development of competition and markets at the national level, and the new potentials for private and public goods created by globalisation in higher education, have exposed weaknesses in the traditional notions of public/private. For example, (1) the statist notion that higher education is always/already a public good blinds us to its role in producing scarce positional private goods, even in free systems; (2) because there is no global state, both statists and neo-liberals model the global higher education environment simply as a trading environment without grasping the potential for global public goods in education – goods that are subject to non-rivalry or non-excludability, and broadly available across populations, on a global scale. Yet higher education in one nation has the potential to create positive and negative externalities in another; and all higher education systems and institutions can benefit from collective systems e.g. that facilitate cross-border recognition and mobility. The paper sets out to revise public/private in higher education. Rather than defining public/private in terms of legal ownership, it focuses on the social character of the goods. It argues that public/private goods are not always zero sum and under certain conditions provide conditions of possibility for each other. It proposes (a) units in national government that focus specifically on cross-border effects; (b) global policy spaces – taking in state agencies, individual universities, NGOs and commercial agents – to consider the augmentation, distribution of and payment for global public goods. This paper has been adapted from a keynote address to the Conference of Higher Education Researchers (CHER), University of Twente, Enschede, 19 September 2004. The CHER conference was focused on the public/private question. Warm thanks to Erik Beerkens, Jurgen Enders, Marijk van Wende, Ben Jongbloed, Guy Neave, other colleagues who took part in discussion at the CHER conference, and the reviewers for Higher Education.     

对高校公共体育教学改革的思考

分析高校公共体育教学的培养目标和存在的问题,提出了要以“终身体育”作为高校公共体育教学改革发展的方向以及进行高校公共体育教育改革的具体措施。     

Framing attrition in higher education: a complex problem

This study situates student attrition within the strategic framework of Australian public universities. It draws on organisational theory to describe higher education within a bureaucratic framework. The study uses a quantitative approach to undertake a content analysis of attrition and retention policy statements from all Australian universities. This reveals that Australian universities, and the higher education sector as a whole, are attempting to address attrition within their existing bureaucracies. Attrition however is a wicked problem that includes many variables outside the influence of universities, which limits the potential of strategic approaches to problem solving. The practical implications of these findings are that current approaches to attrition are likely to fail. The wicked nature of the attrition problem needs to be taken into account when developing strategies or policies within higher education.     

The impact of education on health knowledge

The theory on the demand for health suggests that schooling causes health because schooling increases the efficiency of health production. Alternatively, the allocative efficiency hypothesis argues that schooling alters the input mix chosen to produce health. This suggests that the more educated have more knowledge about the health production function and they have more health knowledge. This paper uses data from the 1997 and 2002 waves of the NLSY97 to conduct an investigation of the allocative efficiency hypothesis by analyzing whether education improves health knowledge. The survey design allows us to observe the increase in health knowledge of young adults after their level of schooling is increased by differential and plausibly exogenous amounts. Using nine different questions measuring health knowledge, we find weak evidence that an increase in education generates an improvement in health knowledge for those who ultimately attend college. For those with high school as the terminal degree, no relationship is found between education and health knowledge. These results imply that the allocative efficiency hypothesis may not be the primary reason for why schooling impacts health outcomes.     

Evaluating student allocation in the Portuguese public higher education system

This paper characterizes and evaluates the student allocation in the Portuguese public higher education system. It describes the supply and demand sides of the system by looking at the numerus clausus across areas of study and institutions, institutions’ degree of diversity, and performance and adjustment indicators based on students’ revealed preferences. Performance indicators quantify the adequacy between demand and supply, across institutions and fields of study, and gauge the performance of public higher education institutions in the competition for candidates. Adjustment indicators allow us to predict the potential impact of changes in higher education regulations on student allocation and its stability. According to these indicators, such changes could result in an expansion for some institutions and fields of study, whereas other institutions might face a reduction.