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INTERNATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION

Affordability and Accessibility

Tarla Shah
Tarla Shah is managing editor of Higher Education Digest and on the staff of the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information, at the Open University. Address: Centre for Higher Education Research and Information, Open University, 44 Bedford Row, London WC1R 4LL, UK. E-mail: T.Shah@open.ac.uk.

This report provides comparable cross-national data on affordability and accessibility of higher education. It shows how different countries perform on a spectrum of indicators of affordability and accessibility and allows nations to see how well they are doing relative to other countries around the world. The report also assigns different rankings to countries’ efforts in making education accessible and affordable.

Including both costs and resources, the report uses the following sets of indicators to look at affordability: costs as a fraction of ability to pay support as a fraction of ability to pay, support as a fraction of costs, and cost minus support as a fraction of ability to pay. The indicators used for accessibility are participation rates; attainment rates; the educational equity index (the quantification of educational inequality by measuring the degree to which students from high-socioeconomic-status backgrounds—as measured by paternal education levels—are overrepresented in higher education; and gender parity index.

The affordability section of the report looks at data on affordability of higher education in 15 countries. The report compares countries on six different measures of affordability (as a percentage of ability to pay): education costs, total costs, net costs, net cost after tax expenditure, out-of-pocket costs and out-of-pocket costs, after tax expenditures. These taken together provide the following weighted overall affordability ranking: (1) Sweden, (2) Finland, (3) the Netherlands, (4) Belgium (Flemish Community), (5) Ireland, (6) Belgium (French Community), (7) Austria, (8) Germany, (9) France, (10) Italy, (11) Canada, (12) Australia, (13) United States, (14) United Kingdom, (15) New Zealand, and (16) Japan.

The analytical findings of the study on comparative affordability reveal a number of trends. Sweden is the most affordable country because of its combination of low educational costs, generous grants, and high take-up of loans. Finland and the Netherlands also do well because of low to middle educational costs, generous grants, and reasonable but limited loan programs. Because of limited student aid programs, the rest of continental Europe fares only moderately well despite low educational costs. The United Kingdom and New Zealand are near the bottom of the ranking because of high costs and low national incomes.

The accessibility section of the report looks at data on accessibility of higher education in 13 countries. Using the four different indicators of accessibility, the country rankings are as follows: (1) the Netherlands, (2) Finland, (3) United Kingdom, (4) United States, (5) Canada, (6) Australia, (7) Ireland, (8) France, (9) Sweden, (10) Italy, (11) Germany, (12) Belgium, and (13) Austria.

The findings on comparable accessibility suggest that the Netherlands and Finland have high participation rates and good or excellent gender parity scores. Finland’s high score is largely due to its very high participation rates. The Netherlands gets the top spot because of its excellence in education equity and gender parity. The United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and Ireland cluster in the mid-to-high zone of the rankings, which demonstrates striking evidence of policy congruence across a shared linguistic zone. Germany, Belgium, and Austria fare well in terms of gender parity index, but are at or near the bottom of the other three accessibility measures. None has a particularly high participation or attainment rate, and all of them have student bodies that are elite relative to the national make-up.

Overall, the report concludes that Finland and the Netherlands are the “undisputed success stories” of the survey in terms of both accessibility and affordability. Both have large student bodies, high attainment rates, extensive grant programs, and student bodies that are fairly reflective of broader society. While there is some clustering, the data and rankings suggest quite strongly that the links between accessibility and affordability are not straightforward. For example, with the exception of Finland and the Netherlands, no country has consistently high scores across both the affordability and accessibility rankings.

[Online] Available: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/Number43/p5_Shah.htm