<story><title>Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn</title><url>http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/feature-germanys-great-tuition-fees-u-turn/2011168.fullarticle</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jiggy2011</author><text>Has there been any extensive research done on relationship between university fees and social mobility?&lt;p&gt;On one hand it seems obvious that if you reduce costs of attending university you remove a barrier that would prevent economically disadvantaged people from attending.&lt;p&gt;But on the other hand, university students, especially those at the best universities disproportionately come from better economic backgrounds and this seems to be true everywhere. In this case it doesn&amp;#x27;t seem fair to tax people who are poor to pay for something that is mainly of benefit to the rich.&lt;p&gt;In the UK we have a student loan system where students do not have to pay back loans unless they earn over a threshold amount, so in theory there is nothing to prevent a poor person going to university regardless of how high the fees are.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bane</author><text>American here, after age 10, I grew up fairly poor and very rural. Within a half hour drive (on highways) from the home I grew up in, all the jobs were either in farming&amp;#x2F;agriculture, similar industrial (quarries or steel factory), grocery stores or gas stations.&lt;p&gt;The notion of going to college was virtually inconceivable to me and I was pretty sure I&amp;#x27;d end up out in a field or a factory someplace. For a while I did odd manual labor jobs, sanding decks, cleaning gutters, digging drainage trenches, that sort of thing. My parents were simply unable to pay for any amount of college for me and I was barely making enough money to cover the gas and meals to get to and from and work at the various job sites. Coming out of that kind of environment, with no hope of ever getting to college, I didn&amp;#x27;t even bother taking the SATs in high school and barely graduated at all, nobody hiring farm work cares about your GPA.&lt;p&gt;Through a friend I managed to land a low-end tech job, but it provided me with &lt;i&gt;just&lt;/i&gt; enough to pay for community college with lots of financial aid (I couldn&amp;#x27;t take loans because I wasn&amp;#x27;t sure if I could even pay them back).&lt;p&gt;Eventually, just &lt;i&gt;because&lt;/i&gt; I was currently in college in a desirable field, I landed a paid internship that paid 3x what I was then currently making. I graduated, transferred to the local state school, converted the internship into a part-time job that paid even more.&lt;p&gt;At the local state school, I didn&amp;#x27;t make enough to pay for college and live, so I qualified for a number of grants which provided 100% of my tuition (I still had to pay for books and various other fees). Today the grants are about the same amount of money, but the state school fees back then were about 1&amp;#x2F;3 less  than they are today thanks to generous subsidies, so I definitely benefited from that subsidy program. I couldn&amp;#x27;t have gone to my final two years of my undergrad in today&amp;#x27;s environment.&lt;p&gt;Because I was nearing the end of my undergrad, I was able to land another, higher paying internship with a performance-based conversion to full-time employment. When I graduated college, I converted to full-time and immediately doubled my income and started on a long and interesting career path.&lt;p&gt;Eventually I went back to grad school and got a Masters, which has again accelerated my career development.&lt;p&gt;So did I experience social mobility from cheap education fees? Absolutely. I think the most important thing is that had I not gone to college and ended up in dead-end farm work, the amount of taxes I would have payed back into the state would have been a tiny tiny fraction of what I&amp;#x27;ve paid back since then. I&amp;#x27;ve easily bought back the subsidies and grants used for my education several times over just in the tax difference that I&amp;#x27;ve paid personally, and the additional economic benefits I&amp;#x27;m able to provide working in my field far outstrip even that. For example, I&amp;#x27;ve been able to hire people from out of state and out of the country and bring them into my state where they&amp;#x27;re now paying taxes back into the system.&lt;p&gt;It seems like such a virtuous cycle that I can&amp;#x27;t imagine why at least the levels of subsidies that I enjoyed haven&amp;#x27;t been maintained. It seems like such an obvious investment.</text></comment>
<story><title>Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn</title><url>http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/feature-germanys-great-tuition-fees-u-turn/2011168.fullarticle</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jiggy2011</author><text>Has there been any extensive research done on relationship between university fees and social mobility?&lt;p&gt;On one hand it seems obvious that if you reduce costs of attending university you remove a barrier that would prevent economically disadvantaged people from attending.&lt;p&gt;But on the other hand, university students, especially those at the best universities disproportionately come from better economic backgrounds and this seems to be true everywhere. In this case it doesn&amp;#x27;t seem fair to tax people who are poor to pay for something that is mainly of benefit to the rich.&lt;p&gt;In the UK we have a student loan system where students do not have to pay back loans unless they earn over a threshold amount, so in theory there is nothing to prevent a poor person going to university regardless of how high the fees are.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tokenadult</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Has there been any extensive research done on relationship between university fees and social mobility?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for asking for data to inform our discussion here. Yes. There are a number of scholars of the economics of education who work full-time researching this issue. You are correct that university admission generally takes in young people from more prosperous families all over the world--because young people from such families don&amp;#x27;t have to enter the labor force immediately after completing compulsory schooling to support themselves or to support other family members.&lt;p&gt;The best evidence from international studies suggests the policy announced by Germany is not the best policy for ensuring access to higher education. An Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) international study reports, &amp;quot;Student financial support systems that offer loans with income-contingent repayment to all students combined with means-tested grants can be an effective way to promote access and equity while sharing the costs of higher education between the state and students.&amp;quot;[1] Reading this study will provide more background information.&lt;p&gt;My recollection of the international research studies I have read is that the best mix of quality of higher education and access to higher education by students of all economic backgrounds is to have a mixed system (nonsystem) of higher education in a country, with some public universities with very heavy tax subsidies so that list price is low (but admission is hard to gain), some private universities that accept students with more money (or more willingness to take out loans on the idea that investing in higher education has return on investment), and some privately funded scholarships specific to students rather than specific to what institutions the students enroll in. Examples of countries with such nonsystems that produce a lot of access to higher education of good quality for a lot of students include the United States (where black people, who are often poor, attend college at a higher rate than French people in France do, as I recall reading), and more recently Japan (which now also has such a mixed nonsystem, parallel to its national universities), and Taiwan. I have also read the Norway and other Nordic countries do well in providing a lot of access to reasonably good higher education, with perhaps a different mix of providers.&lt;p&gt;A 2013 article from the &lt;i&gt;Times Higher Education Supplement&lt;/i&gt;[2] has an interesting discussion of international trends in financing higher education.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/49729932.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oecd.org&amp;#x2F;education&amp;#x2F;skills-beyond-school&amp;#x2F;49729932....&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/a-different-world/2001128.article&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.timeshighereducation.co.uk&amp;#x2F;features&amp;#x2F;a-different-w...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>