The Political Economy of Higher Education Finance

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

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2. The Politics of Higher Education Tuition Fees and Subsidies

   • Julian L. Garritzmann

   Pages 1-56

3. The Four Worlds of Student Finance: A Comparative Descriptive Overview of Tuition Fees and Subsidies in 33 OECD Countries

   • Julian L. Garritzmann

   Pages 57-98

4. Adding “Some Flesh to the Bones”: Illustrative Case Studies of Four Diverse Cases Over Seven Decades

   • Julian L. Garritzmann

   Pages 99-207

5. What Do Parties Want? Parties’ Positions and Issue Emphasis on Tuition Fees and Subsidies

   • Julian L. Garritzmann

   Pages 209-235

6. Testing the Time-Sensitive Partisan Theory in Large-n Analyses: Parties’ Impact on the Tuition-Subsidy Regimes of 21 Democracies Over Time

   • Julian L. Garritzmann

   Pages 237-266

7. Individual-Level Attitudes Towards Subsidies: How Positive Feedback-Effects Prevent (Radical) Change in the Four Worlds of Student Finance

   • Julian L. Garritzmann

   Pages 267-299

8. Conclusion and Outlook

   • Julian L. Garritzmann

   Pages 301-313

9. Back Matter

   Pages 315-319

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This book analyzes the political economy of higher education finance across a range of OECD countries, exploring why some students pay extortionate tuition fees whilst for others their education is free. What are the redistributional consequences of these different tuition-subsidy systems? Analysing the variety of existing systems, Garritzmann shows that across the advanced democracies “Four Worlds of Student Finance” exist. Historically, however, all countries’ higher education systems looked very much alike in the 1940s. The book develops a theoretical model, the Time-Sensitive Partisan Theory, to explain why countries have evolved from a similar historical starting point to today’s very distinct Four Worlds. The empirical analyses combine a wide variety of qualitative and quantitative evidence, studying higher education policies in all advanced democracies from 1945-2015.

• Student Debt
• Student Finance
• Student Loans
• Free Education
• Economics of Education

“Julian Garritzmann’s book provides a very important addition to the literature on higher education policy-making as well as higher education finance. His study is well grounded in contemporary approaches from political science, and the breadth as well as depth of his empirical analyses is impressive. His call for attention to political processes, system structures as well as political actors and their preferences in the study of higher education policy is timely and well argued.” (Jens Jungblut, European Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 7 (1), January, 2017)

“This book is a major contribution to our understanding of the politics of higher education. Combining quantitative and case-oriented evidence from a broad range of countries, Garritzmann demonstrates how partisan politics has shaped different aspects of educational spending and led to distinct paths toward the knowledge economy. It speaks to students of education and inequality across disciplines.” (Torben Iversen, Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University, USA)

“This book represents an impressive contribution to an important body of recent literature focusing on education policy. It provides a systematic account of the politics behind tuition fees and education subsidies in OECD countries since 1945. It should be required reading to anyone interested in the political economy of industrialized democracies.” (David Rueda, Professor of Comparative Politics, Oxford University, UK)

“In this impressive book, Julian Garritzmann analyzes the variety of student financing regimes in OECD democracies, showing that political conflicts about tuition fees and subsidies are at the core of these regimes, contributing to complex dynamics in the political economy of higher education. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods, Garritzmann disentangles these complexities and develops a compelling argument about the role of partisan politics in explaining the origins of student financing regimes. This book is an extremely important contribution to the growing political economy of education literature. It is a must-read for anybody interested in the future of HE finance.” (Marius Busemeyer, Professor of Political Science, University of Konstanz, Germany)

• University of Konstanz, Department of Politics & Public Administ University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

  Julian L. Garritzmann

Julian L. Garritzmann is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Previously, he was Visiting Fellow at Harvard University. His work has appeared in the Journal of European Social Policy, the Journal of European Public Policy, and in West European Politics. In 2014, he was awarded the JESP/ESPAnet Doctoral Researcher Prize.