Student Financing in the Netherlands: A Behavioural Economic Perspective

Student financing has a permanent place on the political agenda in many countries. With higher education being offered to increasing numbers of students and with limited public resources to underpin this demand for high quality higher education, students are required increasingly to play a role in alleviating the financial pressures on the public purse. This so-called phenomenon of ‘cost-sharing’ also takes place in the Netherlands. Cost-sharing in this book is defined as the predominant development towards a transfer of financial responsibilities for higher education from governments towards students and their families (Johnstone and Shroff-Mehta 2000). Cost-sharing can take place in the form of the introduction or increase of tuition fees and in the reduction of subsidies to students and their families, for example through a stronger reliance on student loans rather than on grants and scholarships. Cost-sharing can also — more implicitly — result from support policies that do not compensate students for increases in the cost of living and study costs.