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The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one on the role student loans schemes plays in enhancing the access to higher education, others on types of loans schemes in China and worldwide perspectives on student financing.

The finance of higher education faces a clash between technological advance, driving up the demand for skills, and fiscal constraints, given competing imperatives for public spending. Paying for universities is also immensely politically sensitive. This paper sets out core lessons for financing higher education deriving from economic theory, including the desirability of loans with income-contingent repayments. Subsequent discussion includes a general strategy for OECD countries derived from the theoretical analysis, and reforms in England in 2006 which illustrate the strategy. The paper concludes with discussion of the appropriate role of government in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hungarian student loan system was introduced in 2001. It has four main attributes: universal access and universal conditions; income contingent repayment; private funding; and self-sustaining (zero-profit) operation without direct state subsidy. This latter characteristic makes the scheme quite unique in international practice. Empirical facts support the original idea: default rate is relatively low (1-2 per cent), administration costs per year are around 1 per cent of the portfolio value. This paper focuses on three issues: how the Hungarian model works; why a 'specialized institution' model is superior to a 'retail bank' model; and finally, why adverse selection is not as menacing as the literature may suggest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student loans schemes have developed rapidly alongside China's move towards mass higher education. In this paper, the main features of the existing four types of student loan schemes are compared. In particular, the providers of principal loan, borrower eligibility, loan size, loan origination, interest subsidy, risk-sharing, repayment conditions and loan collection are examined. The authors of this article will then predict the problems and challenges confronting the reform of the student loans system in China and suggest that the feasible option for the future is to allow for the co-existence and competition of a variety of student loans schemes and to explore more mature student loans schemes through institutional innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relatively short repayment periods of four or six years after graduation under the Government-Subsidized Student Loan (GSSL), the main student loans programme in China, has, since its implementation in 1999, imposed considerable hardship in repaying loans. This paper presents a new diversified repayment model, the 'geometric proportion repayment' model in which the repayment ratio is kept within 10 per cent of income, thus both easing the burden of repayment and reducing subsequent default. The results of an ordinal regression model, based on data from a sample of university graduates, provides a method of estimating the (unknown) salaries of graduate borrowers on the basis of known information of their work/employment situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of appropriate indicators of public and private expenditures, from which statistically significant differences in funding policies can be identified, constitutes a solid foundation in which the assessment of the role of governments in promoting higher education can be grounded. Based on a carefully selected set of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development indicators, this paper explores the effects of education funding policies, along with research and development expenditures and tax levels, on the entry rate to higher education. The results from the statistical analysis of the data confirm the existence of two distinct approaches to higher education funding, the Scandinavian approach and Anglo-American approach, and help to define their characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent times there has been considerable change and instability with respect to Thailand student loans policy. The contribution of what follows is to compare and contrast the consequences of disparate possible approaches to the payment of tuition in two main respects: the effect on internal rates of return for higher education investments; and the implications of different approaches for the time stream, and thus the present value, of tuition payments to the government. The authors find that, in general, income contingent loans are preferred to the current scheme, although this would not be the case if such a policy reform is poorly designed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors, two French specialists on the financing of higher education, reflect on the conclusions they drew in an article, "Rethinking the Financing of Post-Compulsory Education", which they published in this review ten years ago. As they foresaw, higher education funding became increasingly based on mixed sources with students being required to pay a greater share of the costs of their education. But mechanisms to make cost sharing increasingly equitable have been refined. At the same time, the determination of actual costs per institution, per course programme, and even per course has become increasingly accurate, and funding is increasingly taking into account the verdict of performance indicators of various kinds. The funding of research is being increasingly differentiated from funding for teaching/learning. Across the board, higher education institutions have had to do more for less. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]