How does student mobility affect the financing of higher education?

By Tina Haussen and Silke Übelmesser. In all OECD countries, higher education is financed by a mix of public contributions (e.g. income taxes levied on labour income) and private contributions (e.g. tuition fees paid by students). Often, the public share clearly dominates. However, within the last two decades almost half of the OECD countries have introduced or increased tuition fees. During the same period, the number of international students has risen rapidly.
In tertiary education systems that are partly publicly funded, there are two possible causal relationships between student migration and the financing of higher education. First, it may be that the migration decisions of students are affected by the extent of private contributions, e.g. tuition fees. While comparably high public contributions may attract students from abroad, high tuition fees can prevent young people from studying in a foreign country. The empirical evidence is however not fully clear. The contradictory state of research in this area motivated us to analyse whether the second causal link – namely, that student migration induces changes in governmental policies – may also be possible. More...