As part of the OECD’s ongoing efforts to make its data and analysis more accessible, as well as easier to understand and use, a team at the organisation’s directorate for education and skills have created a new webpage that allows users to compare countries on a range of indicators. Read more...

National policies regarding tuition fees and financial aid to students generally cover all students studying in a country’s educational institutions, say the compilers of the OECD publication Education at a Glance 2014.
But differences in the fees that local and international students are charged, and the financial help each group may receive, can impact on the flows of international students. Read more...

At the tertiary level, public expenditure per student in both public and private institutions averaged US$9,221 in OECD countries in 2012, the Education at a Glance report says. But the amount varied from about US$2,000 in Chile to more than US$17,000 in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden – the four countries where the share of private spending is small or negligible. Read more...

The financial support that students receive during their studies cannot be solely analysed in terms of the proportion of students who take out loans. The amount support also depends on the size of the loans, according to the OECD report Education at a Glance 2014. Read more...

Many countries have similar goals for tertiary education, such as strengthening the knowledge economy, increasing access for students, encouraging high completion rates, and ensuring the financial stability of their higher education systems, according to the OECD’s latest Education at a Glance report. Read more...

By Geoff Maslen. The cost of higher education and the best way to support students in paying for that education are among the most hotly debated public policy topics in education today, according to the latest OECD report Education at a Glance 2014. Read more...

By Ángel Gurría. The data on earnings in Education at a Glance 2014 point to a widening gap between the educational ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. Across OECD countries, the difference in income from employment between adults without upper secondary education and those with a tertiary degree continues to grow. Read more...

As part of this special coverage on what it costs the world’s students to obtain a degree, the following articles are based on information drawn from various chapters in the OECD report, Education at a Glance 2014, released last month.
These edited extracts describe the fees and other charges that students – domestic and foreign – face in attending tertiary education institutions in the different member countries and, in some cases, those outside the OECD.
University World News is grateful to the OECD for providing copyright clearance to allow us to publish extracts from the report. Note that there is no charge for downloading the report and readers can locate more of the data online. The Excel spreadsheets used to create the tables and charts are also freely available via the Statlinks system provided throughout the report. Read more...

By Ranjit Goswami. There have been two schools of thought in determining whether higher education should qualify as a public or a private good. It is not merely a question of intention, as evidence has long suggested that nations that have treated higher education as a public good have benefitted from increased productivity. Read more...

By Erin Nordal. This past month in Europe has been characterised by debates on tuition fees, or what some attempt to downplay by calling ‘cost-sharing’. Some have tried to disguise it as a ’necessary evil’ in the light of the financial crisis but it has become more and more clear that tuition fees may not have anything to do with the state of the economy. Read more...