Conference Set On How Shifts In Higher-Education Funding Restrict Access For Low-Income Students

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The critical worldwide shift of higher-education costs from governments and taxpayers to students and their parents has raised serious concerns among educators here and abroad because it severely restricts access to higher education for millions of low-income students in many nations.

To illuminate the problem and resolve the critical policy issues related to this crisis, the University at Buffalo will host a major international meeting of policy experts and researchers in higher-education finance on Nov. 14-16.

The "Invitational Conference on the Comparative Study of Student Finance and Accessibility" will identify the principal research questions on which scholars need to work in order to help students and parents maintain access to higher education, despite the withdrawal of government support.

Maureen Woodhall of the University College of Wales, the foremost international expert on student loans, is just one of the many notable education specialists who will attend the meeting.

Participants will include leading higher-education specialists from the World Bank, UNESCO, the Ford Foundation, the Institute for Higher Education Policy (U.S.), the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies at the University of Twente in The Netherlands, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (France) and the Office for Higher Education Integration Programmes (Hungary).

In addition, noted scholars of comparative higher education from the U.S., United Kingdom, Israel, China, the Netherlands, South Africa, Russia, Hungary, Romania, France, Ethiopia, Chile and Argentina will be involved.

The conference was organized by D. Bruce Johnstone, University Professor of Higher and Comparative Education in the Graduate School of Education. Johnstone is a former chancellor of the State University of New York and an international authority on the comparative study of higher educational governance and finance.

For further information, contact Johnstone at 716-645-3168 or at dbj@acsu.buffalo.edu.

Johnstone says the current crisis developed due to a worldwide convergence of three powerful forces:

• The increasing importance higher education in all nations as an instrument of social and economic betterment, both for the individual and for the larger society and its economy. As a result, more and more students-even those in Third- and Fourth-World nations-are desperate to pursue a college education at home or abroad.

• The dramatically increasing cost of higher education, particularly in countries where increasing per-student costs are magnified by sharply increasing enrollments.

• The increasing scarcity of governmental or taxpayer-borne revenue.

According to Johnstone, rising education costs and expanding enrollments far exceed the ability of most governments to continue offering meaningful levels of public education support to students themselves or to institutions of higher education.

Recent changes in government funding policies threaten opportunities for a college education in many nations. For example, most European nations still cling to the principle that a university education should be "free," but in 1997, Great Britain became the first country in Europe to charge college tuition. And while China remains avowedly socialist, it officially has declared the cost of higher education to be something appropriately shared by government and the family. All Chinese students now are charged tuition.

"Governments are finding that higher education cannot be financed solely by taxpayers," Johnstone says. "At the same time, there is great public opposition to the imposition of tuition and other forms of 'cost sharing' before there are adequate systems of need-based grants and loans.

"The cost shift in some countries has been supported by the assumption that some cost sharing-primarily meaning some kind of tuition fee-is possible for some and students and families and is entirely appropriate," he says.

"In these countries, it has been demonstrated that students and families can and will help pay higher-education costs when necessary. Governments say this willingness clearly demonstrates that families understand the high market value of a university degree."

Nevertheless, Johnstone says that in many cases, the families and students who cannot afford to help finance a college education are in the nations that offer neither educational grants nor low-cost loan programs.

"I have been examining tuition and financial assistance policies internationally for almost 15 years," he says. "There is great interest on the part of governments and international development agencies to learn about the best education-financing practices elsewhere. At the same time, such policies are so embedded in the politics and culture of a particular country that it is very difficult to simply transplant programs that may work in, say, the U.S. or Sweden or Australia."

Sponsored by the Center for Comparative and Global Studies in Education in the Graduate School of Education, the conference is supported by a planning grant from the Ford Foundation.