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Despite increasing financial pressures on higher education systems throughout the world, many governments remain resolutely opposed to the introduction of tuition fees, and some countries and states where tuition fees have been long established are now reconsidering free higher education. This paper examines the consequences of charging tuition fees on university quality, enrolments, and equity. To do so, we study the English higher education system which has, in just two decades, moved from a free college system to one in which tuition fees are among the highest in the world. Our findings suggest that England's shift has resulted in increased funding per head, rising enrolments, and a narrowing of the participation gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students. In contrast to other systems with high tuition fees, the English system is distinct in that its income-contingent loan system keeps university free at the point of entry, and provides students with comparatively generous assistance for living expenses. We conclude that tuition fees, at least in the English case supported their goals of increasing quality, quantity, and equity in higher education.

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Total expenditure per student on tertiary educational institutions is increasing in OECD countries. Although tertiary educational institutions across OECD countries are mainly funded from public sources, private expenditure (including public-to-private transfers) remains a significant source of funding. Reliance on private funding by tertiary educational institutions has been growing. On average in OECD countries, private sources account for a significant share of investment in tertiary educational institutions. Private expenditure on tertiary educational institutions increased faster than public expenditure between 2010 and 2016 on average across OECD countries, although this varies from country to country. Participation in tertiary education is not correlated to the funding model in tertiary institutions and high levels of private expenditure at tertiary education are not necessarily associated with lower enrolment. Financial support mechanisms in the form of grants or loans help alleviate the financial burden to households, particularly in countries where private spending on tertiary education is high.

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Nationwide, community colleges have a graduation rate average of only 18 per cent. As a result, institutions continually look for avenues to improve student success, persistence and achievement. While retention programs such as freshman orientation, communities of learning, TriO and mentoring receive extensive study to catalog the factors associated with increased student persistence, data on the Federal Work Study Program is lacking. The majority of studies about the Federal Work Study Program employ a quantitative design, comparing the graduation rates of participants to the general student population. While a positive trend is identified, the understanding of 'why and how' students persist when engaged in the Federal Work Study Program is minimal. This qualitative, transcendental phenomenological study focused on the experiences of the current Federal Work Study student or recent graduate (2012 to 2016). A minimum of two semesters of participation on campus was required to qualify a participant as persistent. Five themes were discovered in this study, through both the words and experiences of the participants and through utilization of student persistence theory. The five themes are: The Fledgling Student, Making Connections, Academic, Social and Institutional Integration, Non-Monetary Benefits and Giving Back. The Federal Work Study Program allows the participant to work up to eighteen hours per week on campus and increases interaction with supervisors, faculty, staff and peers. These connections and learning opportunities were found to enhance the participants' academic and social integration to the college culture, including discussion and future career planning. While participants in this study did not begin the Federal Work Study Program until their second year, efforts should be made to connect students earlier with the Federal Work Study Program to maximize the benefits of program participation.

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One of the main reasons for individuals to be on income support and/or unemployed is that they lack the skills relevant to employment, due either to low education or to skills having been outdated. However, currently there is little empirical evidence on the effectiveness of various training programs (or courses) in terms of their effects on labour market outcomes, especially in the Australian context. By comparing the effects of different types of education and training for income support recipients, this project will provide information for policy development on education and/or training linked to employment services. In this report, the authors use data from the Longitudinal Pathways Survey (LPS) and the Research and Evaluation Dataset (RED) to: examine income support recipients' patterns of participation in training and study; analyse the factors that affect income support recipients' participation in education and training; and estimate the effects of training participation on income support status and labour market outcomes.

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The average graduation gap between Pell and non-Pell students at the institutional level is only 5.7 percentage points. But the national gap is 14 points, a result of large gaps at specific colleges, as well as too many Pell students enrolling at colleges with very low graduation rates. Closing the national gap requires both changes in outcomes and access. Colleges with large gaps need to do more to ensure low-income student success, and more selective institutions should open their doors to more Pell students. But even if all institutional-level gaps in completion between Pell and non-Pell students were eliminated, there would still be a considerable national gap because too many Pell students attend institutions where few students of any sort graduate, and too few attend institutions where most students graduate. The data and illustrations in this report suggest that underperforming institutions - rather than the Pell Grant program itself - deserve more scrutiny.

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The degree to which students are able to make adequate repayments on their student loans and avoid default is of special concern for colleges. If too many former students go into default, the college will face sanctions by the federal government and lose eligibility to provide currently enrolled students federal financial aid, such as the Pell grant. To avoid these sanctions, some colleges have chosen not to participate in federal loan programs by excluding loans from students' financial aid packages. In this article, [the author] investigates the student-level impacts associated with the decision of community colleges to opt out of the Stafford loan program. Utilizing administrative records from over 50 community colleges located in a single state, [the author] estimates the within-college differences in outcomes for Pell-eligible students before and after an institution opts out of the federal loan program. [The author] finds that Pell-eligible students enrolling when the community college offered federal loans were 7.6 percentage points more likely to borrow than Pell-eligible students who enrolled when the institutions opted out. Overall, borrowing also increased by 368 US dollars a year. [The author] also finds that students borrowing a loan attempted 19 additional credits in their first year of enrollment and were more likely to attempt and complete math and science courses than non-borrowers.

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The Higher Education Loan Programme (HELP) is a large and growing Australian government programme that supports participation in higher education by providing income-contingent concessional loans to students to assist with the costs in education. Although the costs of HELP are included in the budget financial statements, they are not separately identified to allow the impact of the programme on the budget to be readily assessed. The cost of the HELP is growing strongly, driven by the introduction of the demand driven approach to higher education funding, recently announced policy decisions to reduce subsidies for university courses and to allow universities to set their own course fees, and expansion of HELP loans to vocational education.

This report discusses the size and costs of HELP and provides an estimate of the impact of the programme on the underlying cash balance. The analysis in this paper is based on the government's announced policies as at the 2015-16 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO), including those that are yet to be legislated.

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Performance-based scholarships have two main goals: to give students more money for college and to provide incentives for academic progress. They are designed to reduce the financial burden on low-income students and help them progress academically by offering financial aid contingent upon meeting pre-specified academic benchmarks. MDRC launched the Performance-Based Scholarship Demonstration in 2008 to evaluate the effectiveness of these scholarships for as broad a range of low-income students as possible, in a variety of settings, and with varying incentive structures. As such, the evaluation includes more than 12,000 students in institutions across six states [Arizona, California, Florida, New Mexico, New York and Ohio] to test different performance-based scholarship designs.

Each program was developed for a different population of students and had a different scholarship structure; the scholarship amounts ranged from a few hundred dollars to $1,500 per term, depending in part on the benchmarks being tested. Institutions created performance-based scholarship programs tailored to what they perceived to be the specific needs of their students, by targeting the incentive, academic benchmarks, and in some cases additional services to address those needs.

The results show that these scholarships improved students' academic progress during the program - effects that remained evident several years after the program ended. The effects on students' academic progress appear generally consistent across the different programs and student subgroups. In addition, one program targeted high school seniors and succeeded in increasing their matriculation in college, and three of the programs reduced students' dependency on loans. Most important, this evaluation finds that the programs modestly increased degree completion, measured after five years. These results show that even relatively moderate investments in low-income students' education can have modest but long-lasting impacts on their academic outcomes.

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The growth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participation in Australian higher education from 1959 to the present is notable statistically, but below population parity. Distinct patterns in government policy-making and programme development, inconsistent funding and political influences, together with Indigenous representation during the last 50 years have shaped the higher education participation of Australia's Indigenous populations. In this article, the authors identify a constant ideological flux between welfare, equity and economic priorities in successive Australian government approaches impacting on equal opportunities for Indigenous Australians in higher education. Maintaining and increasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participation in higher education requires a continued focus on targets for higher education enrolments, governance and working with Indigenous educators.

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This is the report of an assessment of the adequacy of government measures to provide equitable access to secondary and post-secondary education opportunities to students from rural and regional communities attending metropolitan institutions, and metropolitan students attending regional universities or technical and further education (TAFE) colleges, with particular reference to: (a) the financial impact on rural and regional students who are attending metropolitan secondary schools, universities or TAFE; (b) the education alternatives for rural and regional students wanting to study in regional areas; (c) the implications of current and proposed government measures on prospective students living in rural and regional areas; (d) the short- and long-term impact of current and proposed government policies on regional university and TAFE college enrolments; (e) the adequacy of government measures to provide for students who are required to leave home for secondary or post-secondary study; (f) the educational needs of rural and regional students; (g) the impact of government measures and proposals on rural and regional communities; and (h) other related matters.

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