Are you state-funded or self-financed?

The question-title of the blog is closely related with the Finance of Higher Education. Therefore, this blog will cover dual-track tuition fees policy and its impact on academic achievement of students who are state-funded and students who are self-financed.

The phenomena where the state regulation of tuition fees is very constrained with “merit-based” entry to no-fee or low-cost education and open access to for-fee education is called dual-track tuition policy (Johnstone, 2003; Johnstone and Marcucci, 2010). In simple words, if a student gets a high score, let’s say, in UNT then there is a probability that the student gets a scholarship or, otherwise, s/he can pay for higher education themselves and study.  

There are limitations of this tuition policy. Dual-track tuition brings inequity among students from different levels of society (Marcucci, Johnstone, and Ngolovoi, 2008). Mostly, students who get free higher education are those who can afford to pay tuitions or their parents could pay for them. Accordingly, students from low income families have struggles to get those scholarships by competing with students who can pay for higher education. According to Sawyerr (as cited in Johnstone, 2003) introduction of tuitions might increase “the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ in access to higher education”. By this, it means that in spite of enrolled students to the university, there are still challenges in access. As for another limitation of this tuition policy might be differences in academic abilities of students (McMartin, 2009; Ngolovoi, 2008). It means that students with the lowest admission scores to free education had slight difference in academic ability compared to students whose scores were below “cut-off point”.

Many researchers have examined the impact of financial aid or scholarships and tuition fees on academic achievement of students. And the results of these researches do not correspond with each other and are sometimes contradictory. If speaking about the impact of dual-track tuition on academic achievement, little research has been done. Some empirical research reveals that scholarships have a positive impact on completion, whereas it negatively affects on college withdrawal and retention (Dynarski, 2003). Delanay (2011) discovered that financial aid has impact on academic decision making.  Concerning the impact of tuition fees, the researchers agree that tuition fees does not influence strongly on academic achievement (Dyranski, 2003). Also, part-time work influence on academic achievement of students. 

To sum up, there is the gap about the impact of dual-track tuition policy on academic achievement. So, it needs to be researched in future. Because financing higher education might cause misunderstanding in the society and have negative influence on country’s economy.

               

  

References

Delaney, A.J. (2011). State Merit-based Aid and Enrolling in Graduate Study: Evidence From

the Kentucky Educational Excellence Scholarship. Journal of Student Financial Aid, 41(2).

Dynarski, S. M. (2003). Does aid matter? Measuring the effect of student aid on college

attendance and completion. The American Economic Review 93 (1), 279-288 pp.

Johnstone, B., (2003). Higher Education Finance and Accessibility: Tuition Fees and Student

Loans in Sub Saharan Africa. Journal of Higher Education in Africa.

Johnstone, B., Marcucci, P. (2010) Financing Higher Education Worldwide: Who Pays?

Who Should Pay? Maryland, Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Prss.

Marcucci, P., Johnstone, B., & Ngolovoi, M. (2008). Higher Educational Cost-

Sharing, Dual-Track Tuition Fees, and Higher Educational Access: The East African Experience. Peabody Journal of Education, 83(1), 101-116 pp.

McMartin, H. (2009). University Tuition Fee Policy Tools. Journal of Public Policy,

Administration and Law.

Ngolovoi, M., (2008). Financing Higher Education in Kenya: Student perceptions and

experiences. In Tertiary Education and Management, 141-150 pp. New York:

Roudeledge.