The arguments for refinancing the European Union’s (EU) higher education via higher tuition fees largely rest on preserving the profitability of the educational investment and offering deferred and income-contingent payments. Using income survey datasets on Belgium, Germany and the United...

There is plenty of evidence across the EU to suggest that young people from poorer backgrounds are less likely to attend tertiary education than their better-off peers. This correlation is often used to justify monetary transfers to families with students. It is not clear, however, that these...