This paper provides a conceptual framework for the articles that follow in this special issue of the Journal of Education Finance by exploring how the external social benefits of higher education contribute to higher sustainable rates of per capita development of families and nations. It...

The Spanish university system has witnessed many changes in the last thirty years. Initial conditions for competition were laid down in 1983, specially through the recognition of legal status to private universities. However, the shortage of students since 1998 and the drop on demand for higher...

Since the end of World War I, systematic efforts in the USA to promote academic exchange have steadily increased. The resulting exchanges have changed perspectives of the participants in which they perform. In view of the rapid expansion of higher education worldwide, information and...

Efficiency is an important consideration for those who manage public services. Costs vary with output and with a variety of other factors. In the case of higher education, for example, factors include quality, student demographics, the scale and scope of the higher education provider, and the...

Students face four decision margins: (a) How many years to spend in school, (b) What to study, (c) How much effort to devote to learning per year and (d) Whether to disrupt or assist the learning of classmates. The thousands of studies that have applied human capital theory to the first two...

This paper aims at linking cross border mobility of students and graduates with the financing of higher education. Against the background of institutional features and empirical evidence of the European Union and Northern America, a theoretical framework is developed. This allows analyzing the...

The number of tertiary students enrolled outside their home country has almost doubled in the last decade. In higher education systems that are partly tax-funded, a country's labor force might not be willing to subsidize the education of foreign students who can be expected to work abroad after...

We estimate the elasticity of enrollment into higher education with respect to the amount of means tested student aid (BAfoeG) provided by the federal government using the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP). Potential student aid is derived on the basis of a detailed taxbenefit microsimulation...

In this paper we estimate the effects of college education on cognitive abilities and health exploiting exogenous variation in college availability and student loan regulations. By means of semiparametric local instrumental variables techniques we estimate marginal treatment effects in an...

Working has become commonplace among college students; however, this activity can have unexpected financial consequences. Federal formulas implicitly tax the amount of financial aid students are eligible to receive by as much as 50 cents for each marginal dollar of income. This tax creates an...