CES Network: Industrial Relations, Skill Formation and Welfare State Policies
My paper analyzes the politics of higher education tuition fees and subsidies. Using data from 33 OECD-countries, I demonstrate that four tuition-subsidy regimes can be distinguished: a low-tuition-low-subsidy regime; a low-tuition-high-subsidy system; a high-tuition-high-subsidy world; and a high-tuition-low-subsidy regime. What are the political and economic driving forces that shaped and sustained these regimes? My analysis begins by investigating individual preferences towards subsidies and tuition fees. Conducting multi-level analyses to social survey data, explanations for these preferences are tested. I then investigate how these preferences are aggregated into party positions. These results serve as the basis for panel-analyses, which test explanations for the cross-country differences and (recent) changes in tuition-subsidy regimes. In a final step, case studies of typical cases of the four regimes (Germany, Finland, US, Japan) are conducted, focusing on the political and economic actors and institutions pushing forward the introduction of the subsidy and tuition systems. In combining these multi-method analyses theoretically grounded in a combination of arguments from welfare state analysis, party politics, and historical institutionalism, I aim at explaining the politics of tuition fees and subsidies.
