More Tuition, Please! Attitudes Towards Higher Education Tuition Fees – Evidence from a New Comparative Survey

Higher education tuition fees have recently become a central topic of political debate in many countries. The level and kind of tuition fees are extremely important for several reasons: Tuition fees have massive (re-)distributional consequences as well as effects on the inclusiveness, the access conditions, and the quality of higher education systems. Despite this theoretical and societal importance, few studies have analyzed the political economy of tuition fees. Moreover, the large bulk of existing work focuses on the macro-level. To date, there is no international comparative study that analyzes citizens’ preferences and attitudes towards tuition fees, which is related to the lack of comparative survey data on specific education policies. In order to close this gap, we conducted a survey of public opinion among citizens in eight European countries, asking respondents whether they prefer or oppose tuition fees. Moreover, we surveyed their attitudes towards different tuition models (income-related, performance-related, universalistic). Exploiting this data, we investigate individual-level and macro-level determinants of people’s attitudes. Who opposes and who supports tuition fees and what are the determinants of the respective preferences? How do the existing tuition-subsidy systems feed back on these attitudes? For example, do respondents in high-tuition countries differ from citizens in low-tuition countries? Applying logit and nested multinomial models we show that people’s preferences are driven by materialistic self-interests, but even more by political attitudes. Moreover, we find large variation across countries, which we assign to the existence of positive feedback effects of the existing tuition-regimes on public opinion.