Tuition fees in higher education: the deleterious temptation of the French status quo

In the face of the knee-jerk reactions that are usually generated by every position taken in favor or against higher education tuition fees, it is worth recalling three facts that are essential for anyone wishing to give serious thought to this issue.

Firstly, in France, tuition fees are charged by virtually all higher education establishments, including public and private universities and schools.

Secondly, the differences in tuition fees between courses can be very significant.

Thirdly, while the average level of fees is low, the student support system is also very limited.

A "confiscated" debate

The interplay of these three issues makes the question of tuition fees eminently complex to discuss. And yet, we have to admit that the debate is structured around the most simplistic and dogmatic arguments, which are also divisive.

In many respects, this debate seems "confiscated". On the one hand, the "pro-fees" camp imagines that the "price signal" provided by fees will encourage the most capable students to take their training seriously, while on the other hand, students with no talent, no quality or no real "preference" for study will be encouraged to forgo training that would otherwise have been costly for the community.

This stance is bound to provoke reactions from those who know that an individual's talent or preferences are less a randomly distributed natural given than the fruit of a social construction marked by the accumulation of inequalities since childhood.

But the reaction of "anti-fees" is usually limited to defending the dogma of free higher education as a public good against "neoliberalism", without further questioning the characteristics of this public good.

Of course, the "pro-fees" can easily reply that higher education is not a public good with the same characteristics as the police, defense or even primary education; and off we go again for another round of polarized debates, allowing the expression of indignation on both sides.

Polarization

In absolute terms, this polarization of debates and the cycles of position-taking it engenders could correspond to the "natural" expression of democracy, and help to redirect public action when, carried along by its momentum, it tends to go a little too far in one direction or another.

But a closer look at what this polarization produces in terms of public policy tells us that this is not the case: on the contrary, it has deleterious effects on French higher education.

Despite the existence of a "social dialogue" on the subject, as evidenced by the report on the national strategy for higher education and research (StraNES), there is no clear frame of reference for structuring and justifying public action and policy choices in this area: there is, strictly speaking, no policy on higher education, and even less on the financing of studies, as underlined by the latest episode of negotiation between the UNEF and the Ministry, which led to the upgrading and post-study extension of grants based on social criteria; in many respects, this is a "non-issue" for the government.

This mode of operation leads to a renewed segmentation of higher education, contrary to the public authorities' objective.

The deleterious effect of the status quo

In public universities, the public authorities are in agreement on a kind of status quo, where nothing seems to change - following the publication of the StraNES report, there has been no change in tuition fees, which continue to exist - even though seemingly insignificant decisions can have a major impact on students, such as the drawing of lots to enter the bachelor's program for certain highly sought-after courses.

In the case of the most prestigious establishments, we are witnessing the reinforcement of a "one-stop shop approach", whereby reforms and public funding are negotiated "autonomously" and on a highly decentralized basis, outside the scope of "common law" (particularly in terms of supervisory bodies, public subsidies per student and tuition fees).

Lastly, even though it remains fairly contained in France for the time being, the public authorities are observing without reacting to the development of a "low-quality" segment of the private sector, which is expensive, often for-profit and difficult to know whether it really offers the ideal conditions for the successful professional integration of students.

In this way, the government gives to some and to others, so as not to upset the balance too much in the short term. In the medium term, however, this temptation to maintain the status quo is not synonymous with immobility; on the contrary, it leads to uncontrolled changes, with tuition fee increases that have no connection with social justice and the private or public utility of training courses, and without offering fair and effective mechanisms for financing the cost of studies, accentuating the financial difficulties of some students and the inequalities between higher education courses.

All this while the most dogmatic debaters can continue to hammer home their positions in the "debate", overplaying their eternal dissatisfaction.

In the end, it's not clear that there's much to be gained from this polarization of the debate between pro- and anti-fees.

From our point of view, this is all the more damaging given that there are some "good questions" to be asked when debating a policy for financing higher education: fees for what? What to charge? Who should pay? And how are these fees and the cost of living to be financed?

As in any democratic debate, there are obviously several ways of giving a coherent answer to these "good questions", and these different ways constitute as many strategies that the politician must formulate in order for the citizens' debate to really take place.

The "right questions" to ask

The first central question concerns the objectives of fees. Is it to motivate or empower students, to meet the financing needs of institutions, to achieve greater fiscal equity, or to reduce public spending? The inevitably multiple answers to this first question deserve to be assessed in the light of social science research, but above all prioritized on the basis of political choices.

The second question concerns "what to charge", i.e. how to define the normal amount of tuition fees for a particular course, in line with the cost-benefit logic underlined by Marie Duru-Bellat. Should they be charged at the actual cost of training? Should we charge more for access to the institutions that best integrate their students, or the opposite? Should fees be reduced for the most socially useful courses? Or increase them for those reserved for a social or academic elite?

The third question concerns "who should pay", i.e. the criteria for determining whether an individual's tuition fees should deviate from the normal amount. This refers to principles of justice such as merit (for example, some highly selective public courses are free, or even pay their students), need (the basis for exempting scholarship holders from university tuition fees), and equality (the basis for nationally-defined university tuition fees).

The fourth question concerns the affordability of studies. The absence or presence of tuition fees does not guarantee that students will be able to finance these fees and their living expenses. How much of the public resources freed up by an increase in tuition fees should be used to help students by reducing the living costs of the most disadvantaged, and under what conditions and with what mechanisms?

There are certainly no obvious answers to these questions, and the authors of this article would certainly provide different answers. Nevertheless, it has to be said that the debate on tuition fees has remained embryonic in France. Without prejudging the political responses that may be forthcoming, it is important that the democratic choices that lie ahead can be based on a clear positioning by the candidates as to their strategy for higher education, and in particular the financing of studies.

This article is republished from The Conversation under Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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