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Expenditure on tertiary education
Policy makers must balance the importance of improving the quality of educational services with the desirability of expanding access to educational opportunities, notably at the tertiary level. The comparative review of how trends in educational expenditure per student have evolved shows that in many OECD countries the expansion of enrolments, particularly in tertiary education, has not always been paralleled by changes in educational investment.
Definition
The indicator shows direct public and private expenditure on educational institutions in relation to the number of tertiary full-time equivalent students enrolled in these institutions. Public subsidies for students’ living expenses have been excluded to ensure international comparability of the data.
Expenditure on education per student is obtained by dividing the total expenditure on educational institutions by the number of full-time equivalents students. Only those educational institutions and programmes are taken into account for which both enrolment and expenditure data are available.
Comparability
Expenditure in national currency for 2003 is converted to US dollars by PPP exchange rates. The PPP exchange rate is used because the market exchange rate is affected by many factors (interest rates, trade policies, expectations of economic growth, etc.) that have little to do with relative purchasing power of currencies in different countries.
The changes in expenditure on educational institutions per student are based on data from 1995 and 2003. The data on expenditure for 1995 were obtained by a special survey updated in 2003. OECD countries were asked to collect the 1995 data according to the definitions and the coverage of a joint UNESCO-OECD-Eurostat data collection programme. All expenditure data have been adjusted to 2003 prices using the GDP price deflator.
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Long-term trends In 2003, the level of expenditure per tertiary student on average in OECD countries was 11 254 US dollars converted using PPPs. This average masks a considerable variation of spending at tertiary level with three countries (Greece, Poland and the Slovak Republic) spending less than 5 000 US dollars per student rising up to a level of spending of more than 20 000 US dollars in Switzerland and the United States. OECD countries in which most R&D is performed by tertiary educational institutions tend to report higher expenditure per tertiary student than countries in which a large part of R&D is performed in other public institutions or by industry. On average, for the countries where data are available, expenditure on tertiary education per student increased by 6% over the period 1995 to 2003. Despite this average increase however, there was a marked decrease in expenditure in five out of 24 OECD countries (Australia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Portugal and the Slovak Republic) and in the partner country Brazil which was largely due to a rapid increase in the number of tertiary students enrolled in the same period. On the other hand, expenditure per tertiary student rose significantly in Greece, Hungary, Ireland and Mexico despite a growth in enrolment of 93, 70, 34 and 48%, respectively. |
Source
- OECD (2006), Education at a Glance, OECD, Paris.
Further information
Analytical publications
- OECD (2004), Quality and Recognition in Higher Education: The Cross-border Challenge, OECD, Paris.
- OECD (2004), Internationalisation and Trade in Higher Education: Opportunities and Challenges, OECD, Paris.
- OECD (2006), Education Policy Analysis: Focus on Higher Education , OECD, Paris.
- OECD (2006), Reviews of National Policies for Education, OECD, Paris.
- OECD (2006), Higher Education Management and Policy, OECD, Paris.
Methodological publications
- UIS, OECD and Eurostat (2002), UOE Data Collection – 2002 Data Collection on Education Systems: Definitions, Explanations and Instructions, OECD, Paris.
- OECD (2004), OECD Handbook for Internationally Comparative Education Statistics: Concepts, Standards, Definitions and Classifications, OECD, Paris.
Websites
- OECD, Education at a Glance, www.oecd.org/edu/eag2006.
| Texts | |
| • | Indicator web page |
| • | Indicator in PDF |
| Tables (xls) | |
| • | Expenditure per student in tertiary education |
| Graphics | |
| • | Changes in real expenditure on educational institutions in tertiary education |
Changes in real expenditure on educational institutions in tertiary education
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