摘要：The arguments for refinancing the European Union’s (EU) higher education via
higher tuition fees largely rest on preserving the profitability of the
educational investment and offering deferred and income-contingent payments.
Using income survey datasets on Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom (UK) we
first estimate how graduates’ private return on educational investment is likely
to be affected by higher private contributions. We then evaluate the effect of
income-contingent and deferred payment mechanisms on lifetime net income and its
capacity to account for graduates’ ability to pay, considering numerous ways of
financing the cost of introducing income-contingency. Our analysis reveals that
increasing individuals’ contributions to higher education costs, through
income-contingent and deferred instruments, does not significantly affect the
private rate of return of heterogeneous graduates, allows for payments to be
indexed to ability to pay, and can be implemented in ways that minimize the risk
of adverse selection. These findings prove robust to significant variations
between countries’ unharmonised higher education institutional structures
关键词：Higher Education Finance, income-contingent loans, risk pooling and risk
shifting
