Free college explained in a global context

According to the International Higher Education Finance, a project sponsored by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, more than 40 countries offer free or nearly free post-secondary education to domestic students.

A variety of approaches are used to fund higher education in these countries, such as imposing high taxes or making use of their significant natural resources (e.g., oil and natural gas reserves) to provide the financial resources for extensive social investment.

In other places, such as Germany, an egalitarian philosophy and deeply held beliefs about the value of a public education preclude the government from shifting costs to the students.

[...] England recently surpassed the U.S. in terms of having the highest tuition fees of the 34 countries in the industrialized world.

[...] England’s “sister country” Scotland continues to provide more substantial subsidies for higher education, providing domestic students with free access to college while at the same time charging significant fees to students from elsewhere in the U.K.

The question now facing policymakers globally is whether to extend the concept of free college to international students or to let them be a source of additional revenues to offset costs of domestic students.

Denmark, for example, saw attendance from outside the EU drop by 20 percent in one year, after it introduced tuition fees for international students in 2006.

The issue in the U.S. is that it already has the largest share of the international student market – approximately 15 percent – and a steady stream of international students looking to study in the U.S.

[...] state universities often seek to make up resource declines by increasing the number of full-fee paying international students.

Could improved state funding in support of making college more financially accessible to domestic students stop colleges from actively seeking international students?