Abstract
This paper analyzes the relationship between educational funding and equality of student access to higher education. It is argued that in most countries, the commitment of governments to ensure free education has the contradictory effect of accentuating social disparities, thus increasing the gap between supply and demand in terms of university places.
Such relationships have been taken at the international level with data from a sample of 64 countries. Two indices are examined in relation to each other: a) the degree of effectiveness of the higher education subsidy, and b) the degree of educational inequality (as reflected by the slope of the educational pyramid). The results show that the gap between supply and demand, with respect to the university quota, is relatively greater in the less advanced countries, with the highest degree of subsidy in these same countries. The restriction in terms of real capacity at the school level has created new (non-economic) selection options, tending to restrict access to higher education, with the criteria invariably favoring students from wealthy families.
The present study considers different measures of public funding capable of removing the contradiction that currently prevails between “free” education and erroneous admission restrictions.
ECA Estudios Centroamericanos, Vol. 31, No. 338, 1976: 773-788.
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