Tuition fees in higher education: issues, limits and perspectives.

Summary This thesis studies the effects of tuition fees on students in higher education. In the first part, we conduct a theoretical analysis of the motivations for tuition fees. Chapter 1 provides a critical and multidisciplinary review of the literature and identifies three motivations for introducing or increasing tuition fees (the redistributive effect, the incentive effect and the contributory effect) whose validity we question. Chapter 2 examines the theoretical conditions that make the introduction of tuition fees desirable, even though there are social classes with distinct behaviors. We show, using recent developments in behavioral economics, that the implementation of progressive fees, while it may be a fair solution from a purely theoretical point of view, raises other problems. The second part of this thesis focuses on national experiences with fee implementation. Chapter 3 highlights the contrasting nature of the results presented in the literature before drawing up a typology of institutional contexts. Two regimes appear to be coherent even if their foundations are radically different (the "liberal" and the "social democratic" regimes), while the "conservative" French regime appears to be difficult to sustain. The following three chapters offer the first study of the effects of introducing tuition fees in the French university context. We begin by looking at two aspects of efficiency related to the introduction of tuition fees: (i) a selection effect and (ii) an effort incentive effect. In chapter 4, we show that the introduction of tuition fees at Dauphine reinforces the segregation and inequality effects. In chapter 5, we extend this approach by showing, contrary to the results developed in the theoretical literature, that tuition fees do not increase the level of success and therefore the incentives to effort of students at Dauphine. Finally, in chapter 6, we discuss the possible generalization of the previous results by first analyzing the particular nature of the public at Paris 9 Dauphine University within the French university landscape. The theoretical limits to the introduction of tuition fees (Part I), confirmed empirically (Part II), lead us, in the last part of this thesis, to return to the typology constructed in Chapter 3 by discussing how the "social democratic" institutional regime could contribute to meeting the objectives of equity, efficiency and financing needs of universities in the French case. To do so, we introduce the foundations of what we call "pay-as-you-go" education and define the conditions for its equity, efficiency and capacity to finance higher education.