In any country where the educational system faces this predicament there are fundamentally two choices—either limit the participation in tertiary education by putting restrictions on university entrance, or find some quick funding.

 

Annual tuition fees started at a flat rate of £ 1,175 (now Kč 40,800/€ 1,570). Some experts in the field, however, say that the U.K. can offer inspiration for a potential Czech school fee system.

 

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the U.K. has shown a consistent rise in its investment in education. Spending on education has gone from 5.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 1995 to 6.1 percent in 2003. In 2004, with the continued rise in demand for tertiary education, the need for funding was highlighted again. “We simply cannot duck the funding issue …There is no pain-free option of extending opportunity and building a quality higher-education system for the many—not just the few—without someone paying for it,” said then-Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2004. The “someone” was again the students, and in September of 2006, the extra funding came in the form of a tuition fee increase. Fees can now reach as high as £ 3,000, though this is subject to the discernment of the individual university. Sir Howard Newby, former chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, said in late 2006 that by 2010 students could be paying up to £ 5,000 in tuition fees. Recent OECD figures have shown a drop in the GDP percentage put toward higher education in the U.K. to around 5.9 percent but this is still above the 5.8 percent average for OECD countries.

 

The only fairly stable source of funding for higher education is from the middle to upper class participants that are directly (students) or indirectly (parents and sponsors) involved with the institutions, according to Bruce Johnstone, the director of the International Comparative Higher Education Finance and Accessibility Project (ICHEFAP). In the case of most educational systems, especially those of the U.K. and the U.S, this translates into the need for a sustainable loan plan. With the implementation of tuition fees in the U.K., the government promptly announced an expanded plan to administer loans by public sector firm Student Loans Company, which would eventually replace its prior means-tested grant program. Loans are deferred until after the completion of education and are repaid at 9 percent of marginal income above £ 15,000. This is an income contingent loan plan because the repayment obligation is determined by the income of the holder. As Johnstone explains, this can become more of a political issue because it is up to the governmental body to accurately means-test the population to determine what people can afford to pay. Thus, although this system removes some of the resistance against fixed tuition fees by offering both deferment and means-tested repayment options, it still leaves a great responsibility on the institutions and especially the government to supply the cash backing for these signed obligations that are ideally worthy assets—and ultimately to properly collect the repayments from borrowers, he added. In the case of countries like the U.K. and the U.S., incomes are tracked quite regularly and have been for some time.

 

Besides basic school fees, many students also have to cover other costs. The rate of borrowing for living expenses is a major issue, Johnstone said. Determining what a student actually requires for living during their time at a university is a task that can be deemed as more of a sociological issue riddled with variables. This does not help when the living expenses are higher than the tuition fees, as in the U.K. The cost of living at any given British university can be up to £ 8,500 per academic school year, according to the British Council. Students from lower incomes will often incur a consumer debt alongside their student loan debt, though the former tends to be a less forgiving dilemma in the current loan repayment framework.

 

One individual who views the U.K. system as a proper model for the Czech Republic is Petr Matějů, head of the department of analysis and strategy at the Ministry of Education. “The situation in the U.K. has proved that with the implementation of tuition fees there was not a drain on students interested in a university degree. The fact that tuition fees are not paid until the student leaves the university is freeing the students from their family situation [at the time they are studying],” Matějů explained. “In the U.K., the situation is developing well, the system has been settling. … It didn’t shake society and, thanks to the system, universities have been receiving more money; the responsibility of both sides [students and universities] has increased as the students borrow money from their future wages.”

 

So when all’s said and done, plenty of experts end up reiterating what the U.K.’s Blair stated in 2004: there is no “pain-free” way to maintain quality in the system of higher education while extending the opportunity to everyone—someone has to pay for it.