This book analyzes the political economy of higher education finance across a range of OECD countries, exploring why some students pay extortionate tuition fees whilst for others their education is free.

Chapter 1. The Politics of Higher Education Tuition Fees and Subsidies.- Chapter 2. The Four Worlds of Students Finance - A Comparatives Descriptive Overview of Tuition Fees and Subsidies in 33 OECD-Countries.- Chapter 3 'Some Flesh to the Bones' - Illustrative Case Studies of Four Diverse Cases Over Seven Decades.- Chapter 4. What do Parties Want? - Parties' Positions and Issue Emphases on Tuition Fees and Subsidies.- Chapter 5. Testing the Time-Sensitive Partisan Theory in Large-n Analyses: Parties' Impact on the Tuition-Subsidy Regimes of 21 Democracies over Time.- Chapter 6. Individual-Level Attitudes towards Subsidies - How Positive Feedback Effects Prevent (Radical) Change in the Four Worlds of Student Finance.- Chapter 7. The Political Economy of Higher Education Tuition Fees and Subsidies: Conclusion and Outlook.

“Julian Garritzmann’s book provides a very important addition to the literature on higher education policy-making as well as higher education finance. His study is well grounded in contemporary approaches from political science, and the breadth as well as depth of his empirical analyses is impressive. His call for attention to political processes, system structures as well as political actors and their preferences in the study of higher education policy is timely and well argued.” (Jens Jungblut, European Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 7 (1), January, 2017)

“This book is a major contribution to our understanding of the politics of higher education. Combining quantitative and case-oriented evidence from a broad range of countries, Garritzmann demonstrates how partisan politics has shaped different aspects of educational spending and led to distinct paths toward the knowledge economy. It speaks to students of education and inequality across disciplines.” (Torben Iversen, Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University, USA) “This book represents an impressive contribution to an important body of recent literature focusing on education policy. It provides a systematic account of the politics behind tuition fees and education subsidies in OECD countries since 1945. It should be required reading to anyone interested in the political economy of industrialized democracies.” (David Rueda, Professor of Comparative Politics, Oxford University, UK) “In this impressive book, Julian Garritzmann analyzes the variety of student financing regimes in OECD democracies, showing that political conflicts about tuition fees and subsidies are at the core of these regimes, contributing to complex dynamics in the political economy of higher education. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods, Garritzmann disentangles these complexities and develops a compelling argument about the role of partisan politics in explaining the origins of student financing regimes. This book is an extremely important contribution to the growing political economy of education literature. It is a must-read for anybody interested in the future of HE finance.” (Marius Busemeyer, Professor of Political Science, University of Konstanz, Germany)

Examines critically the political economy of higher education finance Advances explanations as to why certain countries charge tuition fees whilst others do not Systematizes and examines the range of tuition-subsidy fee systems and posits that ‘Four Worlds of Student Finance’ exist