Dr. Bruce Johnstone’s Invited Presentations at the 12th Annual Beijing Forum and International Forum on the Economics of Education in China

Dr. Bruce Johnstone was invited to speak in November 2012 at the 12th Annual Beijing Forum, an international conference approved by the Ministry of Education and sponsored by the Beijing Municipal Government, Peking University, and the Korea Foundation. The overall theme was The Harmony of Civilizations and Prosperity for All. I addressed the panel entitled: Improve Education in the Changing World Economy: Quality, Equity, and Efficiency. Dr. Johnstone’s paper was entitled Financial Austerity and the Prospect of Profound Change in Higher Education.

2012 Annual Conference of the Chinese Society for Economics of Education

Immediately after, and in conjunction with, the Beijing Forum and the Annual Conference of the Chinese Society for Economics of Education, Dr. Johnstone presented another paper at the International Forum on the Economics of Education. This paper was entitled The Politics of Higher Education: Common Misunderstandings about the Financing of Higher Education and was published (in Chinese) in Peking University Education Review, Vol. II, No. 2, 2013. Among the ten propositions that Dr. Johnstone labelled as misunderstandings were, for examples:

• High public sector tuition fees (e.g., in the range of 30 to 50 percent of instructional costs) reflects a prevailing political/ideological assumption that most of the benefits of higher education are private. Similarly, low or no tuition fees reflects the view that the benefits are predominantly social, or public; or
• If a country is persuaded that public sector tuition fees are financially necessary (whether up-front or deferred) and that student loans must be offered (whether to cover tuition fees and the costs of student living or both), the loans should be repayable as a percentage of future earning rather than repayable on a fixed schedule of payments, like a mortgage or a conventional consumer loan.