Les prêts contingents aux étudiants dans les pays de l'OCDE

Students Income Contingent Loans in OECD Countries. Investment in higher education is important for economic growth. Now, although most of European countries (including France) invest about 1 % of GDP in Higher Education, United State (and Canada) devote to it about 2.5 % of GDP (OCDE [2004]). We also point out that Higher Education spending tend to be more important in countries where a substantial part of the funding is private, originating from students and their families or from donations (alumnies) or enterprises. The difficulties in Higher Education funding that arose in some developed countries during the 90 s, combined with a persistent inequality of opportunities, have conducted some of them to implement reforms. Those reforms have in common some core characteristics that lean on Income Contingent Loans in compensation of the introduction of higher tuition fees. This note presents in details some of theses reforms introduced in United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. We also present the case of Sweden, where students loan schemes exist since long although access to Higher Education is totally free in this country.