Rethinking the Welfare State: The prospects for ... - e-Library

Rethinking the selfare state 186
conservatives concerned over increases in government expenditures, but this opposition
may well not be decisive if the programs are, in the long run, largely financially selfsustaining,
and to the extent that they are not, entail some reallocation of the already
substantial level of government subsidies to post-secondary education and research to
such a program.
Conclusions
Vouchers, as we argued above, are not a novel public policy instrument in the postsecondary
education context. For decades, governments in industrialized democracies
have funded public universities on the basis of their enrollment levels, but have only
accorded limited scope for these institutions to rely on student tuition to support program
quality. The voucher proposal that we canvassed in this chapter is meant to protect, and,
indeed, promote, access to universities by students from financially disadvantaged
families while simultaneously improving program quality. It does so by creating an
explicit demand-side voucher that would consist of two components: means-tested grants
for students from financially disadvantaged families and income-contingent loans for
tuition and related expenses for all students. Further, to promote institutional innovation,
differentiation, and quality we argue that institutions receiving these vouchers ought to
enjoy increased flexibility in relation to tuition pricing, and that barriers to entry by new
institutions be relaxed (subject to an appropriate ex ante certification regime and ex post
requirements for information dissemination). In tandem, we believe that these reforms are
likely to create a far more dynamic university system, while steadfastly protecting
accessibility goals.