Comparing and contrasting the income-contingent student loans

A Goldsmith Public Lecture presented by Bruce Chapman and Gill Wyness. Hosted by the Research School of Economics.

About the Lecture

Australia introduced the world to income-contingent student financing in 1989, with England setting up a very similar system in 1998. While both countries saw significant expansion in university enrolments and improved access for disadvantaged students, both systems now face serious and distinct challenges.

This year’s Goldsmith lecture brings together two leading economists to examine those challenges and consider what each country’s system can learn from the other.

Emeritus Professor Bruce Chapman will address the Australian context, focusing on inequities in undergraduate field-of-study price relativities and the economics of university-set pricing for postgraduate students. Professor Gill Wyness will examine the English system, where tuition fee freezes have driven a university funding crisis compounded by widespread public concern over the fairness and generosity of the scheme.

About the presenter

Emeritus Professor Bruce Chapman

Bruce has been associated with RSE since 1984. A labour and education economist with a PhD from Yale University, he has authored about 250 papers across these and other fields. He was instrumental in designing the world’s first national income-contingent student loan in Australia in 1989 and has advised governments in about 15 countries on student loan reform.

Professor Gill Wyness

Gill is a Professor of Economics at University College London (UCL) and Deputy Director of the UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities (CEPEO), where she leads the tertiary research program. Her research focuses on the economics of higher education, with particular interest in inequality in university participation and attainment and the role of higher education finance. Her work has been published in the Journal of Labor Economics, Economics of Education Review, and the Oxford Review of Economic Policy. She is also a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) and a Research Associate at the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE.