Variations in the level of endowment in different forms of capital: social, cultural and economic, may contribute to differences in higher education participation and a distribution of students between higher education institutions (HEIs). Students with various social identity perceive and react differently to financial incentives related to university enrollment (tuition fees, grants, loans etc.). Assuming that, the paper will assess an effectiveness of the policies of student support in Poland. Who actually benefits from them? Can financial instruments compensate for lack of different forms of capital by motivating underprivileged, yet qualified, potential students to enroll in HEIs? In other words: to what extent can the redistributive function of student support reduce inequalities? First, a theoretical model of choice will be developed for understanding and analysing the relationships between a) financial incentives, b) social, cultural and economic capital and c) student choice of type of institution. The model will then be used as a basis for empirical estimation of student choice in Poland. The study will employ already existing datasets with individual student data. Optimal educational choice in the model depends, inter alia, on both financial incentives and social identity (endowment in social and cultural capital). Factor analysis will be used to derive proxies for social, cultural and economic capital, and structural equation modeling to analyse the relationships. The study will be limited to Poland, which represents an interesting case. Although basically everyone who wishes to study can be enrolled, HEIs are highly diversified in terms of quality, prestige and costs of studying. Only half of the students are enrolled in non-tutition fee public HEIs. Privileged students tend to attend free of charge programmes at more prestigious public universities which provide a large proportion of state subsidized student support.
