Down With the Choice? Policies and Politics of Managing University Degree Choice in OECD Countries

Policies that enable student choice often come in contrast with political discourses of efficiency that criticise certain degrees viewed as bringing less economic value. Yet policies that promote student choice, such as increasing marketisation of higher education, also have an efficiency rationale, the key idea being that students are better equipped to make decisions about their degree and university course choice than a central planner, leading to better outcomes in terms of efficiency or enjoyment. The dominating view regarding recent developments in OECD countries is that university funding systems now provide increasingly more opportunities for student choice. However, when it comes to one of the most crucial aspects of student choice – degree selection – the picture is more complicated. Using a novel dataset of financial aid policies and funding reforms in tertiary education in OECD countries from 1980 to 2020, this paper demonstrates that indeed, many systems of funding have become increasingly more accommodating of student choice over this period. Nevertheless, many systems remain quota-driven, either in the availability of university places or student support instruments, thus limiting the extent to which university students can freely choose their degrees. In more marketized systems with tuition fees, student choice can also be limited, as governments introduce tuition caps that incentivise choice of some degrees over others. Finally, in these marketized systems, policymakers resort to measures that encourage the choice of specific degrees, such as grants for students in STEM programs or loan forgiveness for teachers. Interestingly, both policies that limit and enhance choice have been promoted as responding to skill shortages. This paper contributes to our understanding of how education policies respond to skill shortages; as well as how the ‘efficiency’ narrative has led to distinctly different policies when it comes to allowing or enabling student choice.