Higher education matters. No longer the exclusive province of a small intellectual elite, it is a key element in national economic performance. A modern economy needs a high-quality university system, and needs to make it accessible to everyone who can benefit. But mass higher education is expensive, and competes for public funds with pensions and health care, to say nothing of nursery education and schools. How to pay for higher education has thus become a central issue.
This book tells the story of the UK debate, illustrating a head-on collision between the economic imperatives of student loans and regulated market forces and the political imperative of "free" higher education. It also tells the story of the partnership of an economist and a political professional. The first part of the book contains selected writing from the late 1980s about two key elements in the puzzle: the proper design of student loans (writing which was picked up and promptly implemented in other countries), and the roleof regulated market forces, an area which remains a political minefield in most countries. The book traces those twin elements through the 1990s and into the 2000s, culminating in important - and perhaps path-breaking - legislation in 2004. Both sets of policies are rooted in the economics of information, and thus have technical roots not ideological ones. The only ideological element (a major preoccupation of both authors) is to widen access to higher education.
The book offers lessons both about policy design and about the politics of reform of particular relevance to countries which have not yet addressed the issue, including many OECD countries, the more advanced post-communistreforming countries and, increasingly to middle-income developing countries. More generally, the policies are suitable for any country which has the administrative capacity to collect income tax.

Higher education matters. No longer the exclusive province of a small intellectual elite, it is a key element in national economic performance. A modern economy needs a high-quality university system, and needs to make it accessible to everyone who can benefit. But mass higher education is expensive, and competes for public funds with pensions and health care, to say nothing of nursery education and schools. How to pay for higher education has thus become a central issue.
This book tells the story of the UK debate, illustrating a head-on collision between the economic imperatives of student loans and regulated market forces and the political imperative of "free" higher education. It also tells the story of the partnership of an economist and a political professional. The first part of the book contains selected writing from the late 1980s about two key elements in the puzzle: the proper design of student loans (writing which was picked up and promptly implemented in other countries), and the roleof regulated market forces, an area which remains a political minefield in most countries. The book traces those twin elements through the 1990s and into the 2000s, culminating in important - and perhaps path-breaking - legislation in 2004. Both sets of policies are rooted in the economics of information, and thus have technical roots not ideological ones. The only ideological element (a major preoccupation of both authors) is to widen access to higher education.
The book offers lessons both about policy design and about the politics of reform of particular relevance to countries which have not yet addressed the issue, including many OECD countries, the more advanced post-communistreforming countries and, increasingly to middle-income developing countries. More generally, the policies are suitable for any country which has the administrative capacity to collect income tax.

Focusing on the importance of Martineau's contribution to the development of the early Victorian press, this book highlights the degree to which the public quarrel between her and Dickens in the mid-1850s represented larger fissures within nineteenth-century liberalism. It places Martineau and Dickens within the context of Anglo-American liberalism and demonstrates how these fissures were embedded within a transatlantic conversation over the role of the press in forming a public sphere essential to the development of a liberal society.

Reframes the long-standing critical narrative of the relationship between Harriet Martineau and Charles Dickens Demonstrates, through new readings of Martineau and Dickens's travel in and writing about the United States, how their encounters with the American public sphere were crucially formative in both writers' careers and in their shaping as journalists Places Martineau and Dickens within the context of Anglo-American liberalism, thereby expanding our reading of them beyond earlier schema framed in narrower terms of political economy Expands understandings of transatlantic literary exchange to offer a more comprehensive reading than those offered through an earlier critical focus simply on the issue of international copyright Focusing on the importance of Martineau's contribution to the development of the early Victorian press, this book highlights the degree to which the public quarrel between her and Dickens in the mid-1850s represented larger fissures within nineteenth-century liberalism. It places Martineau and Dickens within the context of Anglo-American liberalism and demonstrates how these fissures were embedded within a transatlantic conversation over the role of the press in forming a public sphere essential to the development of a liberal society.