Recommendation to Implement an Effective Tuition Fees System at Public

universities for students in order to gain funds for the tertiary educational sector

I. Executive Summary

For the last consecutive years Austrian public universities have been falling behind in international established rankings. The poor financial situation of the universities mainly caused the bad performance of the last year. For necessary measures and improvements was simply too little money available. Universities mainly get the funds from the Austrian Government, but due to various reasons, for instance the global crisis, the government had to implement austerity measures and couldn’t provide enough funds. This is not an optimal situation, by contrast, when Austria is not changing something the country will fall behind in the international competition and the long-term damage will be tremendous. As once the famous American President John F. Kennedy said: “There is only one thing in the long run more expensive than education: no education.“ Austria simple does not have the option to save here. However, intuitive the question comes up, how should Austria generate money for the universities? Especially in tuff times and times of economic crisis, everyone of the society has to contribute his share. Therefore, the only solution of the funding problem is to engage students more. Due to its entire package, which I am elaborating below, I am recommending the implementation of an effective tuition fee system at public universities in order to gain important additional funds to improve our educational level, in particular the tertiary educational sector.

II. Issue History

In the year 2007 the Austrian parliamentary parties agreed unanimously that till 2020 2% of the GDP are supposed to be spend in order to finance the higher educational sector and to improve the educational level. Furthermore, in the year 2008 the Austrian parliament renewed this decision and reinforced their plan. Unfortunately, the measures taken by the government haven’t been successful,...