Economics of Education Review
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while attending university. It is shown that in a constitutionally ''free for all'' higher education country, families spend
privately more than the state in order to prepare for the entrance examinations and while studying at the university. In
state. Evidently, the excess demand generated by
the zero price has created a number of problems, such
the order of h4000 per year, one of the lowest in the
estimated at h6000 per year.
Families and students bear two additional private
his/her socioeconomic characteristics, preparation for
university entry and expenditures incurred during study.
ARTICLE IN PRESS
The questionnai ...view middle of the document...
2-0.3.
r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
JEL classification: I22; I28
Keywords: Private tutoring; University finance; Greece
1. Introduction
According to article 16 of the Greek Constitution,
higher education is free and the responsibility of the
European Union (OECD, 2003). This is funded by the
general taxpayer, which of course includes the parents of
students. Another social and private cost, is the foregone
earnings of the student while studying, conservatively
addition, poorer families spend a higher share of their income on the education of their children. Private education
The real university cost in a '
George Psacharopoulosa,
aGreek Parliament, 5 Kaso bUniversity of Ioan
Received 10 October 200
Abstract
Using a sample of over 3000 first year university entran
preparation for the highly competitive higher education
24 (2005) 103-108
ee'' higher education country
eorge Papakonstantinoub
eet, 11364 Athens, Greece
Ioannina, Greece
cepted 21 January 2004
Greece, we investigate the time and expense incurred in
examinations, as well as what students spend privately
www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev
had enrolled for the first time in the Fall of 1999.
Table A-2 presents descriptive statistics of selected
variables used in the analysis to follow.
Nearly six out of every ten students entering
university are females, showing a continuing trend of
increasing female over male enrollment in higher
education. Parental schooling corresponds roughly to
the completion of secondary education (12 years).
Only 6 percent of the student body had attended a
private lyceum. The grade of the last year of lyceum that
was taken into account for admission to university, was
nearly 18 (out of a maximum of 20).
2. The competitiveness and inequity of university entrance
sions in the labor force as a whole reveals that farmers
are grossly underrepresented in the student body, while
ARTICLE IN PRESS
Table 1
Mean father's income by father's education
Educational
level
Income(h/
year)
Years of
schooling
Percent of
sample
Primary 11 830 6 16.2
Gymnasium 12 613 9 8.6
Lyceum 15 155 12 17.8
Higher
technical
14 241 14 16.1
1Using data more appropriate for this purpose, Magoula and
Psacharopoulos (1999) found that in 1993 that the returns to
non-university technical education were of the order of 6%.
Psacharopoulos and Tsamadias (2001) and Tsamadias (2002)
report returns to this level of education for 1997 of the order of
5%, a year when the interest on Bank deposits was nearly
double. 2In Greece, there is no differentiation whatsoever between
men and women regarding educational attainment or university
access.
G. Psacharopoulos, G. Papakonstantinou / Economics of Education Review 24 (2005) 103-108104
Fig. 1. The 1999 university entrance story.
The students in the sample took the higher education
entry examination in the Summer of 1999. As shown in
Fig. 1, in that year, there were nearly 180 000 candidates
applying for 35 000 university places. O...
