Financing Higher Education in Tunisia

This paper focuses on Tunisia, which like other developing countries, has allocated increasing levels of resources to education, particularly higher education, mainly through public funding over the past few decades. In 2005-2008, public expenditure on education amounted to around 7.4 percent of GDP, with 2 percent allocated to higher education. However, in the last few years, the budgetary constraints have increased, and are likely to remain so in the near future. These budgetary constraints exist within a context of rapidly increasing student enrollment, and the need to improve the quality of education to insure better employability of graduates. In light of this situation, public policy is obliged to define orientations and programs, improving quality and efficiency while reducing costs and resource wastage, to enhance access and equity. This paper is organized as follows: it begins with an assessment of public expenditure on higher education in Tunisia, with respect to its adequacy, efficiency and equity. Next, in section 2, we explore the challenges posed to financing by demographic evolution, the quality of education and private provision. Section 3 examines some financing reinforcement strategies, and analyzes feasible measures to raise private funding contributions. Section 4 provides some concluding remarks.