Funding of Higher Education in Austria in an International Comparison

The higher education system in Austria is underfunded when judged by the scope of its tasks, Austria's per-capita GPD and the level of funding in similar European countries (small, open and highly developed economies). Reaching the Austrian government's higher education funding target of 2 percent of GDP would require doubling current expenditure to € 8.2 billion. Such an increase in expenditure would indeed increase the quantity of research and teaching, taking into account inflation and rising student numbers. Yet it may not be enough to reach the level of Austria's peers. The 2 percent target should thus be seen as a lower ceiling of Austria's efforts to improve higher education funding. In order to really boost research and teaching, however, the critical factors are student numbers, which have increased markedly over the past five years, and how to share such increased funding between research and teaching. At 12 percent the share of funding from private sources is currently very low. If it were to reach the EU average of 21 percent this would reduce by € 3.5 billion the increase in public funding necessary to achieve the 2 percent target. If all of this increase of the private funding share is to be financed through tuition fees, these would have to amount to approximately € 1,300 per student and half-year.