ABSTRACT
An analysis of the sources of public and private financing serves as a good framework for understanding how universities differed in their pattern of absorbing enlarged student bodies. The tuition fees paid by Japanese students decreased the load on the public purse at both public and private universities. In Japan private entrepreneurs could start new institutions on a shoestring, paying professors low salaries and maintaining small libraries. The Germans were the only country reporting higher per capita spending for secondary than for tertiary students. Unlike American states, the Lander and cantons are precluded from giving admission or tuition level preferences to local as opposed to nonlocal students. In 1992 three out of five East German students could claim these grants, compared to only 18 percent of West German students. Swiss and German students are generally older when they start university than those in Japan and the United States.
