The following topics on higher education in European countries, particularly former socialist countries, would be of special relevance to the conference:

a) Funding; including
• funding of higher education institutions - including incentives for encouraging quality as well as models of tuition fees and other forms of revenue supplementation
• financial support to students – student loans, grants, indirect forms of support (subsidies, etc.)
• fairness in sharing the costs among different bearers (private, public sources)

b) Equity; including equity in access and/or other economic dimensions of equity in funding

c) Efficiency; including
• internal efficiency (study efficiency, etc.)
• external efficiency (rates of return: social and private)
• models of institutional and national (or system) financial reforms to enhance efficiency

The committee is especially looking for papers that either: (1) deal with interrelationships among the two or three aforementioned three broad topics, preferably with international comparisons; or (2) represents case studies of either institutional or governmental policy reforms (for example introduction of tuition fees, etc.).