The History of Educational Funding: Models, Debates and Policies in an International Perspective (1800-2000) (2018-2023)

Convenors: Clémence Cardon-Quint (University of Bordeaux), Damiano Matasci (University of Lausanne), Johannes Westberg (Örebro University)

The History of Educational Funding SWG Annual Report 2022 is available here. 
The History of Educational Funding SWG Annual Report 2019 is available here.
The History of Educational Funding SWG Annual Report 2018 is available here.

Description and main objectives: Educational funding is vital for our understanding of mass schooling. As Brian Simon once noted, finance is “the life blood of any system that requires effective resources for healthy functioning.” An increasing number of researchers – both in history of education and in economic history – have consequently addressed various aspects of the economic and financial dimension of primary, secondary and tertiary education. Economic historians have investigated how variations and changes in educational expenditure have been linked to, for example, factors such as wealth inequality, political voice and fiscal capacity, social historians have explored systems of local funding, and historians and educationalist have also explored finance from a policy-perspective. Despite the immense contributions of these studies, there nevertheless remains a wide range of unanswered questions. These include the issues of school vouchers and centralized versus decentralized systems of funding on primary school level, and how the funding of secondary education (that in many countries at least used to be a privilege for those who could afford it) relates to primary school finance. On the tertiary level, we have the question of the funding of universities, and, not the least, the history of student loans that require further studies.The purpose of this SWG is to stimulate the growing research in the history of educational finance by bringing researchers of different disciplines and nationalities together. Thus, the SWG will foster a dialogue between quantitative and qualitative approaches, while promoting international comparative perspectives on education funding. One of our goals is to go beyond the comparison among limited territories of similar countries (“developing countries”, European and North American countries, BRICS etc.) to build a global comprehension of these phenomenon. One the one hand, we will try to use the comparative approach as a tool to better identify and analyze common trends; on the other hand, we will be attentive to the transnational circulation of different funding models, as well as to local receptions and appropriations according to specific political, economic or pedagogic settings. This would usefully extend the scope of the existing ISCHE SWG who are – currently – focused on pedagogical, philosophical or sociological issues but do not tackle directly the economic and financial stakes of educational structures.

For additional information and to become involved, please contact clemence.cardon-quint@u-bordeaux.fr, damiano.matasci@unil.ch, johannes.westberg@oru.se