Precios públicos universitarios en España: incidencia distributiva y simulación experimental de una estructura progresiva a partir de la experiencia italiana

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The spanish higher education system has introduced significant changes in its financing system in recent years, mainly through increases in public fees paid by students. These increases were made basically by following several permanence criteria, which differ depending on the autonomous region the university belongs to, as well as the area of knowledge of the Degree. However, in general terms, this increase is linear in terms of income, that is, all students pay the same public fees regardless of the income of their home/household of origin. The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact, in terms of equity, of the current system of public university fees (linear) on the income of Spanish households, and compare the results with the Italian system (progressive in the collection). In addition, we propose to simulate the results of applying a progressive structure similar to the Italian model for the Spanish case. The data used in this analysis come from the Household Budget Survey for the Spanish case, and its equivalent in Italy for the Italian case. The results turn out to be somewhat unexpected, with regards to the theoretical approach of each system: the Spanish system turns out to be more progressive than the Italian one. It can be observed in the simulations of alternative price policies, where an increase in prices proportional to the ability to pay is established (especially by copying the Italian system or reconsidering the situation of the Spanish system with vertical equity criteria) that they manage to give a great degree of progressiveness and redistribution to the system.