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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Students services: rationale, costs and utilization

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description

Référence interne : 81007; The purpose of this paper is to explore student services from an economist's perspective and to clarify why universities become involved in providing these services, at which costs, and for the benefit of whom. Definition and classification of student services have to be offered and an explicit statement about the various reasons of their development has to be attempted. Then, the main task is to identify the costs of student services and to investigate how the burden of costs is shared by the various constituencies in the university. The patterns of finance varies a lot from one institution is a mix of the sources of funding, and no strict allocation of monies to a specific activity. In some cases, though, a fee-for-service system is applied. To complete the analysis, one has to get into the net benefits which occur on behalf of the student services. Because the set of students who pay for a given service is generally distinct from the set of students who use the service, a complex reaction of transfers can be seen between payers and users. The paper suggests some devices to give an account of these transfers. The preliminary results presented in the paper are mainly drawn from a limited number of case studies.