This study identifies recent trends in access to postsecondary education and government expenditure across countries and regions worldwide. It also examines gender and wealth-related inequality both within and between countries. Assessing wealth-related inequity is imperative because most countries have experienced greater internal disparities between rich and poor (Piketty, 2013/2014), making it challenging to balance the dual policy goals of access and equity set by many national governments. The data were drawn from cross-nationally comparable data by the UNESCO and international household survey programmes: DHS and MICS. Our analyses show postsecondary education systems in many countries enter a massification phase (Trow, 2006). For instance, China, Egypt, and India took less than two decades to leap from the elite to massification phase. Partly due to the expansion, government spending on postsecondary education has grown in three-quarters of the countries. However, even in countries with an increase in government funding, the rapid growth in student numbers has led to a lower per-student allocation in two-thirds of the countries. Moreover, worldwide there is an increasing reliance on private spending by students and their families and by private entities, leading to a decreasing share of government funding in tertiary education expenditure. While certain countries (e.g. Colombia, France and Sweden) have managed to improve both access and equity, many others (e.g. Bolivia, Cameroon and Nigeria) have expanded access with deterioration of equity. Socioeconomic factors (e.g. household wealth) remain the key in affecting individuals’ chances of attending universities or colleges. The disparity in opportunities between the richest and the poorest is enormous. In one-third of the countries, the access rate for the richest quintile households is over 20 times higher than that for the poorest quintiles Our study also shows inequalities formed prior to postsecondary education. By examining the concentration index at each transition point from primary to postsecondary education, three distinct patterns have been identified. In countries, including Bhutan, Iraq and Pakistan, by the end of primary education, the level of wealth-related inequality is already three-quarters of that observed at postsecondary education. By contrast, countries in Central Eastern Europe demonstrate another pattern: wealth-related inequalities start to form significantly at postsecondary education. Finally, a noticeable pattern is observed in Cambodia, Laos and Malawi, where wealth-related inequities are generated continually during the whole education cycle. From the cycle-wide perspective, the study discusses key policy implications when inequalities in access to postsecondary education are to be tackled.

European Commission (2014). Do changes in cost-sharing have an impact on the behaviour of students and higher education institutions? Evidence from nine case studies. Volume I: Comparative Report. Retrieved from: http://ec.europa.eu/education/library/study/2014/cost-sharing/comparative-report_en.pdf doi: 10.2766/74065 Koucký, J., & Bartušek, A. (2013). Access to a degree in Europe. Inequality in Tertiary Education Attainment. 1950-2011 (Working Paper). Education Policy Centre: Charles University in Prague. Retrieved from http://www.strediskovzdelavacipolitiky.info/ OECD (2008). Higher Education to 2030. Volume 1. Demography. Paris, France: Center for Salmi, J., & Bassett, R. M. (2014). The equity imperative in tertiary education: Promoting fairness and efficiency. International Review of Education, 60, 361–377. doi: 10.1007/s11159-013-9391-z Shavit, Y., Arum, R., & Gamoran, A. (Eds). (2007). Stratification in Higher Education. A Comparative Study. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Takyi-Amoako, E. (2008). Poverty reduction and gender parity in education. An alternative UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) (2015a). UIS Data Centre, Regional and Country Profile. UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) (2015b). UIS Data Centre. UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) (2015c). Incheon Declaration Education 2030: Towards inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all.