Participation in higher education has never been greater, and governments around the world continue to invest huge sums of money in the sector, not least to encourage even more enrolment. Meanwhile, many countries are moving away from centralized, taxpayer-funded systems to more ‘marketized’ models. For these and other reasons, the intersection of economics and higher education has never been more apparent. Increasingly, economic principles are applied to analyses of education and education policy, as scholars and policymakers grapple with difficult questions, such as: how should the costs of higher education be shared between stakeholders? What are the ‘drivers’ of inequality in higher-education participation? And what is the appropriate role for government?