For: top-up fees

Wikify: date=January 2008

Tuition means instruction or teaching. In American English, the term tuition is often used to refer to a fee charged for educational instruction; especially at a formal institution of learning or by a private tutor usually in the form of one-to-one tuition. This article uses the latter meaning of the term.

Tuition is charged by educational institutions in some countries to assist with funding of staff and faculty, course offerings, lab equipment, computer systems, libraries, facility upkeep and to provide a comfortable student learning experience.

Some methods students use to pay tuition include:

• Scholarships
• Bursaries
• Grants
• Parents' money
• Their own savings
• Government student loans
• Financial institution loans
• Educational institution loans
• Company funding

Most students who pay for tuition have fees that are greater than their savings. Thus, some students have to take part time jobs and/or take out loans. Those who take part time jobs worry about handling both the course load and working. Those who take out loans have to ensure they are able to repay or else risk bad credit ratings.

Students have private tuition for any one of a number of reasons:

• To improve grades
• To get into a particular school, college or university
• To assist with Special Needs
• To undertake corporate training for their company
• General improvement (adult learners)

Developed countries have adopted a dual scheme for education: while basic (i.e. high-school) education is supported by taxes rather than tuition, higher education is usually given for a fee or tuition.

History of tuition

In medieval Europe, the universities were institutions of Roman Catholic Church. As they mainly trained clergy, these universities did not have any need to exact tuition from the students. Their situation was comparable with the modern corporate universities and military academies. Later in protestant countries and in Russia, the main duty of the universities was the training of future civil servants. Again, it was not in the interest of the state to charge tuition, as this would have decreased the quality of civil servants. On the other hand, the number of students from lower-classes was usually kept in check by the expenses of living during the years of study, although as early as in the middle 19th century there were calls for limiting the university entrance by middle-class persons. However, a typical family could not afford educating a son, let alone a daughter, even if the education itself was free. A similar situation exists in many Third World countries, where the expenses of "free" school (e.g. food, books, school uniform) prevent a lot of children from attending even primary school.