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Factual evidence is a necessary precondition for efficient creation of any public policy, and education policies are not an exception. This paper portrays changes in participation, completion, duration and structure of fee regimes in Croatian tertiary education system, based upon the data collected by Croatian Central Bureau of Statistics. During the past two decades Croatian higher education system went through the greatest transformation in last fifty years. Considerable massification and commercialization of tertiary education ensued. Both processes reached their full pace well before adoption of the Bologna process, and are most visible in professional studies, and academic courses in business, economics and law faculties. Despite expansion of system and prolongation of average study duration, completion rate has somewhat increased during the past decade. Taken together, this was reflected as considerable increase in number of students and proportion of cohort that successfully completes tertiary education. Though, with about 40% of students failing to graduate, Croatia still lags behind majority of EU and OECD countries, both with regard to proportion of cohort which graduates and number of students who drop out of tertiary education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]