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This paper provides an overview of the theoretical and empirical framework of the debate on widening participation in higher education and explores to what extent the lessons learnt in this field have been applied in the field of public policy. Widening participation is based on the assumption that the probability of entering and successfully completing higher education is contingent on a complex range of social, economic and cultural characteristics of potential students, and that the measures aimed at widening participation must acknowledge the multi-faceted nature of inequities in education. In this context, this paper analyses the extent to which international stakeholders in higher education acknowledge widening participation as a priority. Special attention is given to the question of whether their policy documents take into account the results and implications of empirical research in this field. Finally, the paper assesses the potential impact of these documents on the debate on this topic in Croatia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main proposition of this paper is that the Croatian legal framework for higher education fails to meet the criteria of the internal market of the EU. In the first part, the author draws a distinction between education as public good and education as service, and explains how EU law affects the regulatory autonomy of the Member States in the area of higher education. In the second part, the author analyses hitherto identified barriers to the exercise of market, freedoms created by national legal frameworks of higher education. The third part discusses the Croatian legal framework and tests it against EU standards. The author concludes that deficiencies of Croatian higher education law are partly caused by the ignorance of policy makers and partly by the structural weakness of the negotiating process, where chapters are negotiated independently from one another and focused on formal fulfillment of benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for the higher education process to be economically efficient, together with the need for equity and equality in access to higher education services for everyone represents the starting point of this paper. The analysis was conducted using data from a survey on a random sample of young people who recently finished their education using three criterion variables: completion of the study, study success, and the speed of study completion. These variables were chosen because all three individually and in total indicate the efficiency of the process of higher education, but taken together with the data about students and their form of study, other costs of study, family socio-economic background, and eligibility for indirect state financial assistance, also indicate the problems of equality in access to public higher education in Croatia. The obtained results show that the chances for completion of the study are primarily related to the socio-economic status of students. Completion is especially low for students from lower socio-economic strata who do not pay tuition fee, which suggests that the existing instruments of financial aid for non-academic costs are not sufficient for this group. The speed of study completion is primarily influenced by the costs students have to pay for tuition, lower socio-economic status of the students, and eligibility for financial aid conditioned by the dynamics of the study (scholarships). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]