Mexico – Higher Education Financing Project da cuenta de la implementación de un Proyecto del Banco Mundial en este país que buscaba introducir instrumentos de crédito a los estudiantes. El informe final señala cuáles han sido las principales lecciones aprendidas.
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Abstract: The lessons learned included: 1) The project yields a significant number of lessons learned for future higher education projects involving student loans. The high number of lessons learned is not a result of unsatisfactory design or implementation, but rather a result of two factors: (i) the project design was innovative and experimental; and (ii) implementation has been dynamic and guided by substantial monitoring and evaluation efforts; 2) Overall, this experience confirms the technical and political difficulties of setting up a successful student loan system; 3) Design of responsibilities and incentives are crucial for student loans given its long-term nature; 4) Risk and cost sharing with universities is crucial; 5) Continued public investment in student loans is required; 6) A public-private partnership in student loans is desirable but difficult when financial risks are uncertain; 7) Although student loan is a higher education policy instrument, it is also a financial instrument, and experience from the commercial banking sector is necessary; 8) Long term sustainability of the interest rate is important; 9) Long-term financing of student loans is required; 10) Attention to collection cannot be overestimated. Student loan systems in developing countries often fail to grow because of a large implicit subsidy, which in many cases is exaggerated and untargeted due to high defaults; 11) Fear of borrowing is a problem; and 12) Ensure the financial conditions of the assets and liabilities match.
Texto más detallado de “lecciones aprendidas”: ver abajo
Recursos asociados
Recientes publicaciones sobre finanaciamiento de la educación superior (OECD), 19 mayo 2007
Préstamos estudiantiles como instrumento de una estrategia de reforma de la educación superior, 24 marzo 2007
Conferencia sobre crédito educativo, 21 marzo 2007
Mercados universitarios: El nuevo escenario de la educación superior, 2007, libro de JJ. Brunner y D. Uribe
Crédito estudiantil: torre de babel, 15 enero 2006
Educación superior en Chile: Financiamiento de la demanda, 7 enero 2006
Guiar el Mercado. Informe sobre la Educación Superior en Chile, 2005, libro de JJ. Brunner, G. Elacqua, A. Tillett, Javiera Bonnefoy, Soledad González, Paula Pacheco y Felipe Salazar

Full Lessons Learned
The project yields a significant number of lessons learned for future higher education projects involving student loans. The high number of lessons learned is not a result of unsatisfactory design or implementation, but rather a result of two factors: (i) the project design was innovative and experimental; and (ii) implementation has been dynamic and guided by substantial monitoring and evaluation efforts.
Overall, this experience confirms the technical and political difficulties of setting up a successful student loan system. As identified at the onset of the project, the main challenge is financial sustainability, which is the precondition for scaling-up availability of loans. Efficient operation, effective collections and continued public support with strong accountability are the key instruments. However, the results are encouraging. This is the first student loan project that the Bank has financed in Latin America and the Caribbean that has been evaluated as Satisfactory. The previous two student loan projects in the region were all rated as unsatisfactory; those were in Jamaica (World Bank 1987a, 1987b, 1995a, 1996a, 1996b, 1997a, 1997b and 2002a) and Venezuela (World Bank 1992a, 1992b, and 2000).
Design of responsibilities and incentives are crucial for student loans given its long-term nature. The typical student loan contract between the lender, student and education institution lasts 13 years. Hence, unfortunate division of responsibilities and incentives takes considerable time to correct and often carries high costs. A careful design is therefore warranted.
Risk and cost sharing with universities is crucial. The SOFES model put the financial risk to a large extent on the universities and endowed the task of supervision to the same universities. This ensured a strong incentive for careful and continuous supervision of SOFES, which was lacking in the ICEES model (and many other public student loan systems). This risk and supervision sharing is good practice. Non-governmental universities have a strong incentive to develop a loan system, and they are willing to assume part of the financial risks of a loan system. This potential source of funds needs to be tapped to improve financial sustainability. Involving the universities in the loan delivery to the students equally allows: (i) cost-sharing in the sense that the university through its financial aid office bears part of the costs; (ii) data-sharing between the lender and the universities, which is necessary to ensure reliable and early information regarding academic progress and drop out; and (iii) better contact and higher service to the student. Nevertheless, as discussed below, adjustments to the SOFES model are recommendable to allow for efficiencies in collections and scaling-up. For example, universities are not banks. Therefore, they are not experienced managers of financial risk. Universities could be unwilling to partially or fully guarantee the student loans without retaining control over the lending and recovery processes.
Therefore, arguing that the financial risk should not be managed by the universities is a valid one.
Continued public investment in student loans is required. The ICEES system benefited substantially from the state government?s investment. Through the financial guarantee, SOFES benefited from support from the federal government.
However, SEP, the federal government?s responsible agency for higher education, could have played a role in the project. This could possibly have facilitated additional public-sector support to SOFES to ensure financial sustainability since in the Bank?s experience no large student loan system has been developed
in the world without public support. For instance, the student loan system in New Zealand has a 21 percent implicit subsidy. The US-government yearly subsidizes US$5,000 million to cover defaults, administrative costs and subsidized interest rates in its so-called direct student loan program.
A public-private partnership in student loans is desirable but difficult when financial risks are uncertain. The project experience indicates that non-governmental involvement in a student loan system, such as the SOFES model, leads to better performance than a purely public model, such as the ICEES model.
However, the non-governmental involvement can lead to a discussion of the necessary (and appropriate) level of public subsidy/financial risk taking. This level of subsidy is inherently difficult to assess given that the actual loss (default) of a student loan is only known after 10 to 15 years. In the absence of a market solution, where non-governmental entities compete on the basis of the lowest required public subsidy, which was not the case in the SOFES model, a negotiated agreement between the non-governmental entities (in this case SOFES universities) and the government is necessary. Negotiating such as an agreement requires a longterm focus on the common interest in a large-scale sustainable student loan system.
Although student loan is a higher education policy instrument, it is also a financial instrument, and experience from the commercial banking sector is necessary. An important difference between SOFES and ICEES was the involvement in SOFES of experience personal from the private commercial financial sector. At both the director level and at the board level, SOFES benefited from transfer of best practices, technology, and knowledge from the private financial sector.
Long term sustainability of the interest rate is important. The financial development of a student loan agency requires a sophisticated and long-term analysis of a sustainable interest rate on loans offered to students. The rate should be low enough for students to be able to repay, and high enough for the student loan agency to acquire new financing. The extent of an interest rate subsidy must match the commitment of the government to subsidize the system ? as in the State of Sonora where high levels of subsidy were supported by the State government.
Long-term financing of student loans is required. Despite a record performance and a 34-month extension of the project, SOFES faces difficulties obtaining new financing. The time span needed to achieve a track-record and financial predictability of a student loan system exceeds six to eight years. This limits the system?s ability to access the capital market without substantial backing from government guarantees. Therefore, Bank support to new student loans should therefore be longer term; for example, adaptable program lending or alternative
financing sources should be identified. For example, as the volume of student loans increase and the program develops, there is need for more sophisticated financial instruments, notably securitization. A long-term financial vision could include the development of a secondary student loan market.
Attention to collection cannot be overestimated. Student loan systems in developing countries often fail to grow because of a large implicit subsidy, which in many cases is exaggerated and untargeted due to high defaults.
Collection of student loans is to a degree different from consumer loans, because the borrower is young, often inexperienced, has an unstable income in the first years of repayment, has no collateral or other goods that can be re-assessed. Frequent information and contact to the borrower is therefore even more critical. Collections need to be resolute, efficient, fair and humane. To build such a collection mechanism, it is recommendable to:
— Ensure up-front political commitment to enforce collections. For ICEES, the planned actions to improve collections were instrumental in improving the performance of ICEES, but nevertheless insufficient to meet the component?s objective of financial sustainability. The design could have specified in more detail effective measures to improve collections and ensured a commitment of the institution and the state government to take such measures.
— Report loan status to national credit bureaus. This is one of the strongest collection instruments. It rewards good payment behavior and sanctions bad behavior. Importantly, borrowers should have the option of a deferment in repayments during economic hardship. A significant share of borrowers will experience difficulties repaying the loan at some time during the repayment phase.
— Rely upon a large-scale professional collection mechanism. In this project, there were large differences in the performance of the universities as collectors. Many specific collection policies, training, technology, and management strategies exist for efficient and effective collections. Universities should probably not be in charge of collection.
— Although, the university has a ?social? relationship with the borrowing student that can increase repayment, a professionalized collection is now recommended by SOFES. A professional collection mechanism could be achieved by either partially or fully outsourced collections to a collection agency (with due supervision), or develop a professional centralized collection capacity within SOFES.
Fear of borrowing is a problem. Students, in particular from low-and middle-income families, have limited experience with borrowing, and can fear borrowing leads to personal bankruptcy. This potential problem can gradually be reduced as the student loan agency becomes well-known and borrowing for education is better understood and accepted. The student loan product should be designed to help these students. This can involve combining scholarships, tuition discounts and loans, as was in the case of many SOFES institutions.
Student surveys identified a variable interest rate as a factor of increased uncertainty causing fear of borrowing among SOFES borrowers.
Ensure the financial conditions of the assets and liabilities match. In this project, the student loan agencies were responsible for repaying the loans. In other Bank loans, the state assumed the repayment responsibility. When the loan institution is in charge of repayment, asset and liability management becomes crucial. In this project, unforeseen factors delayed loan origination to students, which delayed repayments from students to SOFES.
However, the amortization schedule to BANOBRAS and the Bank remained unchanged. SOFES therefore, a relatively simple timing mismatch resulted in a temporary liquidity gap that could have jeopardized the financial stability of SOFES. This was solved by capital augmentation underwritten by SOFES shareholders and a limited sell back of loans to member universities. More attention should be devoted in the future to adjust World Bank disbursements, student repayments and the Borrower’s repayments when financing student loan programs. For example, the amortization schedule could be made dependent upon disbursement.