Determinants of households’ willingness to pay for public higher education in Dodoma Municipality, Tanzania

Abstract

The study assessed the extent to which parents’ socio-economic conditions and students’ education backgrounds influence households’  ability and willingness to pay (WTP) for public higher education in Dodoma municipality, Tanzania. The unit of analysis was the household  composed of at least one parent and one university student. Since the response to willingness to pay question was binary  demanding a “Yes” or “No” answer, we used probit model to examine more rigorously whether or not households were different  between the two lines of choices. The main finding was that, on average, parents were able and willing to pay 335,000 Tsh. per student  per annum. It was further found out that if user fee continued to be used as the policy option in the country, special attention needs to be  paid on parents’ education, income, marital status and family size. This is because this study showed that these factors significantly  conditioned households’ WTP in different directions.