APORTE FISCAL INDIRECTO: UNA PROPUESTA PARA SU MODERNIZACIóN

The Indirect Fiscal Contribution (AFI, for the Spanish acronym) was created in 1981 in order to improve the quality of higher education through the competence among institutions to recruit best students. Over time, this potential source of incentives has become weak, as today AFI only represents 3.5 per cent of the total fiscal contribution for higher education. Moreover, it shows several weaknesses in design. This work provides proposals to mainstream the AFI to make it an effective tool to promote equity, quality and efficiency of the higher education system. Among them, it highlights: to improve its relative weight as a funding source; to demand the beneficiary institutions to be accredited to receive it; to consider the secondary school graduation ranking to identify students generating the benefit; to reserve AFI places for technical careers; to correct the AFI value by the students SES and to pay it monthly to improve the retention and timely graduation of students.Keywords: higher education; public funding; Indirect Fiscal Contribution (AFI); university entry test (PSU).