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AbstractAn individual's political attitudes have been documented as the most important predictor of acceptance of government measures against the COVID‐19 pandemic. Their effect, however, is somewhat unclear and cannot be reduced to one dimension. In this article, we test whether general attitudes toward policy instruments might, together with left–right orientation, authoritarianism, social liberalism, and attitudes to state intervention, explain attitudes to policy instruments used to combat COVID‐19. The predictiveness of models of attitudes toward three different types of policy instruments to address the COVID‐19 pandemic was tested using a study of Czech university students). We found that individuals' general attitudes toward policy instruments are best measured by posing direct survey questions. Structural equation modeling was used to estimate the independent effects of general attitudes toward three different types of policy instruments on attitudes toward specific policy instruments for combating COVID‐19. We found that an individuals' general tendency to prefer an information, regulatory, or economic instrument significantly affects their attitude toward specific policy solutions, even after controlling for political orientation. These results provide novel empirical evidence for the autonomy of policy instruments attitudes (APIA) theory. The general attitudes toward policy instrument types are reflected in individuals' attitudes toward specific policy instruments, such as those used to combat COVID‐19.

Renowned international experts in higher education financing have argued that, owing to large government deficits, tertiary education will not be able to open up and meet growing demand unless cost-sharing principles and efficient student financial aid programmes are introduced. Opponents of cost-sharing in higher education object that introducing tuition fees will raise inequality in access to higher education. Drawing on OECD data, and focusing on college expectations, the authors argue that the effects of ability, gender, and socio-economic background on college expectations are primarily shaped by the characteristics of secondary education systems, such as the degree of stratification and vocational specificity of secondary schools, while the principal characteristics of the tertiary education system, such as enrolment rates and the model of financing, play a much less important role. The results clearly show that, after controlling for the effects of secondary school system characteristics, cost-sharing, as such or by degree, does not affect the formation of college expectations by ability, gender, and socio-economic background as much as the selectivity of the secondary school system does.