By international standards, American colleges charge high tuition, and students must often take out loans to cover the cost of their higher education. This has prompted many to wonder why the United States cannot copy the higher education policies of certain other rich countries, such as Finland, where students at public universities pay zero tuition thanks to a heavy government subsidy. This report compares the United States to 34 other developed countries, all members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and illustrates how these nations navigate the trade-offs between the various qualities policymakers and the public would like to see in their higher education system. While the analysis in this report cannot establish a causal relationship between these different qualities of higher education systems, the findings are consistent with a world in which government higher education regimes face budget constraints. While this report does not take a position on how countries should design their university systems, thinking about higher education policy in the context of the trade-offs illustrated in this report will help policymakers craft higher education systems that best reflect their priorities and their citizens' values.