8 ms·

I truly don't understand the USA sometimes. Don't you guys know that in Europe higher education is free? Well where I'm from there was a very low nominal cost b

by lz400 9y ago

I truly don't understand the USA sometimes. Don't you guys know that in Europe higher education is free? Well where I'm from there was a very low nominal cost but my father was a public servant so cost was waived, I literally studied CS for 0 cost. And these countries are able to afford it all! Magic! I don't understand how people in USA are not aware of this and literally rioting in the streets. At the very least swing public opinion and voting. Don't even start talking about the we are americans we don't like taxes BS, you really think being a young adult with a 200K student loan and a $6K deductible for healthcare insurance is better than an extra ~5-10% of tax? It's truly mind boggling.

malandrew 9y ago
> Don't you guys know that in Europe higher education is free? Nothing is free. Someone is paying for it.
- lz400 9y ago
  Yes, the state via taxes, where incentives are (or at least have a possibility to be aligned with) quality, equality and cost efficiency, not profit.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
muninn_ 9y ago
What is really mind-boggling is your comment. First, education is not, in any way, shape or form, free. You pay for it in taxes. Period. This isn't a pro/anti tax argument, but it's necessary to say. Second, you can also study CS for free in the United States or at a heavy scholarship. Large state schools subsidize a lot of engineers in their educational pursuit so long as you achieve good grades, or score well on entrance exams. The primary issue we're facing is that we, as a society, decided that in order to obtain an ok-paying job you must attend a university, even when the skills for the job have nothing to do with your education aside from genera knowledge increase. Because of this fact, and the large number of students seeking entrance to university (to get a job) we find that we have far too many students who want to attend college who should not be attending college and they get funneled into degree programs that, while valuable, are not valuable for work. The students that have exceptional need, or exceptional skill, are almost always given a full tuition scholarship so long as they make good grades. Furthermore, by any measure that matters, the universities in the United States are the best in the world, bar none. So the competition to attend, places further pressure on those seeking degrees that do not immediately translate into a high paying job. We've made a mistake, as a society, by emphasizing "go to college" over "go to trade school". The rest of your tax argument is based on not much. Paying high taxes is not indicative of anything. In many cases (in my opinion) government does a great job with services. Areas like healthcare are a prime candidate for government take over, but university education is a far more complicated situation. As somebody else mentioned, most student loans are for under $20,000. And a $6,000 deductible? Idk. I have a great healthcare plan where I don't pay much out of pocket. There is a good podcast about the cost of healthcare but I can't recal the name. But basically, the US spends far more than any country whether you consider it as a nationalized system or a free market system. It's far more complicated than a simple "pay $5,000 more in taxes" argument.
- AndrewUnmuted 9y ago
  The podcast you're thinking of may be Dan Carlin's Common Sense, he recently did an episode on USA health care, where he touches on precisely the same points you mention.
  - muninn_ 9y ago
    Yes that was it. I can't vouch for the accuracy of his claims, but it was interesting to hear his discussion on the topic.
- Daishiman 9y ago
  > Furthermore, by any measure that matters, the universities in the United States are the best in the world, bar none. So the competition to attend, places further pressure on those seeking degrees that do not immediately translate into a high paying job. We've made a mistake, as a society, by emphasizing "go to college" over "go to trade school". Maybe a very tiny minority of the top schools, but in my experience as a CS graduate from another country, I have not really found the skills taught to graduates outside of the small circle of Ivy Leagues and top-tier unis to be anything particuarly extraordinary. Grade inflation and the American bias of universities as research institutions where quality is measured by the number of papers and impact factor does not favor other educational systems where most of the research is done in specialized institutions where undergrads are not being taught. When you get to make up the rankings, it's generally no surprise that the rankings favor you.
  - WillPostForFood 9y ago
    ~40% of the top 100 schools are in the US, as ranked by a non US entity. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2017/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin...
    - NLips 9y ago
      38 are in western Europe, which has a similar population to the US. And many of those universities are much less open to foreign students (due to language barriers, not necessarily selection).
axaxs 9y ago
I understand your sentiment, but realize even if we wanted to, swinging anything to government subsidy would tax us to death. Our healthcare AND university prices are ridiculous by any standards. You can't switch that to government controlled overnight. Where do you even start? Prices HAVE to come way down before the conversation happens, and those profiting ensure those conversations never happen. To put another way, let's take a doctor. He can make a huge salary, but also has a huge student loan debt to pay off (potentially high 6 figure). You can't just slash their salaries and stick them with that education bill. And you can't slash education prices as long as they're more or less private. These two go hand in hand and are going to continue to plague us in costs.
- lz400 9y ago
  Certainly not overnight but you can start somewhere. Look, it works in most of the first world. Many comments are trying so hard to convince us that "in America is different" from their armchairs. It's like people try to convince themselves it's impossible. I truly think both for education and healthcare (both a disaster in the world's first economy vs the rest of the first world) if because those systems in the US are for-profit. These are examples of things that should be government run. How do you get there? Well, I won't say it's not hard especially with how politics are nowadays. But it has to be possible.
  - axaxs 9y ago
    Your last couple sentences sum it up nicely. Anything is possible, but not in our political climate. The two sides think of each other as mentally ill, and are to the point of violence. I hope it calms down, but in my lifetime it's only gotten worse. That needs to be fixed before we can get anything good for the nation done.
    - lz400 9y ago
      The best starting point is for people to agree that student loans are way past stupid at this point and a solution is needed and other countries seem to be doing well with gov run education. If everyone thought like that, things would probably follow. Politics are reactive, not proactive.
labster 9y ago
We're too busy rioting in the streets over the collusion of our President with the Russian Federation to worry about rioting over billions in college debt. The real answer to me is that a lot of people hear "free college for everyone", and decide that this doesn't make sense because there's no way they themselves could have succeeded in college. Extrapolate from that, and most people can't attend college. So if it's a program that only benefits the few, it's evil socialism, and it will just make the government bigger while me and my children get nothing out of it. Now pretty much every step of that logic is faulty, but I believe it's what people mean when they say "we can't afford to send everyone to college for free". Where the reality is, we really can't afford not to send everyone for free in an information economy.
andrestan 9y ago
This is a gross oversimplification of a much more complicated issue. Even if this was all affordable, it doesn't take into account any second order effects. For example, European GDP per capita is typically ~75% that of the US GDP per capita. Have you ever considered the possibility that the tax regimes of European economies might be a contributing factor to this? Or have you considered what differences in attendance look like? For example the US has significantly higher than OECD average for tertiary education achievement (https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-education.htm https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-educat...) Now, imagine what our achievement would look like without any cost for the education. Further, consider this doesn't take into account graduation rates. It may very well be the case that US graduation rates are lower than European rates implying even larger costs in the US. What about the effects of such policies on quality? The US is typically seen as having excellent higher education quality. Would a regime under which higher education becomes free require wage freezes for professors? Increases in class size? Decreases in extra-curricular support? What about the many Euro countries that offer free higher education but to a much smaller sample of the population by making it extremely restrictive (i.e. Germany)? What's mind boggling is that anyone could ignore the massive tradeoffs of such a widespread and costly project as free higher education in the US and simply refer to it as "magic".
- thatfrenchguy 9y ago
  France offers admission to most normal universities without any exam or grade evaluating and a 300€ tuition per year.
  - andrestan 9y ago
    Is this Slate article incorrect: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/dispatches_from_the_welfare_state/2014/02/higher_education_in_france_lots_of_testing_lots_of_planning_not_lots_of.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/dispatches_from_the_w... ?
lr4444lr 9y ago
Free for everybody, regardless of ability, who wants it, and in any course of study?
- lz400 9y ago
  When I studied you had to pass an exam. Certain subjects had a very high bar. For example civil engineering. Can't get it without top grades and top results in the exam. Apart from that, some degrees had very low acceptance scores and many people tended to study some humanities or economics degree that largely won't use afterwards, just for the social pressure of being an uni graduate. It's arguably how much you want to subsidize these people and how good that is for society, I'd agree trade schools and other paths should be encouraged and there's too much silly status attached to an uni degree. Still, overall, the system works in pretty much every first world country.
  - lr4444lr 9y ago
    All of which are worthy considerations in making a judgment on the "better" system. I was just making an important qualification: the U.S. system has wider opportunities for pretty much anyone to attend somewhere and study anything. Now I will be the first to say that the sheer numbers attending universities in the U.S. beggar belief that they many or all of the increased enrollment allow the schools to maintain the same standards. But the point remains that our access may in fact be better than in "free" European countries.
    - lz400 9y ago
      I don't think that's true. Can anyone become a doctor? Where I studied as long as you passed the entrance bar, you can. In big cities there are usually several public universities, some more prestigious perhaps, with a low score you can probably get into the less prestigious ones but you can be a doctor at close to 0 cost. I don't think you can become a doctor in the US without incurring serious debt for example?
      - lr4444lr 9y ago
Teknoman117 9y ago
I don't understand why the cost of higher education has gone up so much. My grandparents paid for college via a job they only held in the summer and my parents paid for college working part time during the school year and full time in the summer - both of those jobs paying a little better than minimum wage. Yet I'm looking at 5 years of debt with a tech industry salary. Having to paying for higher education wouldn't even be such a problem if it still cost what it did when my parents attended. Although, maybe this whole thing is that the military budget has gone up by 80% since my grandparents attended college and education spending by the federal government has gone down 10 times. Also with the fact that there are five times as many Americans attending college than when my grandparents did, I definitely agree it's time we sat down as a nation and discussed whether we as a nation should pay for our children to be educated to the level necessary to excel in the modern economy. I don't think the tax hike would even be that extreme. The reason tuition is what it costs right now is that it pays for the people who are getting free rides for various reasons. We got a letter from University of California once that among other things stated that only about 40% of tuition for someone who is paying to attend actually goes to education that student, the other 60% goes to paying for people the UC gave grants and scholarships to. [Warning - Napkin Math] If it actually cost something like $10k per year per american college student, of which there are 20.5 million students attending both public and private universities, we would need something like an addition $210 billion in tax revenue per year, or an addition 6.4% revenue. So your 25% federal tax bracket would turn into 26.6%. That's not all that much when you think about it. Or, the government renegotiates their military contracts to stop being price-gouged in order lower the defense budget. Then use the savings to help fund education...
- jellicle 9y ago
  Universities are doing price discrimination. They want to charge rich kids a lot, middle class kids something, and poor kids nothing. That requires a high sticker price for the tuition, plus discounts. It's hardly a perfect system but the basic idea is not unreasonable. And remember, if one pumps money into the system from the government side (which, IMHO, should happen) the counterintuitive result is that rich kids are likely to be the first ones to benefit.
mcguire 9y ago
Out of curiosity, what are the requirements for getting into a university there? http://www.businessinsider.com/how-do-european-countries-afford-free-college-2015-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-do-european-countries-aff... "For all countries, with the exception of Finland, the US has a much higher percentage of students who have enrolled in post-high school education."
- ams6110 9y ago
  Thanks to easily available student loans -- you can be sure that "educational" institutions will spring up ready and willing to accept any "student"
- majewsky 9y ago
  I can't speak for Finland, but here in Germany, you need Hochschulreife (university entrance qualification) to attend a university. There are two basic ways to get there, depending on which type of secondary schooling you attended. After typically attending primary school for four years [1] (age 6-10 or 7-11), there are three basic types of secondary schools: - The Hauptschule (general school) is five years long (for a total of nine years). This level of education traditionally [1] prepares for vocational training in the crafts, e.g. in construction or as a barber and so on. As far as I know, there is no way to get to university from here. - The Realschule (real school) is six years long (for a total of ten years). This level of education is traditionally [1] required for office staff. From this point, you can get to the Allgemeine Hochschulreife by completing vocational education in a profession of your choosing (typically 3 years), then attending school again for 1-2 years, which gives you the Fachhochschulreife (entrance qualification for universities of applied sciences). This is how my brothers got their degrees: They both went through Realschule, completed vocational training (one as a road builder, the other as a gauger), then got the Fachhochschulreife, applied to a university of applied sciences, and completed a 4-year curriculum to become certified civil engineers. - The Gymnasium is eight or nine years long (for a total of 12-13 years). Successful completion gives you the Allgemeine Hochschulreife (general university entrance qualification) which allows you to enroll at any university in Germany. This is how I did it. The only barrier that might exist is a Numerus Clausus: If courses are in higher demand than what universities can muster, they can restrict entry to students with a grade higher than a certain threshold. (The grade is the one on the entrance qualification.) In my case (I studied physics and computer science in Dresden), this didn't apply: All I had to do was to fill out a form with my name, address and desired major and hand it in before a certain deadline. Also, there is a small tuition fee of around 250 euros per semester. Of this, about 180 euros pay for my subsidized public transit ticket. About 60 euros go to the Studentenwerk (student services), which operates the university's canteens and offers counseling. The remaining change goes to the student's council. [1] The fine print for all of these descriptions: The education system is in constant upheaval in Germany. Every politician or focus group has their own opinion on how the system should be. Therefore, there's not just 3 forms of secondary school. More like 30 or 40 (over all 16 member states of the Federal Republic of Germany). Secondly, there's a similar trend in Germany than in the US or elsewhere to put less and less value on the shorter tiers of secondary school. More and more roles that used to be Realschule plus vocational education now require a degree. And more and more vocational trainings that used to require Hauptschule now require Realschule. Whereas, a few decades ago, maybe 10% of pupils attended Gymnasium (and went on to university), nowadays it's more like 50-60%.
hourislate 9y ago
The reason school is so expensive is because of the sports programs. You have football coaches that are earning 3 million a year. You will have 100's of millions invested in football stadiums, basket ball, baseball, and all the supporting infrastructure. People wonder why they have to pay so much for tuition and extra fees. Somewhere along the line sports became more important than academia and drove the cost of a 4 year degree from a 15k to 100k. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-philip-l-yeagle/may-you-get-what-you-pay-_b_7503068.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-philip-l-yeagle/may-you-get...
- doyoulikeworms 9y ago
  Don't these sports programs also bring in money though?
smileysteve 9y ago
> Don't you guys know that in Europe higher education is free In SOME countries in europe, higher education is free. I've met plenty of Brits with student loans. They're still in Europe (and the eu for now)
- k-mcgrady 9y ago
  We have to pay in the UK, however everyone gets 'free' student loans to cover it. They cover tuition (£9k per year) and you have the choice of a 'maintenance loan' (basically to cover living costs) of £3-12k depending on whether you live in London or not. I think interest matches inflation, it is paid back via a tax straight out of your pay check but not until you are earning more than £25k per year. Also worth noting that tuition fees used to be about 1/3 what they are now but were raised around 2010. One of the talking points in the current election is how the opposition wants to get rid of them entirely.
  - blacktulip 9y ago
    The threshold is £21K. You repay 9% of anything above that. After 30 years the debt is written off no matter what.
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    I think the interest rate is currently RPI + 3%.
WillPostForFood 9y ago
You didn't pay for it, but it wasn't free. Everyone else paid for you.
- onion2k 9y ago
  And as everyone benefits from a better educated society that's how it should be.
  - WillPostForFood 9y ago
    That doesn't make it free. It does mean the poor, the hardworking, non-college educated working class pay for the more wealthy, more educated kids to go to college for free, while their own kids get to sit another generation out.
    - lz400 9y ago
      In theory the poor (should) pay less taxes. In practice, I'm telling you, in Europe taxes pay for free education and social equality is higher than in the US and access to education (and healthcare) much better.
      - WillPostForFood 9y ago
        Like the US, in Europe most of the poor don't go to college. While they pay less taxes, they do pay taxes, and that money pays for the upper class to get their education (not free, paid for by everyone else). The root of the social equality issues in the US are vastly far removed from "free college". It's the exact opposite - we need fewer marginal colleges, fewer for profit colleges, fewer marginal graduates, fewer drop outs, and more job training. If the US could take one lesson from European education, it would be a good system of tracking students into job training in high school.
        lz400 9y ago
        Depends on how you define poor but in Europe lower class families with no studies sending their children to become doctors or engineers is commonplace (without grants, students that are not super high achievers). In USA as far as I can see this is not true those families can't afford the cost and debt and even if the student could ends up with a huge debt for a large part of his life with no assistance and a worse social net. This is absolutely not the case in Europe. We are talking about people who want to get into college and can't afford it. Happens a lot more in the US.
e40 9y ago
I'm in the US and I understand perfectly: we have been manipulated for decades to be anti-intellectual, distrust the government and think taxation is theft. The result is Donald J Trump. Cutting off your nose to spite your face. Complete idiocy.
thatwebdude 9y ago
I truly understand your argument, but I'm becoming more under the impression that degreed education isn't necessary to nearly as many people as we think it is.
pascalxus 9y ago
The taxes in the US are very very high. Currently the Fed/state/local govs spend almost 1 in every 3 dollars of GDP. So, if you live in an urban area where things are more expensive, indirectly, almost half your paycheck ends up spent by the govt. More degrees inflating the job market, isn't going to increase productivity or magically make more jobs. And since there's already an oversupply of candidates, even more candidates won't make it much better. If you want to see what more degrees does to a country, take a quick look at China. There, the glut of degree holding candidates is so great, that migratory workers get paid more than college graduates!

by lz400 9y ago

malandrew 9y ago

> Don't you guys know that in Europe higher education is free? Nothing is free. Someone is paying for it.

lz400 9y ago
Yes, the state via taxes, where incentives are (or at least have a possibility to be aligned with) quality, equality and cost efficiency, not profit.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

muninn_ 9y ago

What is really mind-boggling is your comment. First, education is not, in any way, shape or form, free. You pay for it in taxes. Period. This isn't a pro/anti tax argument, but it's necessary to say. Second, you can also study CS for free in the United States or at a heavy scholarship. Large state schools subsidize a lot of engineers in their educational pursuit so long as you achieve good grades, or score well on entrance exams. The primary issue we're facing is that we, as a society, decided that in order to obtain an ok-paying job you must attend a university, even when the skills for the job have nothing to do with your education aside from genera knowledge increase. Because of this fact, and the large number of students seeking entrance to university (to get a job) we find that we have far too many students who want to attend college who should not be attending college and they get funneled into degree programs that, while valuable, are not valuable for work. The students that have exceptional need, or exceptional skill, are almost always given a full tuition scholarship so long as they make good grades. Furthermore, by any measure that matters, the universities in the United States are the best in the world, bar none. So the competition to attend, places further pressure on those seeking degrees that do not immediately translate into a high paying job. We've made a mistake, as a society, by emphasizing "go to college" over "go to trade school". The rest of your tax argument is based on not much. Paying high taxes is not indicative of anything. In many cases (in my opinion) government does a great job with services. Areas like healthcare are a prime candidate for government take over, but university education is a far more complicated situation. As somebody else mentioned, most student loans are for under $20,000. And a $6,000 deductible? Idk. I have a great healthcare plan where I don't pay much out of pocket. There is a good podcast about the cost of healthcare but I can't recal the name. But basically, the US spends far more than any country whether you consider it as a nationalized system or a free market system. It's far more complicated than a simple "pay $5,000 more in taxes" argument.

AndrewUnmuted 9y ago
The podcast you're thinking of may be Dan Carlin's Common Sense, he recently did an episode on USA health care, where he touches on precisely the same points you mention.
- muninn_ 9y ago
  Yes that was it. I can't vouch for the accuracy of his claims, but it was interesting to hear his discussion on the topic.
Daishiman 9y ago
> Furthermore, by any measure that matters, the universities in the United States are the best in the world, bar none. So the competition to attend, places further pressure on those seeking degrees that do not immediately translate into a high paying job. We've made a mistake, as a society, by emphasizing "go to college" over "go to trade school". Maybe a very tiny minority of the top schools, but in my experience as a CS graduate from another country, I have not really found the skills taught to graduates outside of the small circle of Ivy Leagues and top-tier unis to be anything particuarly extraordinary. Grade inflation and the American bias of universities as research institutions where quality is measured by the number of papers and impact factor does not favor other educational systems where most of the research is done in specialized institutions where undergrads are not being taught. When you get to make up the rankings, it's generally no surprise that the rankings favor you.
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  ~40% of the top 100 schools are in the US, as ranked by a non US entity. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2017/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin...
  - NLips 9y ago
    38 are in western Europe, which has a similar population to the US. And many of those universities are much less open to foreign students (due to language barriers, not necessarily selection).

axaxs 9y ago

I understand your sentiment, but realize even if we wanted to, swinging anything to government subsidy would tax us to death. Our healthcare AND university prices are ridiculous by any standards. You can't switch that to government controlled overnight. Where do you even start? Prices HAVE to come way down before the conversation happens, and those profiting ensure those conversations never happen. To put another way, let's take a doctor. He can make a huge salary, but also has a huge student loan debt to pay off (potentially high 6 figure). You can't just slash their salaries and stick them with that education bill. And you can't slash education prices as long as they're more or less private. These two go hand in hand and are going to continue to plague us in costs.

lz400 9y ago
Certainly not overnight but you can start somewhere. Look, it works in most of the first world. Many comments are trying so hard to convince us that "in America is different" from their armchairs. It's like people try to convince themselves it's impossible. I truly think both for education and healthcare (both a disaster in the world's first economy vs the rest of the first world) if because those systems in the US are for-profit. These are examples of things that should be government run. How do you get there? Well, I won't say it's not hard especially with how politics are nowadays. But it has to be possible.
- axaxs 9y ago
  Your last couple sentences sum it up nicely. Anything is possible, but not in our political climate. The two sides think of each other as mentally ill, and are to the point of violence. I hope it calms down, but in my lifetime it's only gotten worse. That needs to be fixed before we can get anything good for the nation done.
  - lz400 9y ago
    The best starting point is for people to agree that student loans are way past stupid at this point and a solution is needed and other countries seem to be doing well with gov run education. If everyone thought like that, things would probably follow. Politics are reactive, not proactive.

labster 9y ago

We're too busy rioting in the streets over the collusion of our President with the Russian Federation to worry about rioting over billions in college debt. The real answer to me is that a lot of people hear "free college for everyone", and decide that this doesn't make sense because there's no way they themselves could have succeeded in college. Extrapolate from that, and most people can't attend college. So if it's a program that only benefits the few, it's evil socialism, and it will just make the government bigger while me and my children get nothing out of it. Now pretty much every step of that logic is faulty, but I believe it's what people mean when they say "we can't afford to send everyone to college for free". Where the reality is, we really can't afford not to send everyone for free in an information economy.

andrestan 9y ago

This is a gross oversimplification of a much more complicated issue. Even if this was all affordable, it doesn't take into account any second order effects. For example, European GDP per capita is typically ~75% that of the US GDP per capita. Have you ever considered the possibility that the tax regimes of European economies might be a contributing factor to this? Or have you considered what differences in attendance look like? For example the US has significantly higher than OECD average for tertiary education achievement (https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-education.htm https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-educat...) Now, imagine what our achievement would look like without any cost for the education. Further, consider this doesn't take into account graduation rates. It may very well be the case that US graduation rates are lower than European rates implying even larger costs in the US. What about the effects of such policies on quality? The US is typically seen as having excellent higher education quality. Would a regime under which higher education becomes free require wage freezes for professors? Increases in class size? Decreases in extra-curricular support? What about the many Euro countries that offer free higher education but to a much smaller sample of the population by making it extremely restrictive (i.e. Germany)? What's mind boggling is that anyone could ignore the massive tradeoffs of such a widespread and costly project as free higher education in the US and simply refer to it as "magic".

thatfrenchguy 9y ago
France offers admission to most normal universities without any exam or grade evaluating and a 300€ tuition per year.
- andrestan 9y ago
  Is this Slate article incorrect: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/dispatches_from_the_welfare_state/2014/02/higher_education_in_france_lots_of_testing_lots_of_planning_not_lots_of.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/dispatches_from_the_w... ?

lr4444lr 9y ago

Free for everybody, regardless of ability, who wants it, and in any course of study?

lz400 9y ago
When I studied you had to pass an exam. Certain subjects had a very high bar. For example civil engineering. Can't get it without top grades and top results in the exam. Apart from that, some degrees had very low acceptance scores and many people tended to study some humanities or economics degree that largely won't use afterwards, just for the social pressure of being an uni graduate. It's arguably how much you want to subsidize these people and how good that is for society, I'd agree trade schools and other paths should be encouraged and there's too much silly status attached to an uni degree. Still, overall, the system works in pretty much every first world country.
- lr4444lr 9y ago
  All of which are worthy considerations in making a judgment on the "better" system. I was just making an important qualification: the U.S. system has wider opportunities for pretty much anyone to attend somewhere and study anything. Now I will be the first to say that the sheer numbers attending universities in the U.S. beggar belief that they many or all of the increased enrollment allow the schools to maintain the same standards. But the point remains that our access may in fact be better than in "free" European countries.
  - lz400 9y ago
    I don't think that's true. Can anyone become a doctor? Where I studied as long as you passed the entrance bar, you can. In big cities there are usually several public universities, some more prestigious perhaps, with a low score you can probably get into the less prestigious ones but you can be a doctor at close to 0 cost. I don't think you can become a doctor in the US without incurring serious debt for example?
    - lr4444lr 9y ago

Teknoman117 9y ago

I don't understand why the cost of higher education has gone up so much. My grandparents paid for college via a job they only held in the summer and my parents paid for college working part time during the school year and full time in the summer - both of those jobs paying a little better than minimum wage. Yet I'm looking at 5 years of debt with a tech industry salary. Having to paying for higher education wouldn't even be such a problem if it still cost what it did when my parents attended. Although, maybe this whole thing is that the military budget has gone up by 80% since my grandparents attended college and education spending by the federal government has gone down 10 times. Also with the fact that there are five times as many Americans attending college than when my grandparents did, I definitely agree it's time we sat down as a nation and discussed whether we as a nation should pay for our children to be educated to the level necessary to excel in the modern economy. I don't think the tax hike would even be that extreme. The reason tuition is what it costs right now is that it pays for the people who are getting free rides for various reasons. We got a letter from University of California once that among other things stated that only about 40% of tuition for someone who is paying to attend actually goes to education that student, the other 60% goes to paying for people the UC gave grants and scholarships to. [Warning - Napkin Math] If it actually cost something like $10k per year per american college student, of which there are 20.5 million students attending both public and private universities, we would need something like an addition $210 billion in tax revenue per year, or an addition 6.4% revenue. So your 25% federal tax bracket would turn into 26.6%. That's not all that much when you think about it. Or, the government renegotiates their military contracts to stop being price-gouged in order lower the defense budget. Then use the savings to help fund education...

jellicle 9y ago
Universities are doing price discrimination. They want to charge rich kids a lot, middle class kids something, and poor kids nothing. That requires a high sticker price for the tuition, plus discounts. It's hardly a perfect system but the basic idea is not unreasonable. And remember, if one pumps money into the system from the government side (which, IMHO, should happen) the counterintuitive result is that rich kids are likely to be the first ones to benefit.

mcguire 9y ago

Out of curiosity, what are the requirements for getting into a university there? http://www.businessinsider.com/how-do-european-countries-afford-free-college-2015-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-do-european-countries-aff... "For all countries, with the exception of Finland, the US has a much higher percentage of students who have enrolled in post-high school education."

ams6110 9y ago
Thanks to easily available student loans -- you can be sure that "educational" institutions will spring up ready and willing to accept any "student"
majewsky 9y ago
I can't speak for Finland, but here in Germany, you need Hochschulreife (university entrance qualification) to attend a university. There are two basic ways to get there, depending on which type of secondary schooling you attended. After typically attending primary school for four years [1] (age 6-10 or 7-11), there are three basic types of secondary schools: - The Hauptschule (general school) is five years long (for a total of nine years). This level of education traditionally [1] prepares for vocational training in the crafts, e.g. in construction or as a barber and so on. As far as I know, there is no way to get to university from here. - The Realschule (real school) is six years long (for a total of ten years). This level of education is traditionally [1] required for office staff. From this point, you can get to the Allgemeine Hochschulreife by completing vocational education in a profession of your choosing (typically 3 years), then attending school again for 1-2 years, which gives you the Fachhochschulreife (entrance qualification for universities of applied sciences). This is how my brothers got their degrees: They both went through Realschule, completed vocational training (one as a road builder, the other as a gauger), then got the Fachhochschulreife, applied to a university of applied sciences, and completed a 4-year curriculum to become certified civil engineers. - The Gymnasium is eight or nine years long (for a total of 12-13 years). Successful completion gives you the Allgemeine Hochschulreife (general university entrance qualification) which allows you to enroll at any university in Germany. This is how I did it. The only barrier that might exist is a Numerus Clausus: If courses are in higher demand than what universities can muster, they can restrict entry to students with a grade higher than a certain threshold. (The grade is the one on the entrance qualification.) In my case (I studied physics and computer science in Dresden), this didn't apply: All I had to do was to fill out a form with my name, address and desired major and hand it in before a certain deadline. Also, there is a small tuition fee of around 250 euros per semester. Of this, about 180 euros pay for my subsidized public transit ticket. About 60 euros go to the Studentenwerk (student services), which operates the university's canteens and offers counseling. The remaining change goes to the student's council. [1] The fine print for all of these descriptions: The education system is in constant upheaval in Germany. Every politician or focus group has their own opinion on how the system should be. Therefore, there's not just 3 forms of secondary school. More like 30 or 40 (over all 16 member states of the Federal Republic of Germany). Secondly, there's a similar trend in Germany than in the US or elsewhere to put less and less value on the shorter tiers of secondary school. More and more roles that used to be Realschule plus vocational education now require a degree. And more and more vocational trainings that used to require Hauptschule now require Realschule. Whereas, a few decades ago, maybe 10% of pupils attended Gymnasium (and went on to university), nowadays it's more like 50-60%.

hourislate 9y ago

The reason school is so expensive is because of the sports programs. You have football coaches that are earning 3 million a year. You will have 100's of millions invested in football stadiums, basket ball, baseball, and all the supporting infrastructure. People wonder why they have to pay so much for tuition and extra fees. Somewhere along the line sports became more important than academia and drove the cost of a 4 year degree from a 15k to 100k. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-philip-l-yeagle/may-you-get-what-you-pay-_b_7503068.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-philip-l-yeagle/may-you-get...

doyoulikeworms 9y ago
Don't these sports programs also bring in money though?

smileysteve 9y ago

> Don't you guys know that in Europe higher education is free In SOME countries in europe, higher education is free. I've met plenty of Brits with student loans. They're still in Europe (and the eu for now)

k-mcgrady 9y ago
We have to pay in the UK, however everyone gets 'free' student loans to cover it. They cover tuition (£9k per year) and you have the choice of a 'maintenance loan' (basically to cover living costs) of £3-12k depending on whether you live in London or not. I think interest matches inflation, it is paid back via a tax straight out of your pay check but not until you are earning more than £25k per year. Also worth noting that tuition fees used to be about 1/3 what they are now but were raised around 2010. One of the talking points in the current election is how the opposition wants to get rid of them entirely.
- blacktulip 9y ago
  The threshold is £21K. You repay 9% of anything above that. After 30 years the debt is written off no matter what.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  I think the interest rate is currently RPI + 3%.

WillPostForFood 9y ago

You didn't pay for it, but it wasn't free. Everyone else paid for you.

onion2k 9y ago
And as everyone benefits from a better educated society that's how it should be.
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  That doesn't make it free. It does mean the poor, the hardworking, non-college educated working class pay for the more wealthy, more educated kids to go to college for free, while their own kids get to sit another generation out.
  - lz400 9y ago
    In theory the poor (should) pay less taxes. In practice, I'm telling you, in Europe taxes pay for free education and social equality is higher than in the US and access to education (and healthcare) much better.
    - WillPostForFood 9y ago
      Like the US, in Europe most of the poor don't go to college. While they pay less taxes, they do pay taxes, and that money pays for the upper class to get their education (not free, paid for by everyone else). The root of the social equality issues in the US are vastly far removed from "free college". It's the exact opposite - we need fewer marginal colleges, fewer for profit colleges, fewer marginal graduates, fewer drop outs, and more job training. If the US could take one lesson from European education, it would be a good system of tracking students into job training in high school.
      - lz400 9y ago
        Depends on how you define poor but in Europe lower class families with no studies sending their children to become doctors or engineers is commonplace (without grants, students that are not super high achievers). In USA as far as I can see this is not true those families can't afford the cost and debt and even if the student could ends up with a huge debt for a large part of his life with no assistance and a worse social net. This is absolutely not the case in Europe. We are talking about people who want to get into college and can't afford it. Happens a lot more in the US.

e40 9y ago

I'm in the US and I understand perfectly: we have been manipulated for decades to be anti-intellectual, distrust the government and think taxation is theft. The result is Donald J Trump. Cutting off your nose to spite your face. Complete idiocy.

thatwebdude 9y ago

I truly understand your argument, but I'm becoming more under the impression that degreed education isn't necessary to nearly as many people as we think it is.

pascalxus 9y ago

The taxes in the US are very very high. Currently the Fed/state/local govs spend almost 1 in every 3 dollars of GDP. So, if you live in an urban area where things are more expensive, indirectly, almost half your paycheck ends up spent by the govt. More degrees inflating the job market, isn't going to increase productivity or magically make more jobs. And since there's already an oversupply of candidates, even more candidates won't make it much better. If you want to see what more degrees does to a country, take a quick look at China. There, the glut of degree holding candidates is so great, that migratory workers get paid more than college graduates!