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For what it's worth, Free College works pretty well in most of Europe.

• TomMarius 8y ago
  Does it? I got a chance to take a look inside and I'm no longer sure about it. Corruption is rampant (not in relation to academic results, but other things like employment, grants etc), favourism is flourishing, and huge amount of money is wasted instead of used to help the students. I personally blame the lack of monetary incentives. EDIT: What about having a discussion instead of just downvoting? I presented my observation and expected to talk about it, downvoting isn't helping anyone and my comment is on topic. EDIT2: Seems like some of you misunderstood me, probably my mistake, sorry about that. I'm not trying to convince anyone, I'm not trying to argue any point, I'm asking a question - to see if others' have similar experience or not. That's it, no claims to prove.
  • whyever 8y ago
    Are you saying all of this does not happen in paid colleges?
    • TomMarius 8y ago
      Not at all. Introducing a new reason for it to happen isn't going to help, though.
      • detaro 8y ago
        What is the new reason? I don't really have the impression that students paying fixes anything about the incentives for individuals in the system.
  • romwell 8y ago
    The problems you described aren't helped by making colleges not free. Specifically, > huge amount of money is wasted instead of used to help the students is arguably worse in the US - and it's the students' money.
  • simias 8y ago
    >EDIT: What about having a discussion instead of just downvoting? What about providing concrete examples and citations for your claims? How did you take a look inside exactly? What did you compare it to?
    • TomMarius 8y ago
      I did not compare it to anything. I was an IT employee at a faculty for a while. I can't cite since there isn't anything formal going on, it's just an observation and since I'm asking, I'm not going to support any argument, since I'm not arguing it's true - I'm just asking others if they have similar observations or not.
  • Y_Y 8y ago
    I don't think this is significantly different between European and American and universities. Your argument was probably downvoted because you didn't support your claim very well, and blaming everything on the invisible hand is not a popular dogma.
  • metafex 8y ago
    Can you specify which country or university your experience is based on? In my experience (Austria) there were issues sometimes, but nothing which would even by a long shot could be called "rampant". Here it is more of an issue that there is a lack of funding and not much political will to increase it. The amount of the GDP which goes to funding universities is lower than average recommended by the world bank [citation needed]. Edit: I couldn't find the recommendations but here is a chart by the world bank: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS The most recent data is from 2014 though, interesting nonetheless.
    • TomMarius 8y ago
      I'm Czech, living in Czechia. I'm not going to say more, sorry - I'm not trying to convince anyone about my story, I am trying to collect more data, see if other people have similar experiences.
      • metafex 8y ago
        Thank you, that gives more context! It is just anecdotal and a few years back, but last time I spoke to students in Prague they didn't bring it up as there being that big issues. Is this something that changed in the last years or has it been that way for longer?
        • Scea91 8y ago
          I am also Czech and do NOT have similar experience. I am very satisfied with the level of education I received and with the environment I was able to be part of at my university in Prague.
          • TomMarius 8y ago
            Are you sure? If you've attended any of the top 3 universities, you just were shielded from it; generally IT/math/science related faculties work well, it's the social-related faculties where it works really badly, but still, you won't see it as a student. I'm happy to tell you more in private.
  • dsr_ 8y ago
    Try linking to evidence rather than making widespread assertions. You have three claims here; can you find URLs to reputable sources to back each of them up?
  • DoreenMichele 8y ago
    Corruption is rampant (not in relation to academic results, but other things like employment, grants etc), favourism is flourishing, and huge amount of money is wasted instead of used to help the students. Sounds like SNAFU: Situation Normal -- All Fouled Up. Humans seem unable to escape favoritism, etc. The older I get, the less convinced I am that this is entirely bad. As I get healthier, I seem to get more "likeable." I find myself wondering exactly how much "I just like you" is actually some form of shorthand assessment. I don't know the answer. But I'm quite certain that where humans are involved, you can count on it being a morass. You can also count on some people objecting to something about it, even while others claim it is essentially perfect.
  • detaro 8y ago
    I don't have first-hand experience with US colleges, but you hear complaints about the same issues from there too. I'm not sure what about the power structure is actually different to dis-incentivize those, from what I see it's very similar? (I also wouldn't describe the places I've seen first-hand as strongly as you did, but those issues existed to some degree)
• whyever 8y ago
  After this beginning: > To millions of parents and students, they're magical words: free college. But is the idea pure fantasy? I had trouble to take the article seriously, given that it does not even mention the free colleges in other countries.
• sudoaza 8y ago
  And also in Latin America, at least in Argentina, in Chile they fuck you up with debt AFAIK
• MatthiasP 8y ago
  It works, but it is hardly the silver bullet for higher education HN wants it to be. The biggest problem is the lack of incentive for staff to deliver quality in teaching. Free college does not make the opportunity costs of bad and protracted education go away.
  • estomagordo 8y ago
    Why would American college staff be so hilariously bad, compared to European staff?
  • skh 8y ago
    I teach at a community college. Our funding per student has been declining for 15 years. We raise tuition as a result. We have become more like a business. We need students to pay the bills. Our focus is on passing students and retaining them. It’s all about passing rate. In such an environment standards go down. Instead of society and the ideal of knowledge being our client it is the student who is the client. I can no longer be a real teacher who gives real grades with real expectations. I need a job and this shift in focus is bad and degrades colleges.
    • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      >Our funding per student has been declining for 15 years. We raise tuition as a result. We have become more like a business I thought the Obama administration did a lot to fund community colleges. Was that just all posturing and no actual substance?
      • skh 8y ago
        There was talk of making community college free but that never passed. It would likely have been tied to success rate as defined by the Department of Education. One pernicious stat is that we are judged by graduation rate. This means a student who comes to us for two years and transfers to a 4 year university but does not formally get an AA is counted as a failure on our part. My experience is that most of the metrics used are useless but well intentioned and increasingly funding and whatnot are starting to get tied to these metrics. I'll optimize to satisfy whatever my employment is based on. In the old days we just taught our classes and pretty much everyone was expected to have high standards. Not anymore.
• replicatorblog 8y ago
  Can anyone go to these free colleges in Europe? One of the problems in the US is that we assume that anyone should be able to go to college, so you have a bunch of non-selective schools that allow 50-90% of applicants to matriculate as long as they're able to pay. As I understand the European systems, there are high-stakes tests that determine who gets to go to these colleges. Is that incorrect?
  • chimeracoder 8y ago
    > Can anyone go to these free colleges in Europe? One of the problems in the US is that we assume that anyone should be able to go to college, so you have a bunch of non-selective schools that allow 50-90% of applicants to matriculate as long as they're able to pay. As I understand the European systems, there are high-stakes tests that determine who gets to go to these colleges. Is that incorrect? That is correct. The US has one of the highest rates of higher education (of European countries, only Luxembourg has a higher percentage of working-age adults with a university degree). They're also heavily stratified by race, though this is something which isn't discussed much in Europe (because talking about race is somewhere between taboo and outright illegal[0]). In the US, by contrast, there's much less of a racial divide in rates at which higher degrees are awarded. [0] several countries have prohibited collection of meaningful data on race and ethnicity for public universities
  • detaro 8y ago
    In Germany: ~ 40% meet the requirements to go to any university (for a long time this was primarily through finishing the Gymnasium, the higher-level high-school path, but nowadays it's half and half this vs other paths, most of which end with a big set of exams and an overall grade from those) additional ~ 10% meet the requirements for a "university of applied sciences" Universities are allowed to set a grade limit from the exams for individual majors if they'd be oversubscribed otherwise, with some adjustment for time spent waiting for a spot and other criteria chosen by the university (activities outside school, existing experience, introduction letter, some invite candidates for interviews, ...). If there's a limit like that or not is really mixed. E.g. at the university I studied at, some CS-related majors were limited, others weren't, chemistry, physics and mathematics were unrestricted but "bio sciences" was restricted, ... Some university institutes allow fairly heavy oversubscription and "solve" the problem by hard required exams in the first year - good for people with bad school grades but skill in the field, annoying for those that misjudged their skills. Changing majors isn't as common as it was as far as I know, but still something that happens quite a bit, especially early on. Medical fields are a special case and centrally managed, so you don't apply to an individual university but to a central authority (and give them some preferences where you'd like to study), with again a lot of priority given to grades. Private universities where students pay for classes exist too, but they're a niche thing.