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One of my favorite cultural artefacts from Europe is that "Oh you pay tuition? Sorry your grades weren't good enough" My university only charged you for retaki

by Swizec 3y ago

One of my favorite cultural artefacts from Europe is that "Oh you pay tuition? Sorry your grades weren't good enough" My university only charged you for retaking exams (after 3 tries) and for redoing a year, if you didn't make a baseline of credits. 1 re-do was free. You can re-take any class for free as long as you're enrolled. I used this to take classes from past years that I didn't pass. While I'm a bad example of using free schooling well, this is exactly the sort of thing taxes should pay for. If the world's richest country can't pay for schooling, ... edit: I also remember various professors explaining how paid tuition and good education are opposites. You can't have good education with high standards, if people expect a return on their investment (a degree). How can you look someone who paid $100k in the eye and say "Sorry, you do not meet the bar. No degree"?

chmod600 3y ago
Some zero-price schools in the US, like high schools, have essentially no standards at all. You can get a diploma even if nearly illiterate. Good schools with high standards can be delivered with or without paid tuition, and the same for bad schools with no standards.
harshreality 3y ago
That's true in the US, but probably to a lesser degree than in Europe. If you had good enough SATs, you can often get full scholarships to your state's public universities. Other states' schools as well, although to a lesser degree—it would be more selective, like scholarships for private schools, since public colleges obviously prefer to subsidize their own states' residents over others, given equal test scores.