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IMHO, the problem, especially in the US, is that you pay the premium not for the knowledge but prestige and alumni access. Essentially, you pay for a bling. Edu

by dig1 3y ago

IMHO, the problem, especially in the US, is that you pay the premium not for the knowledge but prestige and alumni access. Essentially, you pay for a bling. Education should be freely accessible, and one of the best things that came from Eastern Bloc is a high-quality (free) education anyone could have, which means that I don't believe in that complex financing talk very much. For a start, take a small percentage of taxpayers' money that goes to the military and redirect it to education.

fabian2k 3y ago
Especially for prestige. And there isn't a way to make this cheaper as the exclusivity is part of it. I quite like the German system here, there isn't a large prestige difference between universities. Of course there are some that have a better reputation for some topics, but it's not so much that it would seriously affect your chances to get hired later. You can get a pretty good education for free, and there isn't as much effort and drama around applying for universities like in the US.
cracrecry 3y ago
>one of the best things that came from Eastern Bloc is a high-quality (free) education anyone could have. It was not free at all. It was payed with confiscatory taxes, total lack of freedom to choose anything(some guy will choose what you will do the rest of your life when you are a kid). People in charge made sure their children had the best education with schools that were only for the children of the people in the Party, or the people that lived in the big cities like Moscow, Leningrad, with internal passports that forbid people to move from second-class cities to first class, like in China today. Not to talk about the fact that over 30-40% of the "high quality education" material and time was actually indoctrination in Marxism like also remains in China today. By the way, in the Eastern Block something like 90% of the money went to internal repression(secret services and Police) and the military. Prestigious engineers could only work for the military. And no matter how much educated you were, they could make you lose your job if you did not behave and make you into a garbage collector. I know because I had family members that came from the Eastern Block. And in the rest of Europe, the education in cities like Prague or Warsaw, Budapest was way better before they became occupied.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
In the US, all the prestige undergraduate (bachelors degree. age 18 to 22) universities are cheap for kids of most families. If you are paying through the nose for a bachelor’s degree and not from a rich family, then that means you are getting bamboozled at a private school when you could have bought the same “prestige” at any number of cheaper state schools.

by dig1 3y ago

fabian2k 3y ago

Especially for prestige. And there isn't a way to make this cheaper as the exclusivity is part of it. I quite like the German system here, there isn't a large prestige difference between universities. Of course there are some that have a better reputation for some topics, but it's not so much that it would seriously affect your chances to get hired later. You can get a pretty good education for free, and there isn't as much effort and drama around applying for universities like in the US.

cracrecry 3y ago

>one of the best things that came from Eastern Bloc is a high-quality (free) education anyone could have. It was not free at all. It was payed with confiscatory taxes, total lack of freedom to choose anything(some guy will choose what you will do the rest of your life when you are a kid). People in charge made sure their children had the best education with schools that were only for the children of the people in the Party, or the people that lived in the big cities like Moscow, Leningrad, with internal passports that forbid people to move from second-class cities to first class, like in China today. Not to talk about the fact that over 30-40% of the "high quality education" material and time was actually indoctrination in Marxism like also remains in China today. By the way, in the Eastern Block something like 90% of the money went to internal repression(secret services and Police) and the military. Prestigious engineers could only work for the military. And no matter how much educated you were, they could make you lose your job if you did not behave and make you into a garbage collector. I know because I had family members that came from the Eastern Block. And in the rest of Europe, the education in cities like Prague or Warsaw, Budapest was way better before they became occupied.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

In the US, all the prestige undergraduate (bachelors degree. age 18 to 22) universities are cheap for kids of most families. If you are paying through the nose for a bachelor’s degree and not from a rich family, then that means you are getting bamboozled at a private school when you could have bought the same “prestige” at any number of cheaper state schools.