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In my country, Uruguay, college education used to be completely free. That is unsustainable, so recently a new law passed, which makes all public university gr
by GFischer 14y ago
In my country, Uruguay, college education used to be completely free.
That is unsustainable, so recently a new law passed, which makes all public university graduates pay a special tax, which starts five years after graduation, and depends on the length of the career (4-year degrees pay less, 5-year degrees a bit more and so on).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Uruguay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Uruguay
Fortunately, college debt is not something people have to consider when enrolling their children. Sustaining them through university, however, is not cheap (and public university is structured in a way that makes working unfeasible).
Not everything is a bed of roses, however... it's constantly underfunded and goes on strike lots of times.
- pjscott 14y agoThat system sounds similar to the one proposed in the article, with a few differences in the way the incentives are structured: 1. If there's a single tax for everybody, then there's no incentive for this education monopoly to improve learning-per-dollar. Or per peso, I suppose, this being Uruguay. 2. As you mention, the lack of coverage for living costs is a problem. This disproportionately puts poorer families at a disadvantage. In a for-profit system, this is an obvious opportunity for an investor to get those students by offering a better deal. 3. If it applies to everybody who goes to college, then people from families wealthy enough to pay for college out of their pockets can't opt out of the tax. This would tend to subsidize poorer students. (I'm not unhappy about this last part.)