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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

How about looking at countries which actually have no tuition fees and learning by example, instead of guessing what might or might not happen? Scotland is the most obvious example, but if you want a larger one, Poland does not have any fees for higher education eiter. I know a few people who started from really poor families and went on to become doctors and engineers, mostly because education didn't cost them anything.

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In Poland there are public universities and private universities, and on both there are some paid courses. If you get good enough result at final high school exam you can study at public university on a free course. If not (or if you prefer to study at evenings and weekends) - you have to pay. Roughly 30-50% of students study for free. The stereotype is that free education is better (because the paid courses set bad incentives to teachers to let pass everybody, and because they will admit anybody who pays).

The effect is - in general kids from well-off families do better at school and don't have to work when they are 18 - so they study for free and get a degree that's worth more in labour market.

Others pay for studies and often have to work during the day, and study at evenings/weekends, and in the end they get a degree that's "second class".

IMHO it's still a better system than USA (I'm not familiar with UK system so can't compare), because the competition for students means that universities can't charge outrageous prices like in USA. Almost everybody can afford university in Poland. But it's not the ideal system some people think it is.

Also the primary and middle school is important. In Poland the default for every kid is to go to university, and teachers teach basing on that assumption.

Russia: reasonably accessible tuition fees with free education easily available based on entrance exam scores. Compulsory military service as a main motivation for degrees for males.

High graduation rate, but _horrible_ education quality exactly because of these factors. Judging by my personal experience, a CS graduate from any not first-rate (and there's about 5 of truly first-rate places left) Russian uni/college is, on average, significantly worse than a self-taught programmer.

Also, incredibly high corruption: professors extorting bribes at exams (not just accepting bribes from low-perfoming students, but actually extorting bribes from students who would able pass tests otherwise) isn't something far out of the ordinary.

Also lots of jobs require higher education when they shouldn't as a result of this "education overabundance".

They don't actually turn you away if you don't have a degree, they just write is as a requirement in job description. But like a lit of other "requirements", it's never strictly enforced.

Austria: no tuition fees, terrible social mobility. Uneducated parents cause uneducated offspring.

Germany is very bad either. You have to take the decision if you want to go to university at the age of 10. In classes the children are discuraged to go that path, because "is very hard, and no time to play". Obviously, a lie, but very effective. It seems, children with academical parents will likely pursue that academical path, due to pressure but also the benefits. The others are required to support the professions for industry. This doesn't mean you don't make a ton of money, you can with the right entrepreneureal skills.

Tuition is actually not homogene, some german lands have it some not. But in the last years, they have been gradually reduced or removed ( in Bavaria for example).

Both Germany and Austria have higher intergenerational mobility than the UK (though that probably has very little to do with tuition).

> You have to take the decision if you want to go to university at the age of 10.

While I'm not a fan of Germany's tracking system, this really isn't true anymore. Leaving aside the fact that at least one state (Schleswig-Holstein) has pretty much killed tracking, your choice after fourth grade no longer locks you into one track. It's still pretty wasteful, but there's a lot of flexibility now (example: my niece is about to do her abitur after having already done an apprenticeship, and this was fully financed by the German government).

Ok, this is quite good news then. But Bayern might be quite slow in implementing such changes.

Regarding tuition, i've seen the tracking system more restrictive than having a tuition. You can always borrow money to pay a tuition, but if you choose wrongly ( or have really low scholar performance in the first 4 years of school), it is(was) pretty hard to access to the university.

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