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Comment by staticelf | Hacker News Reader

What about... offering college for free like the rest of the modern world?

Then you would only have to worry about living costs and those loans are pretty small. I could pay off mine in like 4-5 years if I really wanted to. Plus, then people still could get an education even if their parents didn't save up for you.

What about as a society/culture you start telling people that the country should offer education for free instead of not getting educated?

EDIT: For the butthurt americans, I don't mean that your country isn't modern and I understand that not every country even in europe offer free education. I just think a modern country should offer free education as they offer free roads to travel on.

It works great in every country that has it, why do you think the US would suffer if you started doing the same?

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That's still time opportunity cost for the student and merely shifts the financial burden.

I'm not against a liberal education for the betterment of the person, but it's not a sound investment.

We should not aim to make college free by means of government sponsorship, but rather education free or inexpensive by means of lowering the actual costs. As someone else said in this thread, certain kinds of knowledge are rather cheap to be had. Yet even so, degrees are pursued blindly by students, and hired blindly by employers.

Again, there's plenty of benefit to schooling. I liked taking classes with peers, including the non-major classes (for the most part). But throwing more money at the problem is the problem.

I think most of the comments on this topic ignore the fact that the U.S. really does have a mult-tier education system. The most cost efficient ones are state sponsored public universities, which are also the ones that have had the largest cuts in their budgets over the past few decades.

The private ivy-league and liberal arts colleges are the ones with the highest price tag, and also seem to be the ones most likely to give someone a "leg up" into an upper class life, mostly through the contacts gained while attending. They're also losing quite a bit of their value, especially the smaller liberal arts colleges.

> We should not aim to make college free by means of government sponsorship, but rather education free or inexpensive by means of lowering the actual costs.

I think that you're vastly underestimating how much money is needed to provide quality higher education. Trust me, the last thing we need is a race to the bottom when it comes to higher education.

The amount of money that goes towards marketing, administration, and buildings that are far fancier than they need to be is the issue. The professors are a fraction of the costs. Universities spend far more money than they need to on useless extraneous offices and bloat. Get back to focusing on education and the costs will drop.

It's not that simple at all.

Regarding buildings and marketing: you have to work hard to attract the absolute top students, especially in a huge education market like the US. Now you may argue that students shouldn't be so superficial, but they are, so universities have to deal with that when competing at the national stage.

As for administration, you probably have no idea how complicated it is to keep a university running. Don't like it? Good luck getting faculty to do the daily grunt work. Their plates are overflowing already just trying to get tenure and keep their jobs.

The higher education system definitely has room to improve, but to claim that it's as simple as "cheap facilities and no marketing" is a vast oversimplification in my opinion.

> Regarding buildings and marketing: you have to work hard to attract the absolute top students, especially in a huge education market like the US. Now you may argue that students shouldn't be so superficial, but they are, so universities have to deal with that when competing at the national stage.

Yes but that isn't actually making education better overall, it just means you're taking in better students. It's a zero sum game. Every college could deck out their dorms like the 4 Seasons Hotels, but it's not actually improving the quality of the education provided. It's still the same set of students, rotated around a bit more between which ones ended up in which schools.

That's the key part - is separating out what costs actually provide a better overall education vs. which costs just are "marketing in disguise" to take the top students from School A and convince them to go to School B.

So you're proposing regulation of the higher education market? Not a good idea at all, my friend.

Look, public universities in other advanced economies like Japan, Germany, and France probably spend just as much as a typical US state university, yet tuition is basically free. We can argue about how to improve education all day, but let's fund it first so our students don't have to worry about their debts for years. How do we fund it? Higher taxes.

> Not a good idea at all, my friend.

Do you have any justification for this? Or should this just be accepted because you said it's not a good idea?

I don't see an argument anywhere in your post saying why not. Other than as a general rule you are against taxes. Does that mean we should eliminate the fire dept and police dept as well because they're funded by taxes? Or is it only services that already exist are grandfathered in and new services shouldn't be created?

> Do you have any justification for this? Or should this just be accepted because you said it's not a good idea?

I can provide a counterexample: the best higher ed system in the world operates as a free market.

> Other than as a general rule you are against taxes.

And where did you get that from? In the future, make sure to carefully read comments before replying.

To recap:

I said that we should stop arguing about why school is expensive and instead focus on funding it so American college students don't have to carry a debt for the rest of their lives. I then said that the way to pay for their tuition is to increase taxes.

"Regarding buildings and marketing: you have to work hard to attract the absolute top students"

Bullshit.

Relatively recently, the very top students lived in crappy dorms and ate standard issue cafeteria food and worked out in mediocre gyms. None of which mattered. Because they had top rate professors and high academic standards and intelligent peers competing against them. Throwing away money on fancier buildings and food does absolutely nothing to increase the quality of education.

>Regarding buildings and marketing: you have to work hard to attract the absolute top students, especially in a huge education market like the US.

Government paid higher education usually don't care that much about getting top students. They may or may not come. This attitude makes saving on all the extra stuff pretty easy.

Anyway, not all universities can have top students, by definition, so most universities' generous facilities are wasted in an arms race they can't win.

State universities are absolutely trying to pull in better students. They track average SATs and every other metric. For the top schools in each state, this is not just an issue of prestige, public funding, and attracting stronger faculty, its also about endowments growing because those students graduate and have more money to contribute.

Here is the problem.

By definition, not all schools attract the top students. We need a range of schools for the range of our society, not schools wasting the money of students actually attending the school competing for students that won't attend.

Schooling, like roads and health care, work better when run by government.

I work at a local community college that is in the network of the state University. The amount of waste that goes on is insane. I understand this is a state government issue in general but I'm pretty sure the school could be run with half the funds if they actually tried.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m...

I'm absolutely not saying this is an easy problem. I also agree with your last point. I'm being idealistic, I know, but I'm cautious about accepting any proposed solution.

I definitely see the merit in comparing the US to Europe in terms of what has worked. Even as I am cautious, I value societies willing to experiment and progress forward with solutions to problems.

I'm not sure the US system is amenable to the same thing, but I'll bow out at that point and merely listen to what others have to say.

What I do suspect is that the landscape is changing with regards to what jobs need a degree and how easy knowledge is to obtain.

Depends on the branch, but considering that about 10-15% of costs of college is actually faculty, and marketing is twice that, then something is going wrong.

Oh, we absolutely should. An educated populace fits so perfectly under the idea of "general welfare" that it's a no-brainer to make school free for everyone.

It just runs counter to the goals of our capitalist overlords to have a bunch of learned folks running around. That's why you don't see it. That's why "ivory tower elites" is such a common, cliched even, pejorative. Don't want too many smart folks! They might wonder where all the money's been going for the last 40 years, and might not be so quick to blame immigrants or brown people.

The 'actual costs' are not the reason that fees are so high in the USA though.

On the other hand, one should wonder why college is so expensive in the US in the first place. Even without any subsidies, non-American tuition is a fraction of the cost of the big universities in the US. Why? Why are book so expensive here? Why is so much money spent on buildings, stadiums and hiring football coaches? The highest paid public employee in 39 states in the US is a college sports coach! [1]

Throwing more money at this problem will hardly combat this issue (it's an issue in my opinion).

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/us-states-highest-paid-public...

College is expensive because debt is cheap because of the expansion of pensions and retirement accounts as a proportion of the economy.

You had me at easy credit, but lost me with the reasoning.

Savers are counter-parties to debtors. Every debtor that consumes real goods and services now in exchange for forgoing later consumption gets paired with a saver that forgoes current consumption in exchange for later. The market has to clear, and the price is the risk-free rate of return. More people interested in saving? The natural effect of this pressure is to drive interest rates and credit standards down until you find enough people interested in borrowing.

Equity is fundamentally in the same boat - it's really the same thing as a loan, except the repayment term is a percentage of the economic output of a business venture. There's even some cool math-y economics about how the value of a firm doesn't change when you change the capital structure, so replacing $100M of equity with a $100M corporate bond just shifts risks from bondholders to shareholders.

Anyhow, the short story is that the West is having fewer children later. This means fewer currently-productive members of society per retiree. So, larger amounts of savings/debt required, which means better terms need to be offered in order for the market to clear.

Interest rates aren't set by a free market.

The prime rates aren't, but the rates at which the overwhelming majority of debt is issued are.

I would assume because retirement fund managers and pensions like constant safe returns on investment, given they have a to have a constant payout, they go for things like debt, especially tasty non-dischargable student loan debt. Debt is a lot easier to predict than investing in companies.

Investing in companies vs lending money is a pointless distinction here. The total return for the business venture is the same if, for example, a company borrows money to buy back stock. All kinds of the return-on-savings are fungible with each other, and work together to drive down the risk-free rate of return.

Sports have little to do with it as most of that money is completely separate from the operating budgets of the Public Universities. It does seem to be a good way to attract students for whatever reason. Textbooks are expensive because they have a limited monopoly, but they still aren't a huge expense compared to the per-hour tuition and fees.

The issue, IMO, comes down to decades of budget cuts from state legislatures that ends up being borne by the students. The "fees" end up paying for new buildings for student use, which used to be part of the budget allocation from the state. The "tuition" partially is related to increased administration costs, and partially due to the fact that budget allocations have been frozen for 10+ years but they still have to give professors a COL increase if nothing else.

TL;DR: state budgets have been static for a decade or more while more students are trying to attend. If they want to have classrooms and facilities for these students, and they can't get more money from the states, then they need to raise tuition or hit up donors to build them.

> Sports have little to do with it as most of that money is completely separate from the operating budgets of the Public Universities.

The taxpayers still cover the cost of stadium and other facilities at state schools, usually via bond issues.

Most sports programs (>80%) are subsidized by the university through mandatory fees charged to the students.

Sports often generate enough revenue to cover the costs for the top tier schools. Top ranked universities use sports to build donations from alumni, brand awareness, etc.

If you want to tackle a good portion of the high cost of higher education tackle medical costs. It influences the cost of everything in the US. If you earn $50,000 a year the university is paying another $10,000 - 20,000 for insurance.

"Nearly every university loses money on sports. Even after private donations and ticket sales, they fill the gap by tapping students paying tuition or state taxpayers."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/15/athlet...

How do you do that without massive numbers of voters losing their jobs? The US spends 17% of its GDP on healthcare. Europe spends an average of 10%[1]. Do you know what it is called when a country loses 7% of its GDP? Recession.

How do you incentivize a group of politicians to intentionally do that?

[1] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS

Actually, I think this is at least part of the reason for increased healthcare costs. The consumer almost never the one paying for healthcare. It might help to lower healthcare costs if there was no longer a tax incentive for employers to use healthcare as a form of payment. If that happens it will make far more sense for employers to let their employees deal with the administrative overhead of finding health coverage and pay them higher wages to make up the difference. Suddenly the employee is much more aware of what their health coverage is costing and now has a much greater interest in it costing less. Without the consumer being the one paying for things costs can on paper get a bit crazy when in reality it costs the company a reasonable amount overall as they've negotiated with the insurer and the insurer has negotiated with the hospital.

This is of course self-reinforcing. The reason they want lots of donations from alumni is because it increases profits. But they can only get those donations if the alumni have very fond memories of college. Thus they need to spend donated money on making students feel like they're part of something special, something they'd want to contribute back to. And that increases costs further.

(I went to a humble college, got a degree that doesn't do much more than tick boxes on job or visa applications, and enhanced it with self-study to get an effective education. I feel no obligation to send donations back to my college.)

I have no inclination to donate back to the university I attended since I paid more than enough in tuition. Also, as an out of state student at the time, the tuition and fees I paid was used, in part, to subsidize in state student costs.

But all you're really saying with sports coach comment is that, among people in a sector that is not profit-oriented or known for high wages, the highest paid employee is the biggest differentiator of success ("amateur" participants notwithstanding) for a lucrative entertainment business. That's not really surprising on its face.

Except that college sports aren't really a "lucrative entertainment business." See http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2014/dec/22/ji...

Agreed – see my comment lower down the thread. But even some athletic departments that are net in the red have football programs that make money on their own. Their coaches are paid market value, more or less.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=72825141901

Very few college football programs generate a profit for the school. A large majority of college football programs are propped up by mandatory student fees. College athletics is not profitable for schools with the exception of very few of them.

We created terrible economic incentives.

Instead of investing directly in public universities, we decided to provide grants and loans (but mostly loans) directly to students to use at any university, public or private. This simply created a bubble, similarly to the mortgage lending bubble. College tuition in the US is just another over-inflated asset class.

The top paid coach there is Nick Saban; Alabama football made over $100 million in revenue last year.

https://www.seccountry.com/alabama/alabama-football-reported...

That's a common misconception. Very few college athletic departments are in the black. And even among those, usually only football and men's basketball make any money at all. Sorry no link...should be easy to google statistics.

Every single one of those programs listed is making money, though. That's also easily Googleable and you can see that above link.

It might be wise to not link to an article in which every single sports program is massively profitable as an example of how college sports are causing financial issues. There's an argument to be made for that, but that link isn't it.

The parent comment to my previous was completely rewritten after I replied. It originally said something like "those athletic programs make tons of money for their schools." I was just saying that only a relative few really made a lot of money, which is what the link shows (as you said).

That's not necessarily true.

The big sports programs are profitable, but not all of them.

I guess many state schools do have successful sports programs with big TV deals. For example, 2 of the highest paid NCAA football coaches are in self sufficient programs at state schools in just 1 state: http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/08/big_10_schools_l...

Does that include cost of building the stadium? The gyms? I don't think it does.

Typically funds for new or renovated facilities come from donors/boosters.

At programs like Alabama. But not at most programs.

The stadium has been there since 1929, so presumably.

Upkeep is not $50 million.

Building maintenance isn't free and comes out of university funds. Especially at state schools you see politicians posing in front of a new building they have arranged funding for. Trouble is, the new building requires maintenance, as does the existing building stock, and oftentimes it would make better economic sense to renovate the buildings that are already there as you don't increase the number of buildings. But you won't find a politician to pose in front of a renovation, consequently you won't get free state money either.

At Alabama. What about the other 100 or so FBS schools? Does Alabama make a profit without mandatory athletic fees? What about other schools? Alabama is an outlier and even its numbers are not as good as they make them out to be.

Because US colleges are better than international on average?

Well, for one, college sports is a GREAT selling point to students and alumni, who in turn stay involved and donate back to the universities.

For another, there are quite a few college athletics programs that fund themselves through ticket sales, televised game revenue, televised show revenue, and private donors.

Because the market automatically adjusts to the highest possible cost in a situation like college (as opposed to pork bellies, for example).

It's the same reason healthcare is so expensive.

College is expensive because it has resisted commoditization. You can't get a Stanford diploma from just any school if you know what I'm saying.

While the college coach is often highly paid, keep in mind that the football program usually brings in a boatload of money, and that money goes on to subsidize other NCAA sports and in many cases even returns money back to the university.

I'm not a fan of the sports-fetish of college sports, but I do want to make a balanced point for others to consider.

> football program usually brings in a boatload of money

Let's ask some nice people at NCAA to quantify those boatloads.

http://www.businessinsider.com/ncaa-revenue-expense-report-2...

"Of the 120 athletic departments in Division I-A (sorry, the Football Bowl Subdivision) just 22 were self-sufficient last year. That's actually actually an improvement from 2009, when only 14 schools turned a "profit.""

And as your link says 58% of football programs are self-sufficient. Your link is also referring to sports programs as a whole. So yeah cut out all the women's sports and even more will be self-sustaining (not that I'm advocating that). And, it appears that more programs are making more money as time goes on.

So sure boatload could be a mischaracterization, but majority certainly isn't.

We already provide free college to the best performing students and those students very likely achieve much higher ROI. I benefitted from a four-year tuition, room, and board scholarship from my college, as did my brother and sister from theirs. However, only a fraction of a percent receives academic scholarships and a good portion of scholarships go to star athletes instead.

The German system is nearly comparable. Only 10% of Germans are accepted to Gymnasiums followed by Universitat. If you test highly enough to qualify there, your college is free. Other students get free trade school.

Perhaps America should expand scholarships to more students instead of eliminating them along with other cuts? We seem to have far too much money for sports programs and war while cutting everything else. I've never seen any highly-placed leaders propose that war plans involve a cost-benefit analysis or that cuts should go to the men's football team.

There could be tons of reasons on why you would score badly in your younger years. That shouldn't mean that you should be excluded from a chance to college IMO.

I performed pretty badly before my high school (gymnasium) but after that I performed well as I found what I was interested in. But I didn't have like the best scores but I still have a good education in IT and works as a competent programmer today.

Perhaps I wouldn't be as successful if college weren't free in my country. It's just stupid not to offer college for free. A less educated population leads to bad things. Just see who the US president is.

> Just see who the US president is.

Think it is time to update Godwin's Law.

> a good portion of scholarships go to star athletes instead.

That's simply not true. There are vastly more academic scholarships available than athletic scholarships. Athletic scholarships are regulated and limited to ensure that all schools can compete on even ground for student athletes. Even if you have an athlete who is a star student on academic scholarships it counts against the schools athletic limits.

Aside from academic performance based funding, there is also plenty of needs based funding in the US. We have a set of standard forms that everybody who wants financial aid fills out, and a determination is made based on their personal and family financial situation as to how much financial aid they qualify for - which can come in the form of funding directly from the institution, federal and state grants, and in subsidized or guaranteed loans. It stops there for most people, but it doesn't have to. You don't _have_ to get loans, you can seek out independent scholarships, grants, and other means of financial assistance. There's something for everyone - for people who live in urban areas, for people who live in rural areas, for people with certain ethnic backgrounds, for people who represent a particular struggle or ideal, etc. etc. etc. A lot of those scholarships don't amount to much individually - $500 here, $1500 there, but even $25 is $25 that you don't have to borrow.

There are frequently less expensive housing options, dining options, book options, etc. that can be taken advantage of. There are frequently options for students to earn money while in school.

I don't know about german students, but I do know that Sweden has "free college" as well, and their students generally come out of school with just as much or more debt than students in the US.

In Germany, about 1/3 of students finish with a High School degree that allows them to go to University (https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/235973/umfrag...)

> Only 10% of Germans are accepted to Gymnasiums followed by Universitat

I just registered to point this out: This is completely untrue and has been for decades. Just have a look at this https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiturientenquote_und_Studiena... wiki article, the table on the right should give you an idea how the development looks like, even if it's in German, the "B erechtigten, Ges." column shows the percentage of pupils that get the Abitur (the certificate that qualifies you to study at an university).

It's been pretty much half of each year of pupils for a while now.

> What about as a society/culture you start telling people that the country should offer education for free instead of not getting educated?

Many kinds of education are cheap to free. You can learn how to make a brioche, read Chinese, cultivate roses, or write a compiler for almost nothing. It's degrees from universities that are expensive.

25% of the people in the U.S. believe in classism, and that everything is a product subject to the free market, including education. Sometimes (hand wave) it's acceptable to have very basic public versions that are free for primary and secondary education but beyond that it's socialism (and therefore evil).

25% want to get everyone at the same horse stall starting gate, and then compete. Getting to the same starting gate involves some socialism, but it's supposed to neutralize things like race, class, gender, geography. And then you compete.

Those two groups are fighting which is why the political situation is why it's so acrimonious right now.

And a 3rd group, 50%, maybe give a crap but they hate politics and don't get involved.

Also, most of education happens at a state and local level, where political participation is pretty dreadful so you get even more extremes, and pretty much right now overwhelmingly counties in the U.S. are red/Republican states and they think already there's too much money spend on public schools, and more public money should go to private schools, i.e. make things competitive.

(Hilariously, Republicans think in health care, an option to buy into Medicare to make things more competitive is evil, probably because it's evil whenever the government does something good.)

I come from one of your "paradise European countries with free higher education" and it's astounding to me that in the 21st century, people still fall for this "free lunch" fallacy.

You do realize the education is not really "free", right? That word is such a red herring. It's just tying up resources in a way YOU like, at the expense of other people's preferences.

Many people here, teachers and doctors included, are deeply unhappy with what this centrally-planned-one-size-fits-all turns out to imply for their professional status and career prospects.

It seems everyone is freaking about the original article, but I actually see it as positive news. The value of some good/service has been calibrated by the market and rational people are taking note.

In fact, given the recent trend in (some?) US colleges (Bret Weinstein at Evergreen, Nicholas Christakis at Yale, Berkeley...), I'm surprised this break-even point hasn't occurred earlier. Too little bang for too much (tax-payer) buck.

Yes of course, I am not retarded. But you maybe don't own a car, go much to the hospital etc. but I assume you don't want to privately fund those things?

Education is just one other thing that is simply good for everyone and something you shouldn't have a less opportunity in because you had the "wrong" parents.

But if you're from a paradise country as you say, I assume you enjoyed your free education and now just simply shit on it for no good reason. Do you think you could've really afford it since your parents probably didn't save up? Unless you would have worked your ass of in several years and saved every dime you could not. It was probably good for you with free education, as it is good for the society.

Wrong assumptions all around.

Listen, these are not novel concepts. The ideology of "grand social good trumps individual interests (and I decide what that good is)" has been tried repeatedly, around the world. Its long-term effect on human psyche and society are well documented (try some Solzenitsyn).

"Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

But it's always "This time is different! NOW we finally have the RIGHT social formula!!". Well, I have some bad news for you, sunshine. I'm not "shitting on education for no good reason". The efficiency tradeoffs that come with increased system complexity are real, the break-even ROI points are real. Your wishful thinking notwithstanding.

Just google the people from my previous post, for god's sake.

Did you actually reply to the staticelf's comment? From what I can tell your reply is:

>The efficiency tradeoffs that come with increased system complexity are real, the break-even ROI points are real.

But what do you mean by this concretely, are you saying that if we can find an financial deficit by offering college free then we should stop? Would you say that there is no other good offered by higher education than that measured in monetary gain for the individual & society?

It's not free, it's an investment by the state into getting higher tax revenues in the long-term and a more advanced economy. I think everyone wins in the equation

Education in America is cheap, the problem is people don't go to their local school, they see college as an experience where they travel halfway across the country and stay in student housing.

No, education in America is expensive. If tuition was free or cheap, you could work part-time to pay living expenses and take more time to finish your degree as many students in Europe do.

Community colleges and state colleges aren't expensive at all. I went to community college for ~4 years, and I never paid for a class because of something called the board of governors fee waiver. Beyond that, I got pell grants and scholarships that were my primary source of income. With the addition of food stamps, the occasional side hustle and some creative cost cutting measures I was able to make it work with a single 4.5k loan.

When I transferred to a state university, my yearly tuition was ~6k, which was a great deal since it was a prestigious place as far as public schools go.

> Community colleges and state colleges aren't expensive at all.

> I never paid for a class

Your survivor bias makes you think that is the case for everyone. It isn't. State schools are no longer affordable in most regions of the U.S. without high debt load. It is true that community colleges for the most part are affordable, but the acceptance rate of students coming from community college is not optimal.

I congratulate you on your considerable achievement. You truly earned it through your hard work and good fortune to receive the grants and scholarships.

Many students had the misfortune of being raised in states without affordable state schools, despite being willing to put in the same amount of effort that you did.

More important: if tuition were free you could fail your students. With the present model there is a perverse incentive to pass everyone no matter what because they pay the salary.

Maybe for ivy league schools but there are lots of others that do not grade inflate [1].

[1]: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/grade-inflation-colleges-with-th...

The other factor being that colleges want to boast about their 99% four year graduation rate.

This is an interesting hypothesis. Do you have any information to indicate it is a trend?

I went to two years of community college for under 2k. My parents invested in a state program when I was younger which promised to pay for 4 years of state schooling. Not sure exactly how much they put in, but had you withdrawn the amount to use it for private schooling it was like 10k, so I'm assuming not much more than that.

Because community college was so cheap, I was able to use that other funding to pay for a graduate degree and part of my PhD program.

It's not expensive, people just have goofy ideas about what being educated means.

I agree completely, I have no idea why you're being down-voted. I got a 4-year bachelor's degree in CSE at my community college (through a partnership with a bigger name school). I did all 4 years at the local college, and it would have cost me less then 30k for the entire program. However with scholarships (Which over half of my class receives) I graduated without any debt at all.

There are options for cheap schooling out there.

We have students transfer in from the local community college. They struggle mightily, some even survive. With online labs in the physical sciences (instead of real glassware) it's an experience that I wouldn't wish on anyone. You can't call it education, the level is too low for that.

This may be true in the situation you're looking at. In neither of the community colleges that I have been to has this been the case. We've been in real laboratory sciences with skilled instructors and successful students have gone on to do well in university.

I think, though, the point is worth mentioning: not all community colleges are as good as the ones I've been to. Students would be well advised to consider the options and opportunities prior to matriculation (especially in light of an order of magnitude difference between even state university and community colleges).

As a counter point, I attended a community college program that partners with a larger school to provide a CSE degree at my local community college. When we have combined classes (Which are taught via video) the students on the community college side on average score a letter grade higher. With that, when students on the main campus join us for some classes (commonly during the summer) they frequently have a hard time due to not learning everything we did in previous classes.

That's not to say you're wrong, but you can't judge every community college program the same. Some of them aren't great (Especially if it's involving online labs, like you pointed out), but some are extremely good.

Didn't realize I was so unprepared for my schooling. Thank you for letting me know.

Do you think they'll give me my money back?

My undergraduate supervisor would say that you mustn't suppress outliers, it distorts the statistics.

I went to my state's top public school for <7000/year. It's doable. In addition to a predatory loan system, the US also has a problem of too many kids who can't afford it being suckered to private or out-of-state schools.

Tuition != education. Tuition pays for far more than education, administrative costs are skyrocketing (look it up) and colleges spend like drunk sailors because competition on tuition costs is nearly non-existent (you'll take the loan anyway, so what does it matter the 10% difference in loan size?) and raising tuition won't result in significant application drop (since most applicants are either subsidized or take loans anyway).

I was under the impression that this was already true to some degree in the US. Am I mistaken?

Yes, many schools offer work-study programs and you're free to take fewer classes per semester (within certain limits) than what a 4 year plan would require.

So long as you consider your time worthless, education is free. You are but a Google search away from learning about anything you want. If you want to go to school, that can be expensive, but that is quite different to education.

My "local school" when I was an undergrad now would cost me $30k/year to attend. Even assuming only 2 years (because the first 2 were spent at a community college, and all the credits magically transferred), that's over $60k. My parents never spent $60k on anything that didn't have a foundation and a roof.

Where do you get this impression, because it's simply not backed by any study, or even any anecdotal information? Quite the contrary, most people attend a college within 50 miles of their home[0].

[0] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/02/03/when-students...

No anecdotal information? My life? I went to the local college and graduated with less than 8k in debt and no scholarships. And that study doesn't really dispute my point, most may not, but a large percentage do, and those those who do are the ones without mountains of debt.

Find a study, because "my biases are correct," isn't an argument.

That's not true, it's highly variable. Community colleges are much less expensive, that is true. But depending on the chosen career, a diploma from a community college means lower starting pay than a state university or a private college. Just the way it is.

There are some worthwhile tricks, where you do 2 years at a community college, transfer credits to the state university, and finish a degree there and you get a diploma from the state university.

It's not a trick.

Most community don't offer 4 year degrees. When people are talking about community colleges they are generally talking about a place where you get an associates degree and then transfer.

I don't think it's exactly cheap, but I agree with your point. US kids have this idea that college is about living away no someone else dime for 4 years. That's always going to be expensive. Instead, live at home and go to a local college. Admittedly not everyone lives close to an okay school, but many do. It's what I did, and with a 20-30 hour/week job I graduated with near zero debt.

That may have been true 30 years ago. These days kids who make the "responsible choice" to attend an in-state school can still pay upwards of 20-30K a year in tuition and fees (source: me and everyone I know at my large state school). And many colleges force students to stay in student housing until their sophomore or junior year.

How do you advise we fix this?

"butthurt americans"

Please don't put insults like this in HN comments. Just one can ruin a whole thread.

Why? Does it offend you? People are just commenting stupid shit like "ITS NOT FREE OMG, TAX PAYERS PAY FOR IT" when it's so obvious that's exactly what I mean. Free for the student, not for the society.

It lowers the discussion quality, it distracts from the underlying topic, and it's also against the site rules.

"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3.""

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

like the rest of the modern world

Many countries outside of Europe have tuition fees. Do we really have to label those countries as not part of the modern world?

Free higher education and universal healthcare seems like reasonable criteria for "modern". Throw in use of the metric system for good measure(s).

That's some kind of ideology. The term modern is recognized as something positive, and then beeing used as an argument. I would argue developed countries are also modern.

I graduated from university in Australia 10 years ago. At the time I did not have to pay anything upfront but I did accrue a debt while I was studying. The cost for me studying Engineering was ~$750 per subject (8 Subjects a year * 4 year degree = $24K debt at graduation).

The entire debt was interest free and repaid out of my tax return once I started full time work (i.e. I effectively paid higher tax rate until I had paid off my university debt).

The expensive part in Australia is not cost of university. It is all the living expenses and other costs while you are studying (rent, food, transport etc.) In some cities like Sydney cost of living is stupidly high especially compared to low wages you'd get doing typical student work (waiting tables, bar tending etc).

A significant chunk of the massive numbers people are throwing around talking about the cost of college comes from living expenses.

Many countries in Europe, even. Tuition in the UK is actually higher than it is in the US, though the terms of the repayment are quite a bit more forgiving.

>What about... offering college for free like the rest of the modern world?

Paying for tution with tax money doesn't make it free. If you aren't willing to invest in yourself, why should society do so?

Free college tuition is a waste of resources on the upper middle class.

If you saddle people with debt that can't be discharged, they're less able to take risks that may end up producing major benefits for society. Instead, they're driven to compete for safe positions that have a smaller potential upside. This results in less innovation, and it also depresses wages for people in the safe positions. Besides making the lives of people who are already low on the totem pole worse, this depression of wages for safe jobs can ultimately lead to a greater reliance on government assistance. The only winner is large established corporations who profit from cheap labor and fear disruptive innovation.

> If you aren't willing to invest in yourself, why should society do so?

Because society has an interest in a large, well-educated labour pool that its entrepreneurs and companies can draw from. They can then employ these people, and pay them high salaries, a part of which goes back to education, and there you have a positive spiral.

With rising level of joblessness across the world, I am not too sure societies are having difficulty in having large well educated labour pool.

Doesn't that argument extend to mean that the public shouldn't fund any education? I mean what's the difference between the first ~12 years of school vs the last 2-5? Is the difference that the people are adults and no longer children (and so can be said to be responsible for themselves)?

First, there must be a dividing line between when we are no longer going to pay for a persons education. 18 years old is a pretty good dividing line because that when society deems people responsible for themselves.

Second, college is a good cut of because it's highly specialized education.

Third, almost all the benefits are captured by the precipitant of the education.

Finally, most of the country would either be unsuited or uninterested in college education. To a person breaking their back doing roofting, they might as well be buying rich kids trips to Europe instead. Not only does free college only benefit a portion of society, it benefits a portion that doesn't need a subsidy.

The point of subsidizing college is to give the person who might otherwise become a roofer the option of a more pleasant, lucrative career.

Scientific and technical knowledge drives innovation. Economic growth on a per-capita basis is entirely driven by innovation. Thus scientific and technical education directly impacts your quality of life.

With regards to liberal arts education, I'm inclined to agree that government subsidies may not be the best use of tax money.

> With regards to liberal arts education, I'm inclined to agree that government subsidies may not be the best use of tax money.

Who do you think will start going to college more once it's free? Students who are driven to get a STEM career are already pursuing college. Making it free will attract the people who think along the lines of "I don't wanna start working yet, might as well go live the college lifestyle for free and get a sociology degree before I end up as a barista anyway." (I'm exaggerating slightly but you get the idea).

The key value of making STEM degrees free isn't that it will cause a massive increase in the number of people who get them. I suspect that the increase would be rather modest. Instead, it is to free people who pursue STEM degrees from the burden of debt, so they're more able to take the kinds of risks that can result in big wins for society. Innovation is an inherently risky pursuit, and if we make potential innovators risk-averse through debt we're wasting much of the value of their education.

To be fair, I'm not totally against (at least partially) funding certain liberal arts degrees either. Specifically, creative writing and journalism are both valuable. For example, it would be profitable to subsidize many thousands of creative writing students to produce more popular writers like J.K. Rowling or Stephen King. Total yearly sales of fiction books in the US is ~14 billion, taxes from that could cover subsidies for creative writing if they were merit based.

The first 12 years is general knowledge: how to interact, read, write, basic knowledge, etc. Also has the purpose of acting as a binding agent for the local community: children make friends, join teams/clubs, etc.

College / university is specialized knowledge that is typically used for career and social status advancement. Its helpful and has utility, but it's not necessarily required to be a functioning adult that lives in and contributes to society

It is free, for the student. If I had to pay for college I couldn't afford it. That doesn't mean I am not willing to invest in myself.

The problem is that people are long education and short learning. Learning is free and useful. We should all do more of it.

The primary thing universities offer for jobseekers is a demonstration to an employer that a person probably learned contemporary skills in the field of their degree. They also offer licenses to join oligopolies.

They are of course not the fastest way to learn. Learning quickly is a secondary or even tertiary goal. If you want to learn something the fastest, you gotta teach yourself or use a tutor.

Why don't you subsidize it so it is affordable, but not free? In Canada I pay ~8k per term (and that's higher than most Canadian schools), which I think is pretty reasonable. Plus there are tuition discounts for lower income levels, so it's more affordable for them. Seems to work pretty well, I think making it free would cause people to get more useless degrees, which would just cost taxpayers money for no reason.

Is that plus living expenses? I went to a large 'football school' type school which was not cheap, but tuition a hair under 8K for a semester.

College is not "free" in the "modern world" whatever that means.

Obviously I was wrong, but it is free in many european countries. Payed for by tax payers. The same tax payers that once enjoyed a free education.

Minus the ones which went to US and other countries with lower taxes.

Yeah sure, but far from everyone drives a car and still everyone pays for the roads. College is just one of these common goods we should all pay for.

So you're arguing that everyone should pay for it and go to it until we make it free? Why can't we argue using the reality college tuition payers have today? Instead of arguing from a fairy tale reality for high tuition payers...

Because the argument is society reaps the benefit of an educated populace, secondly yes, everyone should pay for qualified individuals to go to college, as most or much of the civilized world does.

That does not mean free college for everyone. There would still be a stringent entrance exam. It means free college for those who are qualified.

Contrast that to the system now where college is seen as just another marketing device to squeeze profit out of the young and naive. This is not healthy for society and it is not sustainable.

By the way, your jab about publicly funded college tuition being a "fairy tale" flies in the face of the reality of many, many, many countries. Completely unnecessary and ignorant comment.

So by keeping out the "unqualified" we continue to increase the gap between the haves and the have nots? I'm not suggesting that is your intention behind the statement, but that is the harsh reality of what will happen. A policy like this will continue to discriminate against the poor and those stuck in areas without access to decent primary/secondary education (inner-city comes to mind).

Despite the numerous issues with the american primary/secondary education system, I'd imagine you'd struggle to find many arguing that making secondary education free to everyone (qualified or not) wasn't a net benefit for the US.

It is my personal feeling that the entrance exams that used to exist as a barrier to secondary education were awful and unfair. Everyone should have a right to choose their direction, instead of being told you have to start a job/family. Based on the success of eliminating that barrier, I feel opening up university/college to everyone should be the goal of any civilized society.

Free higher education is usually seen as the biggest helper of social mobility.

In the US there is one more fundamental issue that needs to be addressed: the use of local school funding in school districts. Had schools been properly funded with more funds going to schools that need more resources (I.e schools where parents don't have higher education get more money per student than schools where they do) then having grades/tests as a qualification for free can be done without discriminating.

Spending more does not help. Spending per pupil in Washington, DC is possibly the highest in the nation, with the most abysmal performance.

> Spending more does not help. Spending per pupil in Washington, DC is possibly the highest in the nation, with the most abysmal performance.

Perhaps even more needs to be spent, or the money is spent the wrong way? It would otherwise seem as though DC students are impossible to teach - which seems odd.

This seems like a very common line of thinking on the "liberal" & "democrat" side of the "debates." That in situations that already have money being spent on them - and are not going to plan - all of the best solutions involve spending more...

The solution might be spending differently or changing other things that are budget neutral, such as the curriculum.

But in 90% of cases throwing money at it will help most problems a politician will face. More teachers or better teachers is doable without more money but it's hard. That means you need better school administrators that will attract and develop good teachers - but it's the same argument again - how will you get those?

The objection might be that it's not the most efficient use of money - which depending on your political views might be more or less terrible.

But is the benefit society gets from a college educated populace really worth the cost? I feel like there are a decent number of degree programs which we would never get a return on our investment for subsidizing, so making it free for studying any topic seems foolish. Plus, job specific training could be just as good or better than a 4 year degree in many cases, and that would take far less time and be much cheaper.

It depends on what we feel is beneficial to society. Is financial return the only thing we should care about? I'm not a philosopher/artist, etc, but I feel they are important to society, regardless of whether they generate financial gain. We should be providing as many opportunities as possible, not putting financial barriers on education.

These are the similar arguments that went on in the late 1800's and well into the 1900's. Society (at that time) determined it was not beneficial or better to simply do job-specific training. So they opened up secondary education to everyone, for free. I'm happy they did and feel it was great for society, despite the cost. I'd like to believe we've progressed enough as a society to open the next levels of education to everyone as well.

It doesn't mean it is right for everyone, but the individual should be able to choose. They shouldn't be barred because they don't have money or the right activities on their transcript.

In this case, I do think it's what we ought to care about. We have serious problems related to job skills and underemployment that need to be addressed far more than philosophy/art/etc needs to be subsidized. I'm especially opposed to just flooding our existing institutions with money, since they seem poorly equipped to deliver what's needed economically for either their students or for society in general. We could do a much better job of improving education by reforming K-12 than we could by just pumping money into our higher education system imo

And indeed there were people arguing against high school education across the board for everyone: not all students needed to go to high school, they were better served not learning any history or mathematics or science or civics or ethics or English or geography or about the modern world and instead going to an apprenticeship in a trade at 12 or 13, where they would toil for the rest of their lives. The few elites could go to high school and study more lofty topics required to make serious decisions, since they were, after all, destined by virtue of the fortunes of their birth to be the rulers and decision makers in society.

But high school for all is generally considered by everyone to be a Good Thing and having a more educated populace is good for everyone: jobs change, times change, and generally educated, intellectually flexible citizens are better able to adapt with the times, vote intelligently, be part of modern communities, etc. You can go to a trade school after high school.

We've come along far enough it's time to recognize that high school is no longer good enough as a general education, and that's a good thing: a college education where students study philosopy, history, science, mathematics is now the basic standard for an educated citizen and we should provide it to them regardless of how wealthy their parents are or how well they take IQ tests.

Yes, the goal should be to offer university as an option to already well educated 17 year olds.

(rather than the creeping credentialism we choose now)

This logic requires your definition of educational systems to be inherently beneficial and also financially a net-win for graduates. If you turn this around and say that educational systems don't always produce better workers than the self-taught and the apprentices, then we must say they are not necessarily "better than nothing." Which is why it is super reasonable for many of us not to want our tax money going to them!

Having an educated population certainly has societal benefits.

But there is more than one way to become educated.

I am not convinced that college is the most cost effective method of producing an educated population.

I think the best solution for individuals in the US is to move to an european country, stay there and work until you get some kind of permenant stay visa or citizenship so you can enter college for free.

That usually do not take long for americans. If you have kids you can do it when they're small so they are ready for university when they come of age.

Hell, a few countries will provide tuition free education for foreign nationals too. The challenge is that Americans interested in that will have to prepare the corresponding entrance exams instead or in addition to SATs and have sufficient language proficiency.

I knew students back in Mexico preparing for their Abitur exams for Germany at the end of high school (in all fairness, they were coming from bilingual private high school, which is a extreme luxury in Mexico, but still way below what college tuition in the U.S. looks like at most research universities...).

For Germany I know you don't need to be a citizen to be able to take college with the same terms and conditions as natives, it's "free" since most places have a per semester administration fee (5 years ago this was around 100 Euroes). To get a residence permit to study one has to show that one is able to finance one's self, or have someone (e.g. a parent) as a sponsor. The residence permit allows 20 hours/month of part time work for foreigners (or even more if you're working in your area of study), so that is taken into consideration when you go to renew the residence permit every 2 years.

Isn't it rather difficult for a non-EU citizen to become employed in EU member states?

Look up "blue card scheme". If you have a university degree, and you interview somewhere and get the job, and your salary will be over 1.5x average national gross salary (In Germany this calculates to around 39KEUR/year), you will get a residence permit, none of this "is there an EU citizen qualified for the same job" check.

As for the salary, I can only say a German computer science graduate being offered a real programming job would probably laugh at anything below 45K, and is looking at around 50K. After tax this comes to around 30K/year (don't quote me on this number), which will be enough to live if you're single, for more costs of living you can check numbeo.com

>If you have a university degree....

Um, the post I was responding to mentioned getting residency in Europe in order to take advantage of the university system, so....

Ah.. you can see my response above about that. They have residency permits for the purposes of study, you have to show that you can finance yourself or have a sponsor (e.g. a parent).

As a butthurt American I only have one real gripe with what you said - our roads aren't free. Our taxes pay for them. I think we need to change this mentality and acknowledge that our taxes going to something else useful is actually a net good - not 'welfare.'

The roads are free to travel on, as a publicly funded post-secondary education would be free to acquire. The parent was quite obviously not suggesting these things were not paid for by someone/everyone—at least not directly at time of use.

Otherwise, totally agree with your last point. It's a shame we Americans, in our infinite political stupidity, devalue and denigrate tax-funded programs.

Sure, just convince the professors, real estate developers, janitors and everyone else involved in higher education to work for free.

Otherwise, someone is paying for it. If its a bad investment, its a bad investment, whether tax payers or students pay

I say a compromise with free 2-year college is a good one. Most CC's offer trades programs, the ones that don't still let students save 1/3 to 1/2 of the cost of a full bachelors.

We used to have something very close to that here in the US, with very low cost state schools.

Just one of the things that has been lost in our rapid head first plunge towards third world status.

Who pays for "free" things?

Financial wizardry which can make other countries/continents pay in terms of trade or services regulations.

Nothing is free in life except sunlight.

Colleges employ people and build buildings and have ongoing costs. Taxpayer money would need to be used to pay for this, and that money must have continued value, otherwise no amount of money would actually get the job done (see Venezuela)

Not everyone learns valuable skills at college. You have to watch out for conflating "learning valuable skills" with "occupying space on a college campus."

That's not true. If it nets a return greater than the costs, then the costs don't "cost" anything.

Think of it this way: do you think having a large college educated population is a net good or a net bad for the US?

Net bad. Too many degrees reduce their value in the market with poor job prospects. The extra years of education does not create an enlightened utopia.

It would be a net good if the people who went to college were changed in such a way that they stopped destroying value and started creating value.

That is to say, if college (more often than not) turned criminals into saints, and turned a welfare recipient into Erdos, then it would be an excellent investment for society.

But there's no evidence it does this, and it doesn't even do a better job than high school. You can learn more on youtube than you do in college.

So until then, it's a marketing racket that transfers state money into a few private hands- and the gov't goes around collecting for decades.

It is free for the student just as it's free for you to drive your car on the public roads to work.

There is still a price collected. The question is- "is this price worth the value delivered?"

In the case of roads, the answer is usually yes. The value they add is clear (at least until flying everywhereis the new economic norm).

People are willing to pay local taxes, tolls, insurance, licensing fees, gas taxes. A good portion of this money goes to road building and upkeep. Some of it is syphoned off and goes to other things.

If the proportion falls out of balance, and in parts of this country it does, then it no longer becomes "worth it", because of corruption and misuse.

If you've ever drive i95 from the Bronx to Stamford CT, you'll notice the portion in NY is in absolute disrepair, but the CT portion is very nicely paved. And yet, both states are flush with money. So what gives?? Mismanagement of public funds is the cause.

Similarly, if college (a 4 year holding tank after high school) is so much better than secondary education, vocational education, and self-teaching through books and youtube, then we can continue investing in it.

But since it isn't clear that college is better than these cheaper alternatives, it's just a way for public money to be siphoned from your wallet to someone else's.

It most definitely isn't free, unless you avoid the variety of taxes in our society. In which case, I applaud you for living a non-traditional and very self-sufficient life :)

Americans are actually enrolling in college at a rate higher than many other developed countries. A good article in the Economist last year (which I hope to track down if I get the chance) pointed out that 6.25% of the U.S. population was enrolled in university as compared to 3.75% of Germany's population. Other developed countries do provide free and heavily subsidized higher education to their citizens, but they're also more selective in which people go on to university and typically decide which education path students will take at a young age.

While I think that's a more beneficial setup as a whole I think it'd be a tough sell given the attitude the U.S. has towards higher education. I think a lot of people put a value in higher education beyond its economic return on investment. In other words, even if it's a less return on investment pursuing higher education provides the additional benefit of avoiding the stigma of not having a degree.

In my ideal world, the U.S. would offer much greater subsidies to attend university but at the same time be much more selective with who gets into universities to begin with. That, coupled with better connecting high school juniors and seniors into technical education paths.

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