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Comment by TomMarius | Hacker News Reader

Does it? I got a chance to take a look inside and I'm no longer sure about it. Corruption is rampant (not in relation to academic results, but other things like employment, grants etc), favourism is flourishing, and huge amount of money is wasted instead of used to help the students. I personally blame the lack of monetary incentives.

EDIT: What about having a discussion instead of just downvoting? I presented my observation and expected to talk about it, downvoting isn't helping anyone and my comment is on topic.

EDIT2: Seems like some of you misunderstood me, probably my mistake, sorry about that. I'm not trying to convince anyone, I'm not trying to argue any point, I'm asking a question - to see if others' have similar experience or not. That's it, no claims to prove.

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Can you specify which country or university your experience is based on? In my experience (Austria) there were issues sometimes, but nothing which would even by a long shot could be called "rampant". Here it is more of an issue that there is a lack of funding and not much political will to increase it. The amount of the GDP which goes to funding universities is lower than average recommended by the world bank [citation needed].

Edit: I couldn't find the recommendations but here is a chart by the world bank: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS

The most recent data is from 2014 though, interesting nonetheless.

I'm Czech, living in Czechia. I'm not going to say more, sorry - I'm not trying to convince anyone about my story, I am trying to collect more data, see if other people have similar experiences.

Thank you, that gives more context! It is just anecdotal and a few years back, but last time I spoke to students in Prague they didn't bring it up as there being that big issues. Is this something that changed in the last years or has it been that way for longer?

I am also Czech and do NOT have similar experience. I am very satisfied with the level of education I received and with the environment I was able to be part of at my university in Prague.

Are you sure? If you've attended any of the top 3 universities, you just were shielded from it; generally IT/math/science related faculties work well, it's the social-related faculties where it works really badly, but still, you won't see it as a student. I'm happy to tell you more in private.

The problems you described aren't helped by making colleges not free.

Specifically,

> huge amount of money is wasted instead of used to help the students

is arguably worse in the US - and it's the students' money.

Corruption is rampant (not in relation to academic results, but other things like employment, grants etc), favourism is flourishing, and huge amount of money is wasted instead of used to help the students.

Sounds like SNAFU: Situation Normal -- All Fouled Up.

Humans seem unable to escape favoritism, etc. The older I get, the less convinced I am that this is entirely bad. As I get healthier, I seem to get more "likeable." I find myself wondering exactly how much "I just like you" is actually some form of shorthand assessment.

I don't know the answer. But I'm quite certain that where humans are involved, you can count on it being a morass. You can also count on some people objecting to something about it, even while others claim it is essentially perfect.

>EDIT: What about having a discussion instead of just downvoting?

What about providing concrete examples and citations for your claims? How did you take a look inside exactly? What did you compare it to?

I did not compare it to anything. I was an IT employee at a faculty for a while. I can't cite since there isn't anything formal going on, it's just an observation and since I'm asking, I'm not going to support any argument, since I'm not arguing it's true - I'm just asking others if they have similar observations or not.

I don't think this is significantly different between European and American and universities.

Your argument was probably downvoted because you didn't support your claim very well, and blaming everything on the invisible hand is not a popular dogma.

Try linking to evidence rather than making widespread assertions. You have three claims here; can you find URLs to reputable sources to back each of them up?

I don't have first-hand experience with US colleges, but you hear complaints about the same issues from there too. I'm not sure what about the power structure is actually different to dis-incentivize those, from what I see it's very similar?

(I also wouldn't describe the places I've seen first-hand as strongly as you did, but those issues existed to some degree)

Are you saying all of this does not happen in paid colleges?

Not at all. Introducing a new reason for it to happen isn't going to help, though.

What is the new reason? I don't really have the impression that students paying fixes anything about the incentives for individuals in the system.

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