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Comment by dpweb | Hacker News Reader

Here’s a solution. Make college free for all. Anyone with a HS diploma can get in. But, you MUST attend the classes and do the work or you’re kicked out end of semester.

Totally based on merit. No biases on income or anything else.

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Who pays the utility bills? Professor and administrative salaries? Is anyone allowed in just due to having a diploma? What keeps rampant cronyism and end of year cost splurges to keep high budget levels for the next year? Who sets the budget? How does enforcement work, government employees doing enforcing?

In short how do you pay for it given the already spiraling out of control costs of higher education?

All fairly simple issues that many countries have solved.

I suppose so, but it's worth noting that no other nation's tertiary education system holds a candle to the United States.

I would rather everyone have access to great education rather than the top 1% have access to outstanding education.

Because of a few flagship institutions who are valued quite a lot in comparison to the average institution.

Are you saying charging high tuition is responsible for making US universities better? Correlation alone does not equal causation. Is there any evidence for this statement?

Of the top 5 universities in dentistry, oral surgery and medicine in the world, 3 are in Brazil and are completely free:

https://cwur.org/2017/subjects.php#Dentistry,%20Oral%20Surge...

Switzerland and England both have schools in the top 10.

Those schools don't admit everyone, and certainly not everyone for free.

I can't speak for Switzerland but all universities in England charge the same for UK students with nothing upfront. Sure they don't have space for everybody who meets the minimum but that's inevitable. There are no legacy admissions, athletic admissions, positive discrimination etc. Everybody goes through the same process.

That's fine, I was just disputing that "no one holds a candle to the US education system".

Why for Americans trivial problems seems more tricky than climbing the Himalaya?

If Spain, Italy, Germany and Sweden did it; US can do it too.

Some problems are easier to solve if you have a declining population and restrictive/merit based immigration policies.

Also, weeding out people from attending university at 14 years old helps too.

If someone doesn't attend or do anything why does it mater. If they never show up then they take no space and they use no teacher time so they cost nothing to "educate"

They get taken off the roles, lose any student privlidges like their amazon prime discount! and in the vietnam era would be eligible for the draft.

This is effectively what Czech STEM universities do. The supply is way bigger than the demand and as such getting even to the "top" study program is trivial.

Not sure it's very effective seeing the 60%+ failure rates in the first year. These people could spend that year doing something they are more suitable for.

Sounds awesome.

Who gets into Harvard?

Nobody. It gets shut down and turned into a museum of historical examples of corporatism.

Ok. Who gets to go to UC Berkeley and who has to go to Cal State Chico?

Or who gets to go to University of Washington and who gets sent to Eastern Washington University?

Did you go to college? Its not a school, your attendance is absolutely meaningless.

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