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Comment by thinkingemote | Hacker News Reader

I think having free education (e.g. in some EU) makes students appreciate their education. Education is a privilege and something to be earned for many. The universities have more power over the student life as they know best.

Having students pay for everything (e.g in US) makes their education into a product and they are the consumer. Students can then demand to have certain conditions met. The consumer knows best, is king.

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I had not seen this interpretation of the perceived value of education before and find it intriguing (and tentatively agree). I am surprised there aren’t more dissenting comments because it flies in the face of the free-market libertarian interpretation of value, which would argue that people do not value things that are free.

A clearer way of stating it might be not "the euro students value their education more because it's free," but "the euro students value their education more because college attendance is determined by academic status rather than ability to pay. So, they had to work hard at their studies to get into college, and must continue to perform well academically or risk being kicked out."

Whereas in the US, college attendance generally* is determined by ability to pay, and a student who can pay will almost certainly be able to find some college that will let them attend, whether they take their studies seriously ("value their education") or not.

*Of course achievement still matters if you want to get into the most selective institutions ... but I gather you can do that with (a lot) of money, too.

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