Hacker News Reader

Comment by adev_ | Hacker News Reader

> Over a career, the value of tuition free college for the average American comes nowhere near the extra taxes and lower income they’d have in France

That's so bullshit.

What matter is of course not the difference between tuitions fees than taxes.

What's matter is that everybody, even the ones that can't afford the tuitions fees can access university. Which you can in France, which you can not in Europe.

I am the living example of that. I come from a family what would never have been able to afford me US schools tuitions fees. And still I am engineer, thanks to the European systems.

View on HN

My Apologies for my early morning grumpy post, without re-reading.

Here is the more fixed one :

> Over a career, the value of tuition free college for the average American comes nowhere near the extra taxes and lower income they’d have in France

That is so bullshit.

What matter is not, of course, the difference of cost between tuition fees and taxes.

What matter is that everybody, even the ones that can not afford the tuition fees can access University and proper education. Which you can in France and most of European countries, and which you cannot in USA.

I am the living example of that. I come from a family what would never have been able to afford to pay US schools fees. And still I am engineer, thanks to the European system.

In practice almost nobody pays the sticker price for US unis. I would guarantee that you would be able to go to your choice of uni. Financial aid, scholarships, and loans are very very generous. A lot of the talk around the price of education is politics.

The other side of this is that in the European system many otherwise qualified individuals will never see higher education because there is so much competition for the limited spaces available. I would hazard to guess that most people arguing that US education should be more European would not be able to achieve degrees in such a system anyway due to early test scores precluding them from attending.

> The other side of this is that in the European system many otherwise qualified individuals will never see higher education because there is so much competition for the limited spaces available.

I tend to prefer a system where you fail because you are not good enough, to a system where you fail because the pockets of your parents are not deep enough.

"Not good enough" is compared to how many slots are available, many of the people forced out could be good enough.

The stories I have been told of difficult classes in the EU are mind-bending. They seem to be incentivizing ~80% of the class to drop out. There is no way the majority of people are not suited for, say, IT. They may not want to do it, but that doesn't mean they are not capable of doing it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com