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Comment by erfgh | Hacker News Reader

What education fees are you talking about? Everywhere in Europe universities are free with the exception of England.

No. University is not free everywhere in Europe. Fees are relatively low but there is a sustained push to increase them.

Additionally, even low fees are enough to deter the poorest since modern universities prevent you from having a real part-time job.

if you are actually the poorest the only fees in France for instance are 15€ a year (and you get state scholarship every month) - the criterion currently is your parents making less than 33k€). If not it's 300€ a year for university - it's more but not unachievable either when compared to the situation in the US.

Agreed. You also have to factor in that scholarships are far less widespread in Europe, though. The french left wing is quite strong and I doubt the situation is as good in many countries of the EU.

I freely admit that I am not an expert. Just my 2c.

Germany introduced fees a while ago but then rolled them back.

To give you an order of magnitude public University taxes in Italy (it may vary on the specific university and region) are some 160 Euro year fixed + a "contribution" that can be between 0 and up to 3000 Euro per year, they vary on the family income examples:

https://www.unifi.it/p10166.html

https://www.unifi.it/p11206.html

https://www.unifi.it/p11207.html

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