Comment by Morphling | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Morphling | Hacker News Reader

I get that paying for your education is pretty bad, but as someone who is enjoying free bachelor level education in Finland I can tell that the amount of quality teachers is pretty low, our small campus has maybe 4 teachers I'd consider competent.

I'm also the kind of guy who'd enjoy extracurricular clubs, but sadly out of the few hundred students at our campus total of 3 of us (me included) are interested in club activities and only student body event that gets more than 10 people attending is yearly "drinking cruise".

I can't say for sure that these two things are related, but I have a hunch that since people aren't actually paying for their education most don't take it as seriously and thus people just do the bare minimum they can get away with. Or maybe it's just the general level of education which is so much lower nothing feels "real" at least considering how much I read U.S. based engineering students whine about...

Go to most of the small colleges in the US and you'll probably see the same thing. I don't know what it's like in Finland, but from what I've experienced at Swedish universities it also varies a lot. Uppsala, Lund, KTH etc have great student life and I didn't feel that people took it less seriously than at the american university I've been at.

Sure, we don't pay tuition, but usually parents don't pay for their childrens' living expenses during college either. I have about $50k in debt (very low interest loan), all from living expenses for 5 years. That plus the loss of income during this time means you can't really slack off.

Yes, it is true that most students in Finland do take the government backed student loan, but I for 't taken it. I get few hundred euros student welfare from the government and rest I make up with part time jobs and working summers + living in a student housing is pretty cheap.

Which college in Finland are you at? Isn't the University of Helsinki among the best in the world? (just curious)

I'm actually attending HAMK University of Applied Sciences which only produces engineers for different fields.

I'm sure the "bigger players" like Aalto Univeristy or University of Turku are of higher quality, but I can't judge since I've never attended neither.

Well, you're not paying for your education yet

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