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Comment by Kesty | Hacker News Reader

Not really.

14 place ETHZ (Switzerland) https://www.ethz.ch/en/studies/financial/tuition-fees.html $600 at semester = $1,200 (1 school year)

15 place John Hopkins(USA) http://www.collegecalc.org/colleges/maryland/johns-hopkins-u... $45,470 (1 school year)

Obviously it's US against Switzerland, it's completely different and very hard to compare. But bigger fees doesn't really means better university.

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Yes, but there are plenty of scholarhips and need based funds at John Hopkins. So this way a rich student has no problem paying either through loans or cash, but a poor student will be subsidized to a large extent. Also, if you want to major in something that is not in high demand then great, do it but why should everyone else subsidize your choices?

Just because a middle class student can pay for university through loans doesn't mean they should have to.

Colleges advertise about their highly generous financial aid policies, but for most of the middle class whose parents earn say 120=150k together, little to no aid is given outside of loans.

well, theoretically, it makes sense for people to pay for their own education with loans that they can pay off, conditional on the sort of salary they expect to receive in the future as a result of their education. I mean if you want to major in quantitative finance and make a million a year, does it make sense for everybody else to fully subsidize your education ? What if you want to major in Japanese History pre 1600 ? does it make sense then?

and if you're neither rich nor poor, you end up being one of the poor saps with a couple hundred thousand in student loans.

It's funny you mention Johns Hopkins because that's where I graduated from. I won't pretend it's cheap but we certainly didn't pay $45,000/yr. As some others have pointed out, there are fairly generous aid packages at a lot of these universities. I do still have student loans but they are entirely manageable.

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