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by g52oevr0in 3563 days ago
It seems like the high spending per student is a bigger issue than who is paying. If 100% of people go to college, a massive amount of money will be spent on college at current US rates (20 million people aged 20-23 * $20,000/year = $400 billion/year as an estimate). I'm not against income redistribution at all, I'm a big fan of it. I don't mind if the government takes half my Bay Area engineer salary. It would just make rents lower and I will end up with the same quality of life. However, I care about the ROI of that redistribution. If the government takes $100,000 from me I would much rather it pay for college for ten people than five people. But if college only cost $10,000/year total [0], the debt incurred by the student's contributions would be more manageable. And the $100,000 could go toward building a subway or something.

[0] the US spends twice as much per student on average (including all sources of funding, government and tuition). http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp