[ajmurmann]

Having studied in both US and Germany, US universities seem to have a much lighter focus on studying itself. The negative view would be that the are a lot more distractions like fraternities, sorts teams etc. Another view would be that there is a strong focus on network building. Fraternities and the whole school loyalty thing are practically made for this. It's a clear advantage to have those connections for the individual. I do wonder what this does to society as a whole. Maybe it makes matching people to jobs easier, maybe it makes it easier to find people to even start a company with. I could easily see how this caused silicon valley to be adding UC Berkeley and Stanford rather than TU Munich or the Sorbonne. Maybe it's mostly a zero sun game that's very expensive?

[tor0viking]

To be honest I don't like the US model. All the extra fluff isn't helpful in any substantive non-zero-sum way.

You have the freedom to be entirely focused on academics in the US, participating in research etc. But you also have the freedom to live off your loans without any serious focus on academics, treating college like a vacation more than anything else. For the "students" who are tempted by the latter option, college is a waste.

[candiodari]

The US model is in force (with variations) in the Netherlands, the UK, Denmark, Northern Ireland, Latvia, Iceland, Hungary, and for that matter, Australia. The conditions vary greatly, and I'm sure I've missed some.

The European commission already tried to swap all systems for a loan based one twice.

Which "European model" are you talking about ? If there is any of the models worthy of being called "European model", surely it'd be the commission's model, which would be the US model (with the state going after students who fail to pay, not sure about bankruptcy cases).

[ajmurmann]

I think the model torviking and I were contrasting with US is not how you pay for education but around facilities and culture at universities. Do the countries you listed have universities with lots of facilities that aren't directly related to learning, strong emphasize on university loyalty with fraternities, sports teams everyone celebrates etc?