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by exodus_de 2627 days ago
What do you mean by "the college"? Community colleges are already affordable. Other institutions only charge that much because of price inflation caused by reckless lending.

> Join the rest of the developed world.

Let me tell you about the situation in Germany with its "free" universities: First of all, there's a three-tier school system with the lowest tier barred from higher education altogether, the middle tier requiring further schooling to access second-rate colleges only and only the high tier allowing university access. Usually, children are separated into these tiers by their teachers, at the end of primary school. While it's technically possible get back on the higher track when they're 16 or so, it is rare. Parental income/education and race is a huge predictor on which bucket a child ends up.

So let's say you were a "good child" and are allowed to the universities, prepare for long waiting times (years) unless you have a near-perfect grade average, in case you want to study something "popular" like medicine, business administration or law. Don't expect to get a seat at one of those crowded auditoriums, prepare to sit on the stairs. Also prepare to be "weeded out" early, especially in the technical fields. Fail a test in a course three times and you will not only be thrown out of your degree program, you are permanently barred from getting any degree that has that course in it. Failed your law degree? Maybe try computer science then!

Okay, let's say you went through all those filters, you finally get a degree. If you're got one of those "popular" degrees, it turns out that job competition is actually quite tough, because far more people have a degree than what the job market actually can absorb. It's still better than in Spain, Italy, Greece etc, where degrees are handed out like candy but actual jobs are as rare as gemstones.

Bottom Line: "Free College" just produces over-education, because most people choose popular degrees beyond what the market actually needs. With ISAs, at least there's an incentive to only support those degrees that are actually in-demand.

1 comments

How would you get back on track if you were lumped into the "bottom third" after primary school? That seems far too early to make judgement calls about someones future, however I am not a child development expert by any means. One major problem with this is immigration. If a child moves to Germany at age 10 from and didn't know any German before the move, I doubt he would be stand a fair chance in this system.