[dqv]

>This is how the united states fails - our education institutions fail to hold the bar and let the pillars of real education turn to sand.

That’s why we should be providing college for free (to the student, it will cost us all money in the form of taxes). If you fail Ochem, it won’t be thousands of dollars lost (yes maybe thousands from society, but the burden is not on the individual). It might set you back, but not monetarily. If there’s a lottery, it should be in the form of selecting who goes where and not a lottery ticket that oddly resembles a tuition bill.

Of course someone is going to say some version of “we can’t afford that, it’s absurd, people won’t respect their education if they don’t lose something, it decreases competition…” but then I guess we’ll have to let the US fall. Guided instruction needs to be as close to free as possible for people and failure to learn something shouldn’t cause monetary anguish, just more time spent trying to learn.

This is why I’m a big proponent of increased funding for my local community college. I will gladly (and do) pay more in taxes to increase funding and decrease tuition. The day they ask if it should be free on the ballot, I will excitedly fill in “yes”.

We really need to shift away from charging people money to be successful. It has made our society very sick.

[tinalumfoil]

I'm not sure the economics of paying for everyone's tuition, but I don't think this is the issue here. NYU has a $6 billion endowment (~100k/student, projecting modestly from Wikipedia's numbers) and costs nearly $40k in tuition after aid. They're flush with money, and so is the average student (or their family at least). Harvard of all places is known for grade inflation, so I don't think low standards is a money problem.