[em-bee]

Surely people/families in Germany/Austria, some of the richest countries in the world, can afford to pay something towards education costs

rich country doesn't mean rich people. we have high taxes and lower average wages. high rent in cities. in vienna, more than 60% of people live in subsidized housing. none of them could ever afford to pay for university.

and if more than 60% of students need financial support, all we are doing is adding expensive bureaucracy. might as well just make it free instead.

[mytailorisrich]

That does not answer my question and it is obviously not true that people cannot afford to pay for university, not least when we haven't mentioned a price.

Every time similar topics are discussed it's odd to read some comments because they give the impression that people in the richest countries in the world have no disposable income (they can't pay for healthcare, they can't pay for higher education, they can't pay for public transport, etc). Of course there are poor people, but the majority have plenty of disposable income (that's what a rich country means).

> "in vienna, more than 60% of people live in subsidized housing"

This does not mean that this is a necessity it shows some issues with the housing market and housing policy, not that people are "poor". In fact, if the majority of people in a rich European city get housing subsidies it seems quite clear that this has nothing to do with poverty and not being able to afford it, but is a policy/market disfunction issue.

To go back to France, in France every student gets housing subsidies. This does not mean that they need it, it's just that the choice of policy has been to dish out subsidies without consideration of need.

[em-bee]

subsidized housing is only available to those with limited income. in vienna that is below 60k€ per year for a single home, and below 90k€ for a couple, which means 45k€ income per person. if we take the cost of public schools in the US which ranges from 10k to 20k USD per year, it should be pretty clear that those expenses are unaffordable. if they could afford them they probably would not be eligible for subsidized housing.

the majority have plenty of disposable income (that's what a rich country means)

no, it doesn't.

rich country means a high GDP, but we put most of that into public infrastructure, public healthcare (so, yes, we can all pay for healthcare because everyone has insurance) and public transport, and we don't need to pay for education. if education were taken out of the mix then those with lower income would be excluded.