[tgv]

In the US perhaps, but it happened in Western Europe too, even where there weren't student loans. Simplistic explanation: the right wing parties were in favor of "austerity" measures, i.e. budget cuts, and the left-wing ones of getting as many people through college as possible. Unfortunately, both got what they wished for.

[orwin]

On this particular issue, i think all parties that reach power want the same thing: more educated people, cheaper (because let's be honest, a "left-wing" party in Europe that conquer power in Europe is at most a "third way"-type party, sometime with a green tint), and are all equally at fault for the situation.

The meaningfull difference between right-wing and left-wing parties is how the University should be organized, with right-wing party pushing for centralized, more powerful unis that can reach international "power rankings", and left-wing parties usually push for a decentralization (that's how you get university branches in small towns usually). Also most right-wing/third way parties seems to want the admin staff to have power over the education staff, that there's that shift too (the exact same stuff is happening in hospitals).

[aleph_minus_one]

> On this particular issue, i think all parties that reach power want the same thing: more educated people

I don't think so: educated people are much harder to control that uneducated masses.

[fl0id]

LOL no. Here right wingers just want to defund higher ed and control what they do. None of which will help with quality of output. (and those rankings are largely useless anyway) they don’t want more educated ppl, because they blame education for what they see wrong with society and would undermine their base. (Like how there’s claims that unis make people leftist or similar )

[orwin]

Yeah, but it's recent, and it's something europe imported from the US.