[purplelobster]

About collectivizing costs, you speak as if it has never been tried and you discount the idea based on your own assumptions that it would be too expensive? As someone who has gone to university both at a free*(you actually get money to study) (~top) Scandinavian university as well as a (~top 10) US university, there is not much difference in the actual education from what I could tell. Where there's a real big difference though is research. US universities consistently outspends and outproduces European universities by a large factor. My theory is that the undergrads are paying for the professor's research and grad students, but I'm not sure. The money has to come from somewhere. Either way, neither I nor my parents would ever have been able afford US tuition + living costs. I took a loan for all the living costs that were not covered by subsidies, a loan with an interest of about 1.9%, so I can't even complain about that. My point is that in the US, I would probably not have been able to afford a decent college, and I think that's a broken system. Research and fancy campus gyms should not be funded by stepping on poor undergrads.

By the way, it also seems that student loans for US students mainly consists of tuition payments. There is rarely any mention of livings costs which I find curious. Do people just take it for granted that the parents will pay that part? Myself, after 5 years, I was roughly $50,000 in debt, all of it living expenses (note, that's only $10,000 a year in a country with high cost of living). My family didn't (and didn't have to) pay anything to put me through college. From what I can tell, this is the norm here, students take loans for their living expenses and parents are not expected to support them.

[pnathan]

Traditionally[1], I believe US universities have been funded by the government to a large degree. The defunding of the universities I believe corresponds to the ceasing of the Cold War and the dropping of heavy DoD/DoE funding.

My understanding of collectivizing costs is that it's proved extremely expensive for countries such as Germany and the UK, which are moving towards a paying model (last I heard). There's also a pyschological effect when you're paying for your own way vs. someone else paying for it. I'll let someone else more learned in physchology & motivation research comment on the details, but the change in mindset does exist. My gut feeling is that its entirely reasonable for society to generally pay the bulk of the cost of college in exchange for getting the benefit of an educated society.

If you examine the historical cost of education in the US, the tuition began its upwards run around 1980 and has not ceased. So did healthcare. I don't know if there's a connection; and, if so, why. I do know that educational costs have gone wildly up beyond inflation.

To your aside; my student loans were designed to cover the cost of housing & life in general.

I'm very sorry that you did have to go into such steep debt for college. I don't think it's right that higher education costs so very much either. I do want it reformed, but I don't want it done in ways that simply funnel money into someone's pockets without lots of people getting a quality benefit.

[1] between 1945 and ~2000

[purplelobster]

You don't need to feel sorry for me, that loan is a government loan that every student is eligible for. The interest is 1.9%, so the government is actually losing money on it. I pay roughly $900 a year in interest, which is very manageable with a near 6-figure salary that this education gave me.

I think it's a pretty good system, it's good both for the students and their parents. Students don't have to rely on their parents (if they are rich enough to support their children anyway) and parents don't have to save up for years for tuition and living expenses. It still hurts though, it's not like it's free to get an education even without tuition and with subsidies and favorable loans. You also have to think about opportunity cost, you could be making money for 5 years, but instead you're in school. So I don't think you need the additional expenses to feel motivated.

[vizeroth]

The formulas used to calculate eligibility for various forms of financial aid as a US student include an assumption (up until the age of 25 if I remember correctly) that the parents will be paying a certain amount, based on their income. My parents' expected contribution was not within the realm of their economic reality, especially with 4 kids graduating from high school in 3 years.

My wife went straight from putting her parents' income on her student aid forms to my income, so nearly all of her higher education not paid by her parents is on student loans (because by the time we got married my expected contribution to her education was outside the realm of our financial reality).

These calculations do include the estimated costs of room, board, & books, though, and student loan eligibility is largely based on those numbers. Of course, the room & board costs are often based on living in dorms and eating entirely on campus meal plans, each of which, depending on where you go to school, can be significantly different from the cost of living off-campus.

[pathy]

Just a slight country point: The US is actually quite low in number of articles published per million citizens.[1] Now that doesn't say anything about the quality or distribution of research areas of course. Switzerland is in a clear lead with Sweden second.

Does US universities really outpace European ones? I don't know if that statistic means anything in reality. I guess it also depends on the percentage of the population with a degree.

[1] http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/innovation/scienti...

[purplelobster]

Maybe my perceptions were wrong. I went to a Swedish university, and I suppose there is a lot of research going on, but I would guess there's not nearly the same amount of money in it. The US also tends to attract the smartest people, while Sweden is less attractive (not being an English language country) and with less money for doctoral students. Also, international rankings seems to favor US universities, probably because they produce good research, not that the education is in any way superior.