[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.