The reason why student debt is basically unheard of in Denmark since college is free (although to make that happen, the Danish government poses high taxation towards citizens like they do in order to maintain stable social security nets like subsidised healthcare and public housing, also why they have less homelessness).
Mainly Danish, Swiss and European citizens are eligible to study without stressing over student debt upon graduation. It stems from this: Danish government is more on for the people while American government is more on caring about themselves plus nepotism on the side (MORE & HIGHER TAXES TOO ON TOP OF THAT).
Because conservatives/regressives who elect felons, rapists, and pedophiles said so.
It won’t fail if implemented in the US. The US is convinced that bettering its people is libtard stupidity.
There’s also the matter of how every institution here exists to extract wealth profitably. It’s not just libtarded to invest in citizens at a less than explosive profit return, it also undermines the system of exploitation that needs people dumb and cheap to hire.
It starts feeling like the government thinks education is dangerous and only gets in the way of the ruling class.
It worked in the US for many years…quietly. Ask Boomers, Gen-X, and probably Millenials how much their University of Puerto Rico education cost them, and you’ll mostly get a big fat $0. For a long time, UPR price per credit was closely tied to federal Pell grants. The grant check, which applied a vast majority of students, would cover credits and books most of the time.
Yeah that is what I said…
I was agreeing with you and providing a US based example.
Someone asked why we don’t have bullet trains and I think my answer there is equally applicable here:
Rampant corruption redirects almost all federal resources to contractors and corporations.
It requires two things America doesn’t want to do.
Taxing the rich and nationalizing an industry.
nationalizing an industry.
Not even. Every state has a public university system. Many of which used to be free. It’s as simple as investing enough that they be free to state residents again.
Let the private universities continue as they want. Some people will use them but they’ll need to compete against free
It’s not, because public universities are price gouging.
State governments have direct control over their states public university system, including how much they charge
Not enough control, clearly.
But thank you. Also feels like another argument in favor of nationalizing them.
And counting education as more than a just money extraction device imposed on the populous.
It would absolutely work.
Forcing people into crippling debt, however, helps create the indentured servitude class. The in debt students and future workers are less likely to waste time on stupid things like protesting or revolt.
Educational debt is one of the prongs of system rigging and the elites in America prefer it this way.
Elite owned media keeps pumping out the bs of affordability and scaring people with trans nonsense and the cycle keeps on going.If Americans could wake the f up it could change quickly, but history has shown that they won’t.
It also helps push people away from furthering their education. If its just another bill to pay, why bother when you can get just as good a job without it?
I would love so much to go to college, but yeah, at this point in my life it becomes a business question, rather than about personal betterment. Everything is a desperate “Return on Investment” calculation anymore.
Yeah, it definitely pushed me away. I can do art and gamedev without a degree (but haven’t made it yet for a plethora of reasons), but you need a bachelor’s if you want any hope of escaping the country. Drat! Cornered.
I teach myself stuff all the time, but it doesn’t come with a paper that says I put myself deep in debt to do it, so, I’m automatically disqualified for “good” jobs. :(
Works in Germany as well (with a very low fee, nearly free).
We believe that education is a basic human right. The human rights are equal for all humans (listen, Usamericans: humans, not just “citizens”), therefore it must not happen that low income can hinder it. And that’s also the reason why German universities regularly accept a good number of students from all over the world.
Why it “works”? Well it’s simply the government’s job to make it work. We, the people pay them for doing their job. As you might know, or not, in a democracy the people are the highest authority.
That line of thinking is the backbone of us propaganda.
Does the EU have free college and access across the union?
This is not mandated at EU level afaik. Though I found this compare page. Though I’m not sure, what these number include. For example germany is listed as free, though you pay I think between 300 and 400€ per semester. Though that includes a public transport ticket for all of germany (Deutschlandticket). And of course no housing included.
America tried to make college free by guaranteeing free grant money for college. The colleges then suddenly needed to up the tuition fees setting us back to square one.
Step 1: Give everyone a free dollar to add to their lunch budget. Step 2: Lunch starts to cost $1 more.
“needed”
For any question about “why is this extra bad in the United States?”, racism is probably a big factor. There’s a book “Dying of Whiteness” that’s pretty horrifying. Some people would literally rather suffer and die personally than let black people have nice things.
It’s not the only factor, but it’s a big one.
Pick an issue in the US and it’s probably because of xenophobia of some flavor (racism, bigotry, etc) or money. Often both.
For the epstein class it’s only ever about money - they make up the racism/bigotry to get poor people to support their grift.
Not to say they aren’t racist/bigoted, but to them, it’s just a tool to get the money.
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US is a classist society. They want to keep a large % of the population in poverty so that there’s a large base of workers to exploit. The rich are more than willing to pay for their own kids’ schools but not everyone’s. Keep in mind that over 60% of the US has a bachelors degree- twice that of Denmark/Germany. The US has more wealth in general but still, that’s a lot more schools than just the ones the rich kids go to. The reason we have so many more people going to college is that during deindustrialization, the workers were not protected. The government did nothing to help workers find new jobs or retrain. It was on the individual to figure out how to survive. People were told to go to college to attain a middle class lifestyle. Surprise, a classist society will keep you in the working class regardless of how educated you are.
you’re wrong. only 35% of adults over 25 have a bachelors degree or higher.
50% is if you include ‘some college’ which means people who went but have no degree, or have an associates or other trade school/post-secondary level education.
no idea where you are getting 60% from, unless you’re talking about certain states where most of the educated folks live.
A ton of reasons. Among them: capitalist/military extremism. Private sector profits and “”“defense”“” are treated as holy, so the profits of the education sector and of weapons manufacturers need to be protected. The completely out of control military expenditure is one large reason why Americans can’t have many nice things that other countries have (education, healthcare, etc.) as it sucks so much of the national budget.
You don’t understand American politics until you understand American racism.
Plenty of Americans would rather die of a treatable disease than have one penny of their hard-earned taxes go to a black person’s healthcare.
The American experiment with socialism died the instant it could no longer legally exclude black peopde.
Yes, there’s a lot of that too, but I don’t think that the American experiment with socialism died because of that or that it’s even dead.
I find that things that don’t make sense in American history and politics suddenly become perfectly rational when you consider racism.
And if you look at conservative attacks on social welfare policy, it is often and most effectively done simply be associating welfare with “undeserving” black people. Reagan’s cadillac “welfare queen” was racially coded, as was the “young bucks” eating steaks with food stamps (steak is a food, go figure).
This is the Southern Strategy, how the Republican Party flipped confederate slave states from D to R after the passage of civil rights.
If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you. ― Lyndon B. Johnson
Reminds me of this tweet/meme I still remember. Something like:
“Oh it’s fine that we just rolled out another $6bil aircraft carrier, but mention that people should get healthcare or education and suddenly Grandpa’s pulling out his fkin abacus.”
XD
Haha, so true!
I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.
Lyndon B. Johnson
American who moved to Denmark (though I haven’t yet studied here at university, just language schools).
It would work in the US just fine, except that it wouldn’t funnel money from 18 year old kids taking out loans to rich people’s pockets.
My overall tax burden is only a little higher (3.5-4%) than it was in the US. And for that I get healthcare, university, significantly better working conditions and QoL all around, and a society I’m proud of instead of ashamed of.
Big recommend, though I don’t consider the language easy
My overall tax burden is only a little higher (3.5-4%) than it was in the US.
Does that also take into consideration not having to pay insurance premiums for basic healthcare?
I had a really sweet situation where I didn’t pay for healthcare. With almost any other situation in the US I’m sure it would’ve been net cheaper here
People are talking about taxes, but there is one part that is overlooked in how the decisions were being made.
College in the USA used to be much cheaper. The federal government gave state governments land to sell in order to fund “land grant colleges”, basically the top of most states’ public education system. There was massive funding into these colleges, which generally meant that private colleges needed to be somewhat competitive with poorer students. Government funding continued through the middle of the twentieth century with the GI Bill and a mix of federal and state aid to keep tuition low.
However, starting in the 1990’s, three things started happening. First, millennials were getting ready to go to college in a wave that colleges had never seen, requiring the building of new facilities. Second, school rankings were becoming more important, so colleges started chasing clout and that chase cost money. Third, financial aid started to incorporate student loans as a way for kids to pay for college.
So, tuition costs soared as colleges were spending massive amounts of money on new buildings and ways to increase prestige while aid programs shifted to loans. In a lot of cases, states even pulled back funding as student loans could fill the void. Students still came as it was seen that a college education was required to have a good middle class life in the future.
Now that the millennial wave has crested, colleges are dealing with massively falling student numbers, which is a major problem given it became a significant revenue source.
Yep, great comment.
And right now a lot of schools are shutting down because they can’t enroll enough students and they charge way too much to attend. Like 12 schools in my state have closed in the past 2 years. These are typically cheaper schools too, but students don’t want to go to cheap schools, so they don’t apply.
Basically, it’s a story of gluttony and greed.
The pricing dynamics of college education is also obscured. Basically, the reason they all charge so much is because they don’t want to look ‘cheap’. So if one place hikes tuition, they ALL have to do it, because they don’t want to seem ‘cheap’ compared to a competitor. Nobody wants to go to the ‘cheap’ school.
There are great studies about how many colleges, when they increased their sticker prices, saw more students apply to go there. Because if you apply between a uni that charges 50K an one that charge 100K, the 100K one MUST be better. right? This means all the cheaper universities inflated their prices to look competitive with the more expensive ones.
BUT the real cost that students pay at both places is pretty much the same.
this misses what happened to public colleges, like the land grant colleges you mention. at the height of counterculture, campuses exposed everyone to powerful ideas that made them do all kinds of organizing against the establishment. for example in 1970 the Ohio National Guard was called onto Kent State University and fired over sixty rounds into anti-war protestors, killing four. Ronald Reagan became California Governor, defunded universities, and introduced tuition to stop this onset of class consciousness; in his words, to bar “undesirables” from college. then in 1975, NYC went almost bankrupt, and regretfully adopted the same measures upon the City University system in a ton of cuts to tackle $14 billion and growing in debt. thus the same policies spread across the rest of the US. a similar reason is why the “leftist” party in Britain managed to landslide against 20 years of Conservative rule by promising to introduce tuition.
