According to this OECD indicator on higher education, Korea, Japan, Canada and Israel do better. https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/adult-education-level.htm#indic...

Not sure how one would measure "access" though, does that mean counting people who could have reasonably gone to college but didn't?

Access => $70k/year for a private university, $30K/year for state

For some context: according to US News, the most expensive college in the United States (among schools it ranks) with respect to tuition (and fees) is Columbia at ~$55k/year. Below that, there are many schools in the $52--53k/year range.

If you consider the total cost of attendance including room, board, books, and other costs, the estimates for the most expensive schools peak either at $68--72k/year at Columbia or ~$70k/year at Harvey Mudd, followed by at least 40 other schools over $65k/year.

The most expensive in-state tuition at a public college is $16--17k/year. The most expensive (in-state) total cost of attendance are a few schools (like NJIT, William&Mary, and some UC campuses) in the $30--34k/year range.

Raw numbers are pretty meaningless in this context, I would say. If that was the cost but there was a zero interest, flexible payback load from the govt available to everyone, I would still count them as having access, for example.

Are loans maybe very easy to access? So although you'll come out debt-ridden is the point that anyone can get the money for higher education?

The universities themselves are paid for in full by the government, on top of that any student receives equivalent to about 300 euros/month to cover costs of living, no strings attached. Now that's not nearly enough to live on in Sweden so most people do get loans offered with very preferable terms to students, although some prefer to get a part-time job to cover costs of living.

Oh boy. In some countries the government gives you free university education. Imagine someone going into debt to get loans for high school.

Maybe loans are easy to access, and maybe education is of higher quality, but maybe not. Assuming equal quality of education, i'd say not being debt-ridden counts as higher accessibility. That's why i'd like to see some source for their claim.

Elsewhere the government will just pay for university, or give you an interest-free loan.

Oh I know my point was, although US universities may be more expensive maybe that doesn't impact on access if loans (even if they aren't interest free) are easy to get.

Well it kinda does, Sutton Trust (an education charity in the UK) did a study that showed three quarters of graduates will still be repaying their student loans when they're in their 50s.

From a policy perspective that kind of long term debt comes with stress, health problems, productivity problems, social mobility problems.

Peoples ambition (and in some cases sense of entitlement) comes from their upbringing; if you add long term debt to that aswell you end up in a situation where even more careers are decided by childhood circumstance, rather than potential.

On the other hand, my repayments of the UK Student loan are so small that I literally don't care. They are also always based on my income, so if I lose my job - no biggie. No one is going to come and chase me about it, there just won't be anything to pay until I get a job and make more than the current threshold.

I don't see how this could be stressful even if I continue paying some small amount into my 50s - from my point of view it's not debt, it's more like paying a water bill each month.

You as a reasonably well paid technology professional (presumably) don't care. Don't make the mistake of assuming that the rest of the world is in a similar situation to you.

For example; a starter salary of £28k would be only £7k over the threshold and "only" result in repaying 9% of that, or £630 per year. But in Austerity Britain people on that kind of salary (e.g. nurses) are already starting to resort to using food banks.

Weigh up the alternatives, such as an apprenticeship or a job offer and university starts to lose ground to other options; but much more so for people with a lower socio-economic background. This is the problem.

I actually make less than the amounts you quoted and I still absolutely don't care. I'm actually living very comfortably on this salary. But then I'm in the north east, maybe in London you have to use food banks on 27k but over here you absolutely don't.

Sure, it's great to hear that you're doing okay. It's still important not to generalise your own situation to the whole country. As you say, things are different for other people.

Again, I agree with everything in your post - however that has nothing to do with access I don't believe. None of those things are good obviously but the only way they would effect access would be if people considered the long term issues you've mentioned and decided university wasn't worth those costs.

>... however that has nothing to do with access I don't believe.

Some people will look at the associated debt issues and decide it's not worth it (open question as to what percentage). Often this will be in comparison to a job offer or apprenticeship.

There will also be people who don't look at the issues directly, but instead rely on the guidance of older generations, and perhaps contrast things like living costs.

These decisions are made differently based on socio-economic status. That's the access issue.

I don't have objective data but there's plenty of anecdotal evidence around of people from lower-income backgrounds making choices because of their background not because of their ability.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/aug/17/teenagers-...

The site lists under its USA entry "Years of tertiary schooling - 1.86 (years)". One would presume that's an average across the country, but that seems really high. Haven't found a deeper data source.

For comparison, Denmark lists 0.95 years, UK lists 0.96 years.

http://www.socialprogressindex.com/?tab=2&code=USA

Undergraduate degrees in the United States are four years long. I think in most of the rest of the world they're three years long. I wonder if that is a reason for the higher figure.

PhDs and masters are also absolutely monstrously long in the United States - often literally twice or three times as long as in Europe. Fewer people do those of course but maybe that also adds up to a higher average.

In places like the UK you normally go from zero degrees to PhD in six years, while in the United States you could conceivably only just be fishing your masters work at that point.

Slight nitpick: first degree courses in Scotland are 4 years. And knowing maybe a dozen people who did PhDs in the UK I don't think anyone did it in 3 years - even the people who were full time PhD students took at least 3.5 years (most of us were "Research Associates" on salaried contracts and the average among this group was more like 4.5 years).

Mind you this was in an engineering department in the late 80s and early 90s - things have no doubt changed :-)

I believe that the EPSRC now heavily penalises universities if students are not submitted by the four year point, so the universities have responded by literally just failing you and sending you down if you go over four years. I submitted the day before my four year point.

As another extreme, I have a colleague who completed a PhD with very strong research results in Austria in just two years.

AFAIK in most of Europe you have to do a master before the PhD and typical (theoretical) numbers are 3 years bachelor, 2 years master, 3 years PhD. But that's theory, usually it's more like 4 3 4, but obviously there are also people working on the master's thesis for 5 years ;).

I'm from Austria and we switched to the bachelor master thing just briefly before I started to study. Before we usually had 5 years diploma studies and a doctorate with at least 3 years.

Another interesting difference is probably that our studies tend to be completely specialized. So when I studied CS I did only that. If you're interested in history or whatever you just study that in parallel - no tuition and for long we also had no access restrictions - you basically just went there and said you want to study X. 10 minutes later you were enrolled.

Interesting, thanks.