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A comment on Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education. Parent comment

Re:Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ ab... by eli_gottlieb on Thursday April 30, 2020 @01:26PM (#23033443)
> Then an 18-year-old, potentially with parents who aren't great at math but have great aspirations for their child, is sat down and asked to sign a load of papers, not realizing that this will lock them into decades of unforgiveable debt and wage slavery.

Well yeah, because us "adults" don't wanna pay the state and local taxes necessary to keep public universities affordable.

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Re:Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ ab... by HarryHirsch on Thursday April 30, 2020 @02:21PM (#23034191)
Why is this downvoted? In the European nations (with the notable exception of Britain), university is free or nearly so.
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Re:Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ ab... by chongli on Thursday April 30, 2020 @04:58PM (#23036039)
It may be free but fewer people attend university in European countries (apart from wealthy Luxembourg) than in the US. So essentially, the “free” university is a tax on everyone that mostly benefits the rich. I don’t think Americans want that.
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Re:Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ ab... by JamesBarney on Thursday April 30, 2020 @06:05PM (#23036749)
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS?end=2...

Our government spends more money on education in both a relative and an absolute sense than the European average.

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Re:Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ ab... by pmorici on Thursday April 30, 2020 @03:19PM (#23034938)
It's not 'free' it's paid for through taxes.
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Re:Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ ab... by dyadic on Thursday April 30, 2020 @03:53PM (#23035331)
It is free to the person that receives it.

Imagine I bake and give you a cake, it's still a "free cake" even though I've put the work into baking it and other people have put the work into harvesting the ingredients and bringing them to me.

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Re:Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ ab... by pmorici on Thursday April 30, 2020 @07:02PM (#23037279)
No it isn't, presumably that person will graduate and go on to have a career where they are paid a salary and pay taxes on that salary. How is paying higher taxes for one's entire working life different than making payments on a loan with lower taxes?
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Re:Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ ab... by HarryHirsch on Thursday April 30, 2020 @03:43PM (#23035228)
Good point. The rich need to pay taxes, else there is civilization only for the rich. Consider Alabama, a lowtax state, thanks to the 1901 constitution that the landowners and industrialists wrote to protect their wealth and look what shape the state is in.
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Re:Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ ab... by toomuchtodo on Thursday April 30, 2020 @02:13PM (#23034083)
Attitudes such as this are the problem. Civilization has a cost, that cost is paid with taxes.

Edit: I didn’t pickup in the sarcasm. Mea culpa.

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Re:Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ ab... by eli_gottlieb on Thursday April 30, 2020 @02:48PM (#23034572)
You know I sarcasm-quoted "adults" to indicate the immaturity of not paying for civilization-upkeep costs, right?
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Re:Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ ab... by Gollapalli on Thursday April 30, 2020 @02:26PM (#23034253)
The guy was agreeing with you.
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