> The cost is low for the student but it's pretty high for the taxpayers.

That is a supposition that proves to be false. The same happens for health care. To have a centralized state sponsored education or health care system allows it to be more efficient that smaller for profit institutions that have incentives to increase cost to the students as their profit depends on that.

Also, I would like to notice, that for European tax-payers it is an investment. That money spend in education brings back way more money that what the original cost was. So, to just talk about "cost" misses the point.

> bouncing in and out, not bothering to finish it or prolonging it till their thirties, etc.

Not true. I have never been in a classroom where anyone was above thirty, probably no one was over their 25 anniversary.

But, that is my personal experience. Can you provide some data about that? I have not been able to find any statistics to confirm your statement.

Americans are absolutely, utterly, unable to imagine that the way they do things is not the best. It's incredible to watch from outside.

Americans are over 300 million people, and like Europe we are not homogenous.

And many Americans believe European healthcare, education, and infrastructure are far superior to the U.S.

The problem is that despite Europe being far more efficient at health, education, and infrastructure spending it also has a wide range of policies. So it's difficult to determine which policies are driving the increase in efficiency and which aren't.

There’s no such thing as “European healthcare”. European countries (and I’m going to ignore Brexit and include the UK) approach provision of healthcare in a unique way. For example, the UK has the NHS, Switzerland has insurance mandates, and France has strict regulation of private insurance companies.

Yet all of Europe has one thing in common: people don't go bankrupt over surgeries because 99.99% of people have an insurance.

Yeah this was my point.

What does homogeneity have to do with anything?

>Americans are absolutely, utterly, unable to imagine that the way they do things is not the best. It's incredible to watch from outside.

Treats Americans like they all have the same beliefs, i.e. homogenous.

Please refrain from nationalist slander. It's unproductive and against site rules.

Europeans are utterly unable to create new global enterprises at the rate of America and China, apart from a few odd balls like Spotify. Different places optimize for different things, for better and worse.

> Europeans are utterly unable to create new global enterprises at the rate of America and China,

Having a homogeneous, single-language, single market of 350 million, and 1.4 billion people, respectively, is an enormous competitive advantage that Europe cannot replicate, without doing away with sovereignty and brainwashing ~80% of its population.

And despite all that, the quality of life of the average European is pretty good.

Counterpoint - Israel. Tiny country, unique language, way more success in tech and VC per capita than Europe.

And how much success does it have making things sold to consumers? (Which is where the common market is most important.)

I don't think I have a single thing in my home made by an Israeli brand (And I don't use Waze, and either way, it's Google's now). I have quite a few European-branded items, though.

Europe is a collection of small countries. It's not coincidence that the economic powerhouse of Europe, Germany, is the most populated country. And since this is going quite off topic here is some wild idea: let's keep just a fraction of the current universities, like say 5 or 10%, force talent in Europe to concentrate in a few places, force mixing across nations. Actually this is already encouraged somehow but let's be more brutal. Just thinking out loud maybe an stupid idea.

Whose fault is it that Europe has many small countries instead of being dominated by Germany the?

If the EU hadn't stopped its continent-scale genocidal domination, it could be on par with USA and China for linguiatic and economic unity.

Europeans are absolutely, utterly, unable to imagine that things they pay a percentage of all income earned, over their entire life, are not free. It's incredible to watch from outside.

CAs tax rate when you factor in federal tax is comparable to the EU and we get none of the benefits.

> CAs tax rate when you factor in federal tax is comparable to the EU

Nominal rates might be, but tax burden is not. California tax burden is well under 15% GDP, and federal collections in the state are a tiny bit higher than state tax revenues, together still under 30% tax burden. EU overall tax burden is over 40% of GDP.

How do these numbers look when you count health care/insurance cost for CA instead of only for EU?

> How do these numbers look when you count health care/insurance cost for CA instead of only for EU?

Then you are counting the cost of the thing you are complaining about not getting for your supposedly-equivalent taxes in order to try to justify the claim that the taxes are equal.

Count school fees and student debt too - public schools in most of the EU are good enough that you don’t have to go private the way the US does.

You don't need to go private in the US, either, that's largely a status display and a mechanism for non-educational social benefits more than an actual educational benefit; like the difference between outcomes in different public schools outcomes, the vast majority of difference between education outcomes in private and public schools is explained by factors outside of the school attended that determine educational outcomes (socioeconomic status, parental educational attainment, engaged parenting, etc.)

30% federal plus 15% state is also higher than 40%, isn‘t it?

GP is saying 15% state plus 15+epsilon% federal < 40%

I agree, that state is a mess. I happen to live in state with low taxes and affordable school.

Perhaps the european model is better overall, or perhaps there are other complications. Regardless, the debate is not "free" vs "pay private companies". Both models have costs and benefits.

Which state is this? Just curious. Most of us in the Bay Area are here due to our jobs, not because we love the place.

I think they are well able to image that, but it's paid as part of income taxes so the hit when they're not earning isn't as catastrophic.

Also, consider that EU tax collection is comparable (and often lower) than US tax collection, despite not EU not having to separately pay for education and health...

I don't disagree. I am not making a judgement of which is better overall, just that neither alternative is free, or even close to that.

When you consider the totality of costs, inside and outside taxes, European healthcare and education is significantly cheaper for comparable or better outcomes.

See other comments. That may be the case, but it's wrong to frame it as "free" vs "paid".

I'm not framing it as free vs paid. I'm framing it as public vs private. The public sector just does some things better.

No one in Europe is under the illusion that public services are free. This is a complete strawman. But they are much more cost-effective than the alternative, a lot of the time, and provide universal services to everyone and help maintain the social fabric of a society.

> That is a supposition that proves to be false.

To date, that may be true. But give it a few decades. With the GI bill and the immediate post-war boom the US is arguably ahead of Europe in terms of the "college access for all" mindset, and cost of college only really became near the turn of the millenium (note that college debt is a "millenial" issue) and unbearable around 2005-2010 or so; so US colleges have had a bit more time to hone the fine art of rent-seeking.

> Also, I would like to notice, that for European tax-payers it is an investment. That money spend in education brings back way more money that what the original cost was. So, to just talk about "cost" misses the point.

How do they know this is the case at the margin? The analyses I've seen of this is usually [benefits of education] = [# of college grads] * ([avg. college grad salary] -[avg highschool grad salary])

Which has two large fundamental issues. One that college grads are differently from highschool grads in ways besides education, and probably the people most likely to go to college are the ones that would benefit from it the most.

Not to mention several posts have talked about how much better educated Europeans are despite the U.S. spending significantly more money on education than any large European country.

The Swedish report "Education and Economic Development - What does empirical research show about casual inter-relationships?" https://www.regeringen.se/rapporter/2005/12/ess-20054/ asks a similar question and starts its conclusions as follows:

"Our results are potentially contradictory. On the one hand, we have shown that the best studies which used variations in education between countries and regions – here we consider recent studies to be more reliable – indicate that there are no strong external effects from education. On the other hand, we have pointed out that there is strong evidence that education leads to improved health and life expectancy, politically more active citizens, lower crime and possibly that the children of educated persons become more productive. One explanation for these seemingly contradictory results may be that the favourable effects of education are not sufficiently strong to have an impact on economic development. It is also possible that the traditional measure of GDP is too narrow (and perhaps insufficiently stable) to capture the favourable effects."

> To have a centralized state sponsored education or health care system allows it to be more efficient that smaller for profit institutions that have incentives to increase cost to the students as their profit depends on that.

There is a major flaw in this argument: mixing incentive with potential. Yes, governments have the potential to be more efficient due to scale, but there is no incentive to do it. Smaller for profit institutions don't have the economy of scale, but have the incentive to be very efficient. In the end, private institutions need to be extremely efficient to compete with the free state colleges in Europe, while free state colleges have zero motivation to improve and compete, their money is a given.

> while free state colleges have zero motivation to improve and compete

Couldn't this argument be extended also to primary schools? Shouldn't they too be profit-maximizing businesses? Or are they already?

This would be a valid argument if the only incentive for human action was money. Since we know that to be false makes your argument invalid.

>To have a centralized state sponsored education or health care system allows it to be more efficient that smaller for profit institutions that have incentives to increase cost to the students as their profit depends on that.

An institution whose survival depends on profits is incentivized to...reduce costs, not increase them. All profits are, are the difference between what is consumed and what is produced. Either your argument is: institutions who produce more than they consume are bad or a service provider ("centralized state education") can be granted a monopoly to the service and will, more efficiently, produce the service. Typically monopolies charge monopoly prices (bad for everyone except the monopolist), if the granted monopoly has its prices legislated to address these concerns (the case in Europe), it must sacrifice either on {cost, quality, quantity, quickness of delivery} of the product.

If you really do think that monopolized industries outperform markets with "wasteful profits" you might study the history of the CCCP and democratic welfare states.

The market manipulation that started in US education is a result of price fixing -- the price of education is a molested price: service purchasers don't select on electing a provider based on cost because that market price has been pushed up by government-secured debt to which a party cannot default on (otherwise know as selling yourself into slavery). Since producers have less competition on price, they compete on quality, quantity, and quickness. It's the same issue that resulted in the FAA price-setting airline tickets - airlines couldn't compete on cost so they had an ever increase set of luxury options to attract customers.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_deregulation#Civil_Aer...

https://fee.org/articles/the-effects-of-airline-regulation/

No, the cost to tax payers in Europe is less than what people in USA have to pay the college.

This is because my University (in Europe) had no sport facilities whatsoever, not even a soccer field. It also had no dormitories, canteens, no fancy library, sport teams etc.

It did teaching + research, and nothing else.

For reference, cost in France is about 11kE per year for undergraduate and 22kE per year for master in computer science engineering. That's what it costs the university per student, not what the student pays (up to 1k a year). This doesn't cover accommodation or canteen since that's not part of the university.

I don't know what's the cost in the US but I don't imagine it's orders more. The worst number I heard from coworkers was 60k$ a year in NYC (that's easily triple income and taxes compared to France so not a straight comparison).

That's roughly how much public in-state universities cost in the United States on average[0]. Some states are significantly cheaper.

[0] https://www.valuepenguin.com/student-loans/average-cost-of-c...

Wait. You're comparing total cost in France, to cost at the point of use excluding taxes in the US. Education in public in-state universities is also highly subsidized.

Those state subsidies have steadily been eroded over the time period under discussion--part of why tuition has increased. At most large state flagships, public funding is now a significant minority of revenue.

Right. But you still can't compare US price without subsidies to French price with subsidies. They are still a significant minority, about 30-40% of what Tuition brings in.

Besides, public funding given a year ago still factors into costs today.

Is it highly subsidized? Any reason to think that is the case?

It is indeed highly subsidized, to the tune of billions a year. You can read the Financials online.

Do you mean subsidized in the sense of student loans backed by the government?

No. The link I was replying to was referring to State Universities. They are owned and partially financed by the government.

Sure. But what I'm wondering is what subsidies you're referring to. Are you talking about grants and loans that students get, or maybe federal grant money for research?

These organizations literally directly receive money from the government. Students grants are a factor too, but they are owned and financed in large part by the State. That's called a subsidy. They are losing money, that the taxpayer shoulders.

Ok. So I looked at the FY19 budget for one of the universities I attended and for the overall budget of $7.3 billion it's broken out like this (numbers are rounded). [1]

Tuition and fees -> $1.8 bb

Government appropriations (it looks like this is what you're referring to as direct subsidies?) -> $ 470 mm

Grants and contracts -> $862 mm

Sales & Services University -> $543 mm

Sales & Services Health System -> $3.3 bb

Sales & Services OSU Physicians -> $480 mm

Gifts and Endowment -> $380 mm

Negligible other items -> $100 mm or something.

So what subsidies are you referring to? Happy to look at a different university if you want to provide an example.

[1]https://busfin.osu.edu/sites/default/files/12_a_fy21_budget_...

-edit-

Unfortunately I can't reply, but I'm not sure why you're only considering government appropriations with respect to tuition instead of the entire budget. Seems a bit selective to me.

Yup, government appropriations is about 38% of tuition. Part of tuition is also paid for by the government via various programs.

So if you want to look at total cost starting from the average amount a student pays as tuition you have to increase it by 38%. There are of course other intangibles paid for by the government such as the initial investment, often the land and a part of the endowment too.

So it is consequence fair to say that that tuition in state university is subsidized by the government.

Right -- in the context of Europe, high quality means high education quality; it may not be high quality in the sense of all the frills Americans usually expect out of the college experience.

>had no sport facilities whatsoever, not even a soccer field. It also had no dormitories, canteens, no fancy library, sport teams etc.

Sports teams and dorms are no where near the top of the ticket of University expenses. Many of the Ivies hardly invest in sports and still come with a 60k ticket.

American private universities are more expensive because American universities hire more administrative faculty and pay them more. That’s largely where the money is going.

> Many of the Ivies hardly invest in sports and still come with a 60k ticket

Believe it or not, at some of those Ivies, the cost per student exceeds $70k/yr, and is covered by overhead on grants, endowment, and other donations.

Ticket price has nothing to do with budget. The schools have endowments and scholarship for rich students to pay more while poor students pay less.

Idk. People say this but are sports the real cost driver here? Many sports programs in the US pay for themselves and more or might be close to break even.

We also have Title IX (1) which in some cases will lead to increased costs. Not to mention we have, you guessed it, a Title IX coordinator at every university that has to comply with Title IX who probably makes $50,000 - $100,000. If you think about other programs at universities, you’ll see quite the glut of administrators.

https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/advocacy/what-is-titl... (1)

The US education system is really just screwed up by free, guaranteed government loans. If we just made loans dischargeable then most of our issues would go away overnight. The issue you have here though is that we are concerned about access to affording college for those who have to take out loans, but this route we have just makes college increasingly unaffordable. It’s a viscous cycle. I think stopping it is the way forward.

Most likely sports are going away at US universities. Big football programs will stick around though because the make a killing and people generally love them. Men’s basketball too because it’s relatively affordable. For reference, as I’m watching Bloomberg there was a report that came out suggesting star quarterbacks at major Us football programs at the collegiate level should be compensated at around $2.4 million dollars. We won’t have a men’s rowing team, or women’s volleyball anymore though. Kind of sad since these are also used as Olympic training programs. But maybe we will change how we do things. I think the US will start losing a lot of sports talent though because the infrastructure isn’t there outside of the university system.

> We won’t have a men’s rowing team, or women’s volleyball anymore though

Universities in Australia generally have sports clubs where students play sport at an amateur/non-professional level. And that can even involve a representative team that plays the sport with students from other universities, even a handful of sports scholarships for promising athletes. That doesn’t cost the university that much at all, because unlike many American universities they are not trying to field a professional level team, just provide students with a recreational break from their studies, some exercise and socialising

Yes, most lose money and average losses are projected to increase. Here’s an NCAA study: http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/growth...

> We won’t have a men’s rowing team, or women’s volleyball anymore though.

Why not? Can't they be funded in the same way as intra-mural sports i.e. by the athletes?

Title IX (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX#Equity_in_athletics) has pretty broadly been interpreted as meaning equal funding. So scholarships you allocate to men's football needs to be equally funded in women's scholarships. IDK what the OP is talking about, beacuse there's no way the status quo changes until Title IX is repealed.

Equal funding, yes, but not necessarily to the same sports. They're allowed to take into account interest and participation. Otherwise, wouldn't we see million-dollar coaches for women's college football teams too? (I actually don't know of any women's college football teams, for that matter)

I never said equal sports; but pretty much any women's sport doesn't draw in enough ticket sales to justify its existence based on profits alone.

Almost no college sports, men's or women's, are profitable. I don't understand what you're trying to say.

Afaik, only few super winning sports programs are earning. The rest of them costs money.

Probably 20-30 I’d say safely make money. For the others, it depends on how much it costs. Like if they are in the whole $100,000/year they could instead fire an administrator, or ask alumni for donations.

I have to think most universities aren’t losing too much money or they’d cancel the sport already, but I think with COVID-19 this is going to happen across sports in college anyway,

One theory goes that the whole "College ranking" apparatus has created a "race to the most affluent" situation, since high tuition costs have no negative effect on a College's ranking, and if you don't spend on facilities and things to up your ranking, then you'll lose customers to the competitor who does.

Aren't college rankings mostly using the bullshit "citation" metric, for which researchers optimize by forming citation rings? [1]

[1] not to mention self-citations, which is probably half of all citations in the US vs roughly 1/4th of them in most other places: https://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php?order=au&ord=desc*

> The cost is low for the student but it's pretty high for the taxpayers.

Well, not really. In France for example, the cost per student per year looks like the following:

* Classe preparatoire (math & physic 2 years course to prepare ranked for Engineering schools): ~15K euros per student per year

* Engineering Schools: 10 to 25K depending on the specialty, with a few prestigious schools (Centrale Paris, Polytechnique, Mines de Paris, etc) in the 30 to 60K bracket.

* Literacy student in university: 5 to 7K

* Math or Physic student in university: 10 to 15K

* Business School: 15 to 20K

However, keep in mind this figures don't include housing.

Apart from Business schools and less prestigious engineering schools, most of these are public schools with low tuition fees for students (even if these are slowly increasing, Centrale Paris raised them to 3.5K recently for example).

Also, cost apart, having public schools with low/no tuition fees helps keeping open opportunities for everybody, and mitigate social and economic aspects.

It reduces the "my parents don't have the money to allow me to go through university" or "do I really want I 200K lawn from the start of my professional life?" aspects.

It's just better at giving more equal opportunities to every students, minimizing somewhat factors that are outside of their control like the socioeconomic background of their parents.

Don't get me wrong, it's far from perfect and these factors still play an important role, but at least it's an effort in the right direction.

> bouncing in and out, not bothering to finish it or prolonging it till their thirties

Very rare. Mostly because school is not paying you unless your results are super great. Meaning, if you want to eat and live inside, you need money.

Not exactly true. When parents pay your rent and food and University is free some have little incentive to take it seriously.

The parents who do that till yoir 30ties who simtaneously insist on you being formally student at university are rare. Either they cut you off or are fine paying you even if you dont study.

And frankly, my impression is not that American students take school more seriously in average. They dont seem to, the paying money effect seems to be primary demanding more support and stufd from school. Not working more.

If nothing else, the college experience where massive focus is on fun, parties, extracurricular acrivities, fraternities, sorrorities, networking, fun again and sport tend to be American focus.