This is even referred to in loquation's post, by describing it as an ideological problem. I agree, and would pose the ideological question as follows: Should education be treated as an individual investment or a societal investment? If it is an individual investment, then it should be paid for by the student either up front or through debt, and that investment is recouped directly through higher income. If it is a societal investment, then it should be paid for by society as a whole (i.e. publicly funded through taxes), and that investment is recouped indirectly through opportunities that require a more educated society.
He's not.
Its like writing to tell people they are illiterate
> loquation
> Living in a country, where there basically is no college tuition in the US sense and scale, this sounds all so alien to me. There's nothing "utopian" about it. From my perspective, it's more of an ideological problem than anything else.
was responding to my perception that his or her written / implied sentiment was conveying that it's so strange that students would need to work to be able to afford to go to college. That we should have a system where students have a special right to get something for free as an entitlement of society.
Now, whether that is a good policy is a legitimate question. My response was to point out that the above kind of thinking regards students as a special class of people who should be insulated from having to work. While implicitly, it is ok for other people to have to work or pay taxes to fund that privilege. Often that attitude is easy to adopt when you forget who's paying the bills.
You already believe that, you just disagree on the definition on student. Or should we take 14 year olds out of school and send them back into the coal mines?
I'm not differing on the point that free tuition might be a good thing. The (unspoken) point of this story was to suggest that student labor might be enough to make a college solvent.