If many in the U.S. continue to obstruct education (by defunding or by arguing against the value of college) and other countries continue to increase college education, it's not hard to see which countries will have the most educated populations with all the benefits that entails, including attracting and creating the highest skilled jobs.
This has the same problem as most seemingly-good ideas: unintended consequences.
If you give every US citizen who attends a US college $20K/year, think about what happens to popular universities with fixed numbers of slots like Stanford or UC Berkeley. They have every incentive to raise their fees by $20K/year. It would still improve the financial situation of students: the universities would probably use some of the extra funding to ensure they don't price out people who can't afford it. It just wouldn't improve it as much as you might anticipate.
Second, consider who you are giving this money to: college graduates are the top earners in the US. Giving subsidies to those who will be richest is a deeply unfair idea. (Needs-based subsidies to help poorer families afford college and provide an opportunity to join the richer classes, by contrast, does make sense)
Free community college is the way to go. Give everyone an opportunity to see if they can make it in college, and do it at a reasonable cost without promising a fully free ride. Just don't fund it the way the President proposed by raiding the money I saved away for my children's tuition.
Part of 'funding' college for everybody isn't just giving them the money to go to college, it's making sure public institutions have enough capacity to handle those students.
Instead of increasing grants, I think directly lowering tuition cost for public universities would force private universities to become more efficient and lower their tuition costs too... non-zero tuition makes for an interesting tension where public and private can compete in different ways (possibly making the system as a whole better than one with only, or mostly, free public colleges)
One challenge that other nations face is the Community College system. In China, there's incredible competition to get into 4-year universities...mostly because the only other option is to have no tertiary education.
In the USA we have low-cost options, including the 2-year degree and the transfer degree (2 years in CC, 2 at a Uni). We give people the option to only gain a small amount of education, where the burden on them is reduced.
Also, I'm not sure what are the college enrollment rates for people above 40 in China. In the USA, reeducation is as simple as paying tuition.
There is the community college followed by state university combo. This can be quite affordable and help students adjust up to the university system if they were ill prepared in high school.
> There is the community college followed by state university combo. This can be quite affordable and help students adjust up to the university system if they were ill prepared in high school.
People don't get that when you make college free, you also take away a lot of the choice that goes into college. German colleges are free but the kids who are chosen to go to them are often selected by the third grade.
Lowering the cost of public universities while increasing the quality will pressure private universities to do the same, and thus make college more affordable and accessible for everyone -- it's a much better use of funds.
Prep schools are not for university, they're for "great schools" which is a separate system and pretty much unique to the country. Neither prep schools nor the bac are relevant to universities (outside of having the bac), universities are free-ish and anyone can attend (at least the first year, there's no entrance test)
Prep schools in France can be damn selective as well. And prep schools tend to have contracts with universities so drop out from prep schools can be admitted to universities (they might or might not have to pass an exam for that). Prep schools are somewhat equivalent to the first two years of university, with a bit of literature/philosophy and foreign language classes, but prep schools are much intense and exams are harder (disclaimer: I did prep school and a "Grande Ecole", and and also have an Msc from a University).
The German school system divides students into three distinct groups starting in the fourth grade, meaning the decision is made in the third [1]. The three divisions are 1. Hauptschule (central, lower-level school) 2. Realschule (technical school) and 3. Gymnasium (uni-prep school). Once placed into one of these three tracks, it's very difficult to switch between them - more so in the later years, since they each have a different number of years required in order to graduate.
Over the past few years, the system has been changing to allow parents greater say in their children's future, resulting in the same mixups that happen in the United States when parents can override course placement decisions. I can go into more detail on this if anyone wants.
Czech have similar system. It is easy to get into technical university if you know some math. Real hard are humanities, some art schools take perhaps 0.5% of applicants.
Not sure about market. Most musicians and painters I know are self educated and have daily job.
University does not have monopoly, one can always pay for private university (which is not that expensive). But state university is highly selective and most prestigious.
Starting with 5th grade, primary school has 4 years (or 6 in 2 states, and possibly different numbers in experimental cases).
And while switching between the tracks indeed is difficult, it is possible to either gain the Abitur after going to one of the "lower" levels by taking additional years of schooling, or start at uni (especially universities of applied science) without it all. The article you linked gives the (to me surprising, I wouldn't have expected the numbers to be that high) statistic of
> The most traditional route has always been graduation from a Gymnasium with the Abitur; however this has become less common over time. As of 2008, less than half of university freshmen in some German states had graduated from a Gymnasium. Even in Bavaria (a state with a policy of strengthening the Gymnasium) only 56 percent of freshmen had graduated from a Gymnasium.
That said, this early split certainly is a heavily debated topic and in many cases likely is not optimal.
Although this is true, it is only half the story and school system.
You leave out the Fachoberschule, Berufsoberschule (name and curriculum depends on the state) and Berufsschule/Apprenticeship system. While the biggest factor in if someone will go on to study later in life will be if a student attended the Gymnasium from 5th grade on, every single person in Germany has many options to get to a university or university of applied sciences. As for the the schools I mentioned before:
Students from the Hauptschule (until 9th grade) and Realschule (until 10th grade) can attend the Fachoberschule, depending on a certain core GPA and extra coursework for Hauptschul students. Which is leading towards the 12th or 13th grade, depending on if the student wants to attend a university of applied science or a university.
Furthermore, students who do an apprenticeship after the 9th or 10th grade can enter a Berufsoberschule with successful completion of their apprenticeship. These students are often allowed to skip the 11th grade (same curriculum as the Fachoberschule).
Whereas, I have to fully agree that it is hard to switch from Hauptschule or Realschule to a Gymnasium, but it is not impossible and I know multiple people who studied at universities, while starting out at the Hauptschule.
It's just a few programmes like med where people get selected strongly. Even there you can get in if you're okay with waiting for a few years. Usually you just register at the university and begin studying there.
This is a very generalizing argument. Universities are free (paid by taxes obviously) in Finland, but there is no such thing like what you describe. In here the only prerequisite is that you have finished high school, then you can take the entry exams.. It's also not uncommon for someone to go into a university later in their life. My cs courses had a good bunch of people in their fifties re-educating themselves.
It's incredibly bad. ~40% after first semester. 60%+ will fail the first year. That first year is basically a post high-school buffer. Netherlands have a one year gap for kids to cool off and find what motivates them. France should really adopt that.
But that too is a small minority. To be exact, in 2013, 9% of all first year students in tertiary education took a gap year. About 1/3rd of them traveled during that time, most of the rest had a job. And although the data doesn't explicitly say, it does seem like that includes those work for a few months between the end of the school year of high school (in May/June) and the start of the year at university, in September/October or in January, depending on the specifics. I'm not claiming they included everyone with a summer job, just that what is claimed to be a 'gap year' isn't really in many cases, but more a 'I have a few months time and I need to pay for my studies, let's make some money'. A far cry from the GP's suggestion that there is some formal structure to go soul searching or whatever.
Don't know about the drop out rate in first semester, but the percentage of students passing the first year can be pretty low. In medicine, I think it's aroung 10%, in maths maybe 30%.
Space is not infinite, they check your 'file' and admission is based on your grades.
Also, priority is (or at least was years ago) given to people who come out of high school, making it impossible to get into university if you didn't go directly from high school.
According to the "Bildungsbericht 2014" 50% of all persons eligible to enter tertiary education do so [0]. In 2013 51.7% of people in the relevant age groups (18 - 21) were eligible for enrollment in a tertiary education program [1].
These are just some quickly researched numbers. Feel free to criticize!
On a personal note: I am a german student and trust me, even at institutions regarded to be high-tier (e.g. LMU Munich), you will find lots of people that should have rather entered an apprenticeship for example.
You have to keep in mind that Germany has strong apprenticeship programs which include practical on-the-job training half of the time and vocational school the other half. Those are not included in the numbers above.
Americans take it for granted that the level of education at American colleges is extremely variable. Cornell is called "college" but Tumbleweed State Technical College is called college, too.
The education one would get out of university in Germany is equivalent to a top-25 college in the US. On that front, the Germans are doing rather well. How many Americans have a degree from a top-25 institution?
Not in Uruguay. Anyone can go into college without any entry exam nor grades taken into account. Also, there are private universities for those who prefer them.
In Venezuela, there are free colleges run by the government and private for-profit colleges. In the last year of high-school you present a test equivalent of US's SAT, and the result is averaged with your high school notes. You fill a form with three options of profession-college, and according to your score, you're selected.
But the curious thing is that most public colleges are good, and most private colleges are bad. There are few private colleges that worry for academic excellence, but most are for profit. They sell degrees to people who can't get it on the public system. Students unable to get good scores has no other chance. Lazy rich kids who are not interested in studying, go to private colleges, basically, to buy a "title". Professor in private institutions are under constant pressure to pass students, while in public colleges they are free to evaluate according to their criteria (and I know a few professors that work both in public and private colleges).
A friend from India told me that the situation there is similar. I think that here there are profound differences with US and Central Europe colleges, where private institutions have a reputation to keep.
So, I can only say: good for you, Chile! That was the result of years of students' protests. I'm happy they have what we have and what England once had.
If college is free, then admission is strictly on academic grounds. There is nothing wrong with that: in fact, it is ideally the way it should be.
If you examine it honestly, you will see that your argument boils down to, "though I'm not rich, and certainly cannot afford private university, I do have some money and that should give me an advantage over applicants who are better qualified, but poorer."
By the way, even if tuition is free (and even if supplies like books are), there is really no such thing as absolutely free. You have to live somewhere, clothe yourself and eat. There will still be those who don't have time to go to school because they have to struggle to eke out a living.
Free universities are still difficult for the poor because to make the cut, you have to work hard and that requires support. In the world, having more money than someone else will almost always given you an advantage in one way or another.
Exactly. You nailed it. Free universities have indeed this "hidden" fee in my country. Everyone knows that if you are well-off, you'll do better even in our public universities. A lot of poor people simply cannot keep up with working and studying at the same time.
This isn't an argument against public education, but it's evidence that it's not enough. People should be able to take better advantage of this free education.
Sorry, this isn't true in Argentina either (someone already mentioned it's not true in Uruguay).
We have excellent public and free university. Some of its faculties are very demanding, some are bogged down by endless red tape, but the education level is pretty good (according to who you ask, ranked among the best in South America). And everyone can get into university, no grades from high school requirements. The "hidden" fee is that university can be pretty demanding, and if you're poor and have to work to support yourself or your family, it's exhausting and very hard to keep up with your studies; this causes many students to drop out.
Here in Argentina there are plenty of private universities to choose if you wish, some cheap, some expensive. Everyone who's honest acknowledges public university has the better quality (with a few exceptions), but some people just can't have a job and afford the time/dedication public education takes, so they pick a private university with lower dedication demands. And that's a perfectly acceptable choice.
I'm from Argentina (Córdoba) and this is very accurate. I dislike a lot of things in my country but if there is something to be proud of is the universal access to education for everyone and the quality.
There are a lot of things to improve, IMHO some of the plans are a bit outdated and teachers get a low salary.
"kids who are chosen to go to them are often selected by the third grade."
Not really. I had a friend during elementary school and he was advised to go to the Hauptschule (lowest middle school). Right now he is pursuing a PhD program at one of the "elite" german engineering schools.
"Wer will, der kann" (more or less "You can if you want to")
I don't think free college works without some sort of strings attached work. It exists in Austria and the quality of students and colleges is terrible. Everybody and their dog go to colleges now dropping the quality to abysmal levels. There is no proper selection happening.
Unless you're trying to filter out poor people, removing tuition makes selection MORE fair. Intelligence and capability should be the only criteria for selection, not money.
Free higher education is not some imaginary ideal that doesn't exist yet. Take a look at universities in Sweden. If you're a citizen can attend great universities for free, No Strings Attached.
> Unless you're trying to filter out poor people, removing tuition makes selection MORE fair.
You can have tuitions and financing options for poor people. As far as I understand Harvard and other universities operate schemes like that.
> Intelligence and capability should be the only criteria for selection, not money.
More than intelligence and capability it should be motivation. Make the access to university too easy and you have idiots like me taking up valuable resources because they were not forced to make a proper decision about what's good for them.
>As far as I understand Harvard and other universities operate schemes like that.
Harvard is one of the richest non-corporate entities in the world, currently holding a ~$30 billion endowment. Saying "well, Harvard manages to do it" is not useful when talking about higher education on the whole, particularly public education.
>Make the access to university too easy and you have idiots like me taking up valuable resources because they were not forced to make a proper decision about what's good for them.
Even in for-pay schools, intro classes are full of idiots. People willing to sign up inherently have the motivation. If they don't also have the intelligence they should fail and not get to take subsequent classes. If your complaint is that dumb people are allowed to take classes, I don't think that's a problem, unless schools are somehow forced to grade on a curve or otherwise pad the work of students who are not performing well enough.
The quality issue is already happening in the US. With the loans available to almost anyone in conjunction with a "college = success" attitude, everyone who wants to go to college pretty much is, regardless of the ultimate down the road cost.
And these colleges want to retain students for the full 4+ years to get the maximum amount of loan money, so they make the course work easier and easier to keep retention high.
State will only pay for education it finds useful. So there will be lot of engineers and doctors. But some narrow fields might might accept only 0.01% of applicants.
Not saying it is good or bad. Humanities are mostly affected, I guess we only need 3 sociologist per 1 million people. But also entire Germany in 2006 had only 20 graduates who knew howto control atomic reactors.
i had idea, which lines up with basic income ideas, of treating college attendance just like any other 8-5 job. I.e. tough interview, raises based on performance, annual performance evaluations, firing for not performing well. And "salary" paid by taxes.
I get that this is highly unlikely today, but may be when basic income ideas will be more acceptable, something like this could be proposed too.
Yeah, and quite a bit of opium for the uneducated mass.
You need to either be very smart or lucky to come from an uneducated background and probably also have a family that shows virtually no support to 'educate yourself' using the internet.
I'd like to add that right now an even more important discussion in Chile is about the quality of higher education. After the educational laws were modified in the 1980s in order to allow the existence of private universities and technical institutes, many for-profit institutions appeared, even though educational profit is forbidden (institutes found obscure ways to achieve this). A direct consequence of those for-profit institutions was a constant decrease in the quality of higher education, at expenses of overcrowding classrooms or hiring bad professors. People against this new reform argues that government's money should be expended first by fixing the bad-quality the educational system has, and after that is solved, to fund higher education students.
It doesn't really make sense to forbid profit in education (at least the way the Chilean government does it). The best universities in the world make a lot of money (e.g. Harvard, MIT, Stanford). Opening the educational market should create competition and drive quality up. Of course the market should be regulated, but forbidding profit is not really the way to go.
Not sure how me not being smart is relevant to the discussion. I would say you are not very polite, however that still doesn't add to the discussion here.
Top (and rich) universities, like Harvard, MIT, etc, have an endowment which invests donations (and pretty much most of their money), in companies and funds, which would not be allowed under Chilean law.
Additionally, I would argue the idea is not to re-invest in the institution, but to invest the university money in a way that is financially sustainable and in line with the university goals. Spending all the money on infrastructure might not be the best way to achieve that.
Private universities in Chile devised tactics inspired on Hollywood accounting to extract profits: for example they don't own the buildings and pay hefty rents to landlords who are shell corporations of the owners.
1) There's no way Chilean education is the most expensive in the world. Tuition for an engineering degree at the best universities in Chile is around USD 5k/year, which is way cheaper than pretty much any university in the US. (edit: in fact here's a ranking, and Chile is not even mentioned on it http://www.businessinsider.com/hsbc-australia-is-the-most-ex...)
2) The tax hike was a bust and it generated only around USD 2B, a fourth of what it was expected to bring in. Now they are saying they'll tax people for having a degree!!
3) There is no clear plan to actually implement free higher education. They increased taxes hoping to collect additional money from taxpayers (which didn't work), without knowing how they are going to use the funds.
4) Those students leaders that are now part of congress, deceived the people that supported them and are now supporting completely different things than what they said they would when they were leading the people that got them elected. They basically sold out.
5) The article is from February. Only 2 days ago, the president of Chile announced she was asking for the resignation of all of her ministers. No one knows what will happen next.
6) Even though education in Chile is not the most expensive in the world, it has the highest paid congress people in the world, and they just approved an increase of seats!! Talk about inequality (they make around USD 300k/year, when the average salary in Chile is less than USD 5k/year)!
I'm all up for free education for everyone, but the way the Chilean government is doing it is definitely not the way to go.
PS: all discussions about educational reform in Chile are so short sighted that no one has even touched on the subject of online/virtual education and making education cheaper and more efficient.
It's the most expensive compared to the average salary in the country.
In response to your other points: Chilean government fails a lot and the president has 25% rating. So at least they're trying to reset the government.
Also you're looking at "virtual" education from NA/EU perspective but Chile is digitized very poorly compared to "on the edge" countries. Online services are like 2001-2003 US ones.
It's the most expensive compared to the average salary in the country.
Source please.
Chilean government fails a lot and the president has 25% rating
Exactly! so most likely the whole thing will fail before it even begins.
Chile is digitized very poorly compared to "on the edge" countries
Completely agree. So why not start with free Internet access for everyone instead (which should be way cheaper), and then negotiate with organizations like Coursera, MITx, KhanAcademy, Duolingo, Classroom.tv (Chilean), eClass (Chilean), etc to provide access to quality content, in spanish to all of Chile.
"Chilean universities are among the most expensive in the world when measured against per capita income, which is no doubt a factor in the nation’s high dropout rate. It is estimated that Chilean families pay more than 75 percent of the costs associated with higher education, compared to 40 percent in the United States and just 5 percent on average in Scandinavian countries."
I came in here to make exactly your points 2 and 3. They cannot be overstated: they haven't even gotten the budget math to work out yet.
Given unlimited resources, sure, who wouldn't want free universities. But making it work within our real-life constraints means something else is going to suffer for that, and in today's reality it's going to be really hard to make the case that this is a priority. (Especially when many high school graduates are still basically illiterate, so only elite graduates will make it in, which means we'll be further subsidizing the elite).
On point 1) if the average salary in Chile is less than $5k/year then it costs more than a years salary to pay for a years schooling. That is incredibly expensive.
By contrast in Australia it's around $10-12k/year for a local and the average full time wage is $75k/year!
If Chilean education was as cheap as Australia's then a good education would cost less than $1k/year.
You are right, my bad. Actual average salary is USD 10k/year. Also notice the USD 5k/year is tuition for an engineering degree (2nd most expensive - only to med school) at the best universities, so it's pretty much one of the most expensive degrees you can get in Chile.
Also, it is really easy to get a low-interest student loan (which a lot of people don't even pay).
My guess is that access to education in Australia is definitely better than in Chile, but I wouldn't say education in Chile is the most expensive in the world.
Access to education in Australia is definitely better - for most courses entry is egalitarian - students are ranked and preferences orders determine what courses you get offered (it's very different to the US system - you nominate the course you want to take, BS, BA, including the major area and while you can transfer later, relatively few do). Obviously art and music courses often have an audition requirement, and exceptionally high demand or courses deemed to have a desire for 'suitable' people (without getting into a debate about that), such as medicine may also have an interview requirement.
However, the general philosophy is the Higher Education Contribution Scheme. This is a fee that is largely flat, only paid on graduation, as an increased income tax requirement (a few percent more), if and only if your salary is above a threshold. Drop below that and you're no longer paying on your HECS debt. However, you can also voluntarily opt to pre-pay your debt for varying discounts. When I went to school (mid 90s), this fee was $1800/year. Any course at any university, from liberal arts at a country college to medicine or law at the most prestigious of institutions.
For the interest of those unfamiliar with the scheme, HECS-HELP is structured as an income-contingent loan, albeit one with an inflation-linked indexation rather than a real rate of interest.
Re Point 1: Australia is very cheap to get an education - IF you're Australian or a resident. There is a large desirability (especially in conjunction with proximity to Asia and many Asians desire for a 'Western' education) that allows international student fees (which is what the article you quote refers to, NOT the cost of education for your average local student) to provide large subsidies to the cost of education.
How to pay congress is a problem in poorer countries since too low a salary might invite corruption, and too of a good one attracts the wrong people to the job.
Tuition for an engineering degree at the best universities in Chile is not 5k/year but closer to 7k/year. PUC is $9355, UChile is $7964, Santa Maria is $6456, USACH is $6388, U. Concepción is between $5200 and $7000 depending on the type of engineering.
It does not sound like a lot compared to the tuitions in Ivy League schools but is a lot considering average income. It is also important to remember that we are not talking about full cost of attendance but only tuition and fees. I took a look at the tuition and fees in undergraduate engineering programs in the US, Berkeley is $13,878, Caltech is $44,000 (however 91% get financial aid), Stanford $14,728, MIT is $23,200 (30% go tuition free, 56% get need-based scholarships), Carnegie Mellon is $49,610, Georgia Tech is $32,000.
Using the Household net adjusted disposable income reported by the OECD the average US household would be 2.8 times richer than a Chilean one. Given that it doesn't look that it is more expensive than the US, I agree that Chile is not the most expensive but most likely among the most expensive. On another hand, given the particular income distribution in Chile using the average salary might give a wrong idea about how affordable is higher education.
Yes, it's fair. Just like a lot of public works and services are funded by taxes even if you in particular don't use them.
More importantly, fairness is a trade-off. Granting free universal access to certain things benefits the poor and those with lower incomes, even if it's not particularly beneficial for people with higher incomes. That's a good trade-off in my opinion, and in the opinion of progressive governments.
My main gripe with the language of progressive politics is the redefinition of words like "fair."
Intellectual honesty demands that you call things what they are. Marketing demands you redefine things to make people feel the right warm-and-fuzzies. What you did is the latter.
It is fair to the country that a greater number of people have access to good quality education. The lesser unfairness that this causes in the people who don't care about public education is acceptable. Same as the lesser unfairness that public roads cause to people who don't use roads is also acceptable. This is the greater good we are talking about.
"What is justice/fairness?" is one of those philosophical questions that will never be closed. Claiming that there exists some ground truth definition of fair is, frankly, naive.
Terms like "just" and "fair" are over-loaded and refer to an ephemeral concept for which there are multiple, competing explanations and theories. No consensus or ground truth exists, so it's always fair game to introduce new explanations and theories. This has been the case for at least thousands of years.
Progressive politics didn't "redefine" fairness in any meaningful sense. Whose definition of "fair" isn't a "redefinition"? Rawls? Plato?
> . Granting free universal access to certain things benefits the poor and those with lower incomes, even if it's not particularly beneficial for people with higher incomes. That's a good trade-off in my opinion, and in the opinion of progressive governments.
This is patently, obscenely false.
A value-added economy depends on qualified, skilled labor. If the pool of people with higher education is smaller, you will have less potential to develop industries with that requirement. Training costs will fall on companies (which will be onerous and will not supplant a 4-year degree), and costs for the smaller labor pool go up.
It is in the interests of all developing economies to have talent in their workforce. It's a significant limiting factor in many industries in Latin America.
Oh, no disagreement here. My comment was poorly worded. I meant "even if it didn't particularly benefit", but like you said, it's in the overall best interest of everyone in the country that the majority of the population has access to good quality education. And this is true even if you don't think in terms of the workforce.
With an exception, of course: some people would rather the rest of the people weren't as well educated as themselves. That way they can continue paying them miserably low salaries. It's a self-destructive behavior, but it still happens, because some people don't think long term. I didn't want to address this in my original comment.
Read my reply to Daishiman. In the longer term, it's fair to them as well. And in any case, fairness is a relative term. It's fair to the country as a whole.
As a Chilean living in Chile I can tell you this article not accurate and outdated.
There has been enormous troubles trying to implement this reform, last news I had about the current version of the reform was that this "free higher education" was a form of government loan you pay off your job paychecks.
If you read Chilean news, as of yesterday, all the ministers (including the cited interior, education and economy) where asked to step down by the president who faced 70% disproval for a number of other scandals including not holding to this reform original promises. There is a political crisis happening right now and its very unlikely that the education reform launches any soon.
To read about real free higher education ~100 years old, I'd recommend our neighbors of Argentina
What this article doesn't mention, and which hasn't been mentioned below, is that Chile's president, Michelle Bachelet, is a socialist. I am 100% in favor of eliminating fees for public universities by increasing state and federal funding. But this means voting for people who have socialist views. You won't get this from the democrats or the republicans, who are both in the pockets of the wealthy, who do not want to be taxed to pay for education for the middle and lower classes. Unless you're willing to say, "I believe in socialist principles, and I believe education should be without direct fees as a matter of principle or human rights, and it should be payed for through progressive income taxes", you won't see this reality in the US. We are far too neoliberal/laissez faire/anti-welfare state to collectively support an initiative like this, and that is a problem, IMO.
Reagan slashed the top marginal income tax rate, we tax capital at a higher rate than labor, and the wealthy have numerous mechanisms for reducing their tax burden through loopholes in the code. Until this is changed, there are a number of policies that sound nice, but which we can't pay for. But at present, the republicans won't go for it, and the democrats won't fight for it.
I lived in Chile for several years. I think this is a bad idea for several reasons.
First off, one of the things that makes Chile great is that its education system is independant of the government. It results in chileans who are markedly better at critical thinking than americans. (While there one of the things I did was work with high school and college students and of course got to know a lot of chileans.) Their schools are all about education and keeping the people sending their kids there happy-- by educating them.
There is a real effect where the person paying the bills calls the shots. When government is paying the bills, turning out good citizens is the goal. This is why the football players are the heroes of most schools and the computer nerds are beat up. This is why schools are enacting absurd zero tolerance policies. This is why standardized tests and teachers tenure and unions are so bad.
There really is something to the market incentive to provide a better experience at lower cost...
The socialists are in power in chile right now but I don't think that will last long, and the reality is the Chilean constitution is pretty well protecting capitalism. Consequently the government runs a surplus does a great job of providing services and mostly stays out of peoples way... and Chile is the south american economic miracle as a result.
Is this good for the poor people who can not afford it? Will it make a difference? Certainly.
Will this result in a more highly skilled, and a more highly educated population? Yes.
People should still be able to afford private schools if they can now.
The American idea that you can't mix socialism and capitalism is absurd! (urg, just saying these words makes me feel like I'm using outdated old ideas from the 1800's!)
Societies much better than USA are mixing them well with great effect. Selling out your young people with debt is really silly. Having 45% illiteracy in the USA only benefits the people currently in power.
America is a mix of socialism and capitalism, and everywhere that socialism has touched it's been a bad experience.
You give a good example in your response: %45 illiteracy only benefits the people who are currently in power. That's your statement, and who is in power? Who controls the schools? The government. How do they benefit? They have a populace which is sheeplike and easily controlled.
That's the power dynamic I'd like to break.
Home schooled kids do better than public schooled kids and by a wide margin. But instead of burdening every family with having to be a complete school to themselves,s why can't several families band together and take turns? If one parent is an engineer, then they can take a day off or on a saturday teach engineering topics to the groups kids. This would lower the burden and provide higher variety-- this would be a makeshift school at very low cost. Even poor people could do it... but of course that would threaten the government's schooling system and so it's not allowed.
From one side you show socialism as the root of all evil, from the other you propose another utopia: home schooling.
>Then they can take a day off or saturday
Do you really believe that this chaotic schedule would ever work? Every parent have to work somewhere else with an agenda that might not fit. And then? One lesson of a particular subject once a month? Once a year?
>Even poor people could do it.
How? As an e.g what would a janitor teach?
>But of course that would threaten the government's schooling system and it's not allowed.
I think most countries would be happy to do it. Maybe not US.
Say you're a poor Chilean and thanks to this new policy you get a free ride at Universidad de Chile or Católica, the two top universities in Chile. You're well educated, but you've got the wrong last name and no connections - who on earth is going to hire you for anything? Say you start a business. Who's going to give you capital? Who's going to even do business with you, when they've never heard of you or anyone in your family?
This is a way to placate the often-radical student movement in Chile, but I can't see it helping poor Chileans that much if at all. Perhaps they can get their educations and then emigrate to a place with less nepotism.
You can make a lot of connections at university. Along with job offers. Along with special consideration from banks for graduates and even enrolled students.
Will a change be immediate? No. But I've seen the affects in other countries over 10 year period.
It's never a single thing which helps people in society. It's many things at once. Of course if the students need to work to support their families or even to feed themselves, then a free education is going to help far less people. But if those same students don't need to pay for their education, then many more will be able to do so.
You're misrepresenting what that stat means. ~86% of Americans are functionally literate.
It's ridiculous these kinds of claims even make it to HN comments.
Proficient on the survey that derives from, is the highest possible ranking. Proficient on that survey does not equate to functional; anything at or above basic is functional.
About half the 14% of people that fall below functional, do so because of language barrier problems related to not speaking English as a first language.
United States has a functional illiteracy rate of 48.7% according to [0]
The UK is at 21.8% for comparison.
The link you provided shows between 43% and 55% are functionally illiterate (basic or below) depending on which test you look at, for English.
Just because education is poor for people who don't know English as a first language, and just because USA services are not available in Spanish despite such a large percentage speaking Spanish does not mean there is no problem.
Functional illiteracy in the USA is a big problem. The education system in the USA is a massive failure.
[0] Cleckler, Bob (2009). Let's End Our Literacy Crisis, Revised Edition. Salt Lake City, Utah: American University & colleges Press. pp. 15–26. ISBN 1-58982-230-7.
Excuse me, but you're too fast on making conclusions. Also you're totally ignoring the lack of vertical social mobility in the Chilean society because poor people have no chance for education and better jobs for their kids.
> It results in chileans who are markedly better at critical thinking than americans.
This statement is too generalized. But even if it's correct then you can't pinpoint it to education. There's a whole culture behind
> Consequently the government runs a surplus does a great job of providing services
That's simply not true. Chilean government is criticized a lot and the president has very low ratings.
> Chile is the south american economic miracle as a result.
Chile is resource-cursed country with quite small population and low corruption. It's not the government's achievement.
The primary thing inhibiting vertical social mobility in Chile is cultural.[1] I have worked with chilean high schoolers and college students and they have a lot of opportunity that they don't see because they are locked into a specific tract (namely work for a large company.) The only reason poor people would have no chance for education and better jobs for their kids is if government made education illegal. Even poor people can get together and hire people to teach and teach their kids themselveS (imagine home schooling but with a dozen families cooperating)... unless government prevents it.
The internet has made all the information of the world available free... education is cheaper now than at any point in history.
It's true the chilean government is criticized-- I saw the sometimes weekly marches down the blvd of students and communists making noise. That doesn't mean they are right. When you look at Chile's economic development over the past 20 years and its political stability, it's doing better than it's peers. Sure people are criticizing the president, she may be bad, but that's not what I'm talking about.
I think it's silly to say Chile is resource cursed. You would rather the country be poorer? You think economic development is a curse? Yes, it does have low corruption- that's a good thing and that's a sign of a good government, relatively speaking.
[1] This conclusion, by the way, I'm taking from what I was told by people running Startup Chile as the motivation for the program, it may even be in their public website... and it is consistent with my experiences talking to Chileans. I'm not a chilean culture expert by any means!
To a greater or lesser degree. In america if you do a startup and you fail, you're not seen as a failure and untouchable.
In chile that's more the case, and it can really hurt your career.
This is why Startup Chile is such a brilliant program... it's single handedly introducing entrepreneurship to chileans... and the ones I met really liked it.
Chile is corrupt from top to bottom. It's true that you can't bribe the cops, and Chileans are very proud of this (primarily because you can bribe the cops in Argentina), but access to opportunity in Chile is almost 100% dependent on who you know. The entire business class has raised nepotism to an art form.
While free university education sounds good, even going to a top-ranked school like Universidad de Chile isn't going to help much if you've got the wrong last name and don't have the right pitutos.
In India, access to the top univeristies is completely determined by score on an entrance exam. Many major employers prefer to hire graduates from IIT. If you find a way to score well, you can get a pretty good job. Maybe not CEO, but a top-5%ile income.
This wasn't my experience. I got into Startup Chile knowing nobody in chile. Many of the other teams there were south americans from a variety of countries, including chile. I really don't believe that last name was a factor in the selection process (Though I do believe being from south america gives you a leg up these days.)
After Startup Chile there were a variety of follow on funding programs, almost all of which I would have difficulty getting in, but that a chilean would have a much easier time getting in.
I knew chileans who were bootstrapping from nothing (who got none of the funding I got) and I knew chileans who were getting investments. The chilean government supports a thriving angel and VC system there which, as far as I can tell is much better than the one in Seattle, though maybe not as good as the bay area.
Sure it is probably more nepotistic-- in hiring-- but I don't believe that when it comes to startups. And all it takes is a few startups to be successful to create a system where more startups are started each year. And then more are successful and it feeds on itself.
Chile doesn't seem to have much regulation keeping businesses out... so really it's all about being willing to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, network with others and apply to the opportunities for help that are there-- which was pretty vibrant.
> I have worked with chilean high schoolers and college students and they have a lot of opportunity that they don't see because they are locked into a specific tract (namely work for a large company.)
Far be it from me to label large companies a good thing, but people need some amount of stability in their lives to be able to plan any kind of personal projects. In the capitalist and corporatist societies, people are told to get this stability by working as a salaried employee for a very large firm.
If you want people to become entrepreneurs or something like that, you have to offer them a way to do so that doesn't involve risking their ability to eat, keep a roof over their head, and buy medicine for their ageing parents.
We have government-sponsored higher ed in many Eurozone countries and I think they do quite a good job at turning out critical independent thinkers. Using the US as your only point of comparison seems somewhat misleading to me - I'm a good bit to the left of you and I also think a lot of US public education is a shambles.
However, I think there are multiple complex reasons for that and it's not as simple as 'public financing >> intellectual bankruptcy'. Rather, it's a mix of overly-powerful unions, civil war legacy and the extreme politicization of education in the US, a litigation-driven culture, and more. Education in the EU (at least in the western EU) is less politicized and a bit more paternalistic.
Oh, I'd never say there aren't lots of factors. As another person pointed out, culture is a factor too. The US seems to have been in a cultural decline for much of the last 100 years.
You can't make direct comparisons, absolutely.
But, you can make an argument about incentives and that's what I'm doing.
When government is in control you have no choice. You are forced to pay for it and you get what they decide you get. You can't opt out.
When things are privately financed you have choice. Every company has to keep its shareholders, employees and investors happy. They have to do all this and compete well, and that's not easy. But their incentives are more in line with each of those constituencies.
When it comes to government I find little alignment-- even elections have been completely compromised, and I'm not just talking about the rampant election fraud that's been going on since 2001 (when Gore won the election) but is not talked au tanymore-- I'm talking about how the system of elections is set up to deny anyone but the two parties a meaningful chance, and within the two parties their selections at high levels are not really democratic either. (Remember the Nevada republican convention that was cancelled to keep the Ron Paul delegates from voting for him?)
I am making a generalization... but I think history is on my side.
Look at the degree inflation in the USA and the rampant debt that kids are graduating with and yet they can't repay because they can't get good jobs.
That's a distortion that has messed things up... and you would't have it if there was no "free money" of subsidized loans and the consequent incentive to pursue a degree program that would result in you being able to pay back the loans.
> The US seems to have been in a cultural decline for much of the last 100 years.
Can you explain what, exactly, you mean by this? Looking back 100 years, I can't help but see an enormous amount of improvement in culture, at least in terms of the tangible impact of culture on the lives of people living in the USA.
I he think the regards the creation of a federal income tax as the beginning of the end of the American experiment, going by comments in some other threads.
By the other hand, education is probably the best thing in socialism. I'm from Southwest Europe and I know some russians living here that sent their kids to study in their home country, Russia. They say that subjects for 9th grade here, are learned during 6th in Russia. Is very common in my country that kids from Eastern Europe that still made some schooling there are the best students in their class/school.
Making a fast analysis, historically, US colleges are/were full of professors from communist countries..
If that's true, why has it produced such incredibly mediocre end results across the world?
Outside of an extremely small number of countries, socialism-tilted education systems have been complete failures at leading to superior results for people, economy, innovation, and so on.
Or you could make the argument that sometimes the good parts of socialist education systems has compensated for the crappy economic system and the capricious dictatorships.
The Soviet Union could not have produced the science and engineering it did without very good education -- in certain, protected pockets. A lot of it was ideological crap but if your university students arrive on the first day with a basic knowledge of calculus, you can teach them proper physics right away.
I respect your opinions (i've read other comments that you made) but this comment is full of fast conclusions and fallacies. If I could downvote it would be my first downvote ever.
If I had a fallacy or made a "Fast conclusion" please explain it. I don't get this "fast conclusion"... yes, I know more about a subject than I'm explaining-- I tend to be too verbose -- and so I give a quick summary of the reasons behind my conclusion. But that doesn't make them bad (as you imply by grouping them with fallacies).
I think if you make the accusation of fallacies you should show where the error is, in specific, and give at least an argument for why its in error (Rather than merely asserting its wrong.)
Otherwise isn't it kinda like saying "Your thinking is fallacious" which is sorta talking to the person rather than the point.
Is higher education public in America? What's with all I'm hearing about student loans then? It seems that without that, your whole argument falls apart.
The student loan problem in the US didn't exist 15 years ago. It is a big problem now, all due to the US Government perpetually backing higher loan amounts. Student loan debt has increased by about eight fold in that time. About 13% of Americans have student loans, and only about 3-4% of Americans have problematic student loans.
The median student loan debt is less than the cost of a cheap car: $13,700.
Between, say, ~1940 and 2000 the US had both the best university system on earth and it was affordable.
There are still a lot of public universities in the US that are extremely affordable to go to.
Nice libertarian fantasy rant but Chile ranks way below the US in most education measures. For example 8th grade science 525 vs 461: http://nces.ed.gov/timss/table11_5.asp
> markedly better at critical thinking than americans.
>Their schools are all about education and keeping the people sending their kids there happy-- by educating them.
by far the largest compaint against US colleges is that the don't teach students, because the students pay the bills, and the students want to be happy -> amenities and easy grades, not a tough education.
> When government is paying the bills, turning out good citizens is the goal. This is why the football players are the heroes of most schools and the computer nerds are beat up.
What does the government care about football players? Computer nerds are useful, productive, revenue-generating citizens.
> This is why schools are enacting absurd zero tolerance policies. This is why standardized tests and teachers tenure and unions are so bad.
I live in Peru, next door (give or take a few thousand miles), and completely agree with you w.r.t. Chile being very start-up and generally business-friendly, which does indeed involve government staying out of wealth creators' way, and setting up a couple of programs like Startup Chile. Setting up a new company in Chile can be done in a couple of days now, and much of it online.
Peru is following in Chile's footsteps and has had amazing growth for the last 20 years as a result of a radical reforming of government in the 90s, precisely to kill stifling bureaucracy and red tape. Where there was 50% poverty in the mid-90s, there is now about 20%. Even remote farmers are online via their smartphones, and now know what to grow, when to grow it, how to grow it, where to sell it, etc. Tech and free markets have substantially improved people's lives, to the point that anyone who visited around the year 2000 would just not recognise the place today.
It's clear to me that free markets work, and that Chile and Peru are living proof of it. Sure, it's not first world levels yet, but both countries are certainly getting there at turbo speed. Anyone who doubts this should look at the number of highly qualified migrants going not from Chile and Peru to Spain, but in the other direction: from Spain to Chile and Peru. They see it as a place of opportunity where the old and sclerotic welfare systems of Europe have let them down.
Would love to hear some thoughts on that too. I remember watching quite a while ago some really fascinating documentary movie on Fujimori. Really interesting situation, e.g. highly corrupt but without the public questioning their support of him.
Hello das2, sorry for the late reply. Yes, it was down to Fujimori.
It's true that Fujimori is in jail right now, but not for corruption. He's in jail for his overzealous approach to the antiterrorist campaigns that took place in the early 90s.
When the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path, a Maoist terrorist group that nearly managed to overthrow the state in the late 80s/early 90s) were at their peak, Fujimori came to power. Very shortly thereafter, the SL hijacked the Japanese embassy on a night when they had a big event on, kidnapping everyone from the Japanese ambassador to the directors of large Japanese corporations (Toyota, Sony, etc.).
Fujimori ordered a replica of the embassy to be built in the desert, and special forces trained there for weeks in preparation to storm the embassy. The operation was a great success, the kidnappers were killed, only one soldier died, none of the hostages died.
High on this amazing success, Fujimori ordered more campaigns against SL, and managed to pretty much eradicate them from the country. Two campaigns, however, did not go as planned. One at a university called La Cantuta, one in a poor district of Lima called Barrios Altos. Innocent people died in these campaigns, which had received his direct, personal go-ahead. That is what he went to trial for, and the reason he's in jail now.
Fujimori took over when the state itself was a failed state: hyperinflation of both the old Sol and the new Inti, had all but destroyed everyone's savings, political processes were sclerotic, there was enormous bureaucracy, no foreign investment, etc. Fujishock, as it has come to be called, was the process of undoing all this. Fujimori created the new Sol currency which has been a very stable currency ever since. Parliament was closed and replaced with one single congress and a super-simple process of election that elects both the percentage of parliamentary representatives and the president. Bureaucrats were sent home and the machinery of government simplified a great deal.
A lot of investment went into infrastructure, too: where it used to take more than a day for a farmer to take his produce to the nearest city, it can now take just 3 or 4 hours, which means they don't just go once a year but once every month, which puts them more in touch with the market and more responsive to price signals. Many things that would take forever to start (companies, brand registrations, etc.) can now be done online in a couple of days. The country has seen between 6 and 9% annual growth ever since the mid-90s, reducing poverty from over 50% to around 20% today.
Some corrections about the "embassy" crisis... It wasn't SL, it was Tupac Amaru. It wasn't an embassy, it was an official residence. 1 hostage and 2 soldiers died... It's all on wikipedia.
> First off, one of the things that makes Chile great is that its education system is independant of the government.
Well that would depend on the definition of great. And for me, great is not zero class mobility
> It results in chileans who are markedly better at critical thinking than americans. (While there one of the things I did was work with high school and college students and of course got to know a lot of chileans.)
Could you tell me the names of those Schools? Because in my experience, as a Chilean, that happens not to be the case.
> Their schools are all about education and keeping the people sending their kids there happy-- by educating them.
The good, more expensive schools are > "all about education and keeping the people sending their kids there happy-- by educating them."
>> There is a real effect where the person paying the bills calls the shots. When government is paying the bills, turning out good citizens is the goal. This is why the football players are the heroes of most schools and the computer nerds are beat up. This is why schools are enacting absurd zero tolerance policies. This is why standardized tests and teachers tenure and unions are so bad.
I don't really understand what you're saying here. Are you saying that when I pay for my education in a Chilean School I call the shots and I can decide how the education of my Children should be? Well, if that's the case, even for the ones paying, that's only true in a minority of higher-end private schools in Chile.
> There really is something to the market incentive to provide a better experience at lower cost...
Yeah, we have a lot of choices when it comes to education, and among them, a lot of McDonald's equivalents have appeared. I'm sorry, but get real, yeah, there's an 'opportunity for Cheap High Quality', how is the target audience going to realize what's high-quality or not, if they are already uneducated? That's why in Chile, marketing is king for this crappy private universities, they lure the big mass of uneducated with the promise of a better future. In reality, that future, is just debt.
> The socialists are in power in chile right now but I don't think that will last long, and the reality is the Chilean constitution is pretty well protecting capitalism. Consequently the government runs a surplus does a great job of providing services and mostly stays out of peoples way... and Chile is the south american economic miracle as a result.
Dicator Augusto Pinochet and their team designed the current constitution of Chile, who has so many issues that are now collapsing our society. We definitely need improvements, a lot of the Chile that you see now, with a lot of capable professionals etc, is people who got formed pre-dictatorship.
tdlr, it seems that you only just know an epsilon of Chile. Next time you're here, try to see the big picture.
My first thought was "only 27%? The US has a 35% corporate rate and can't afford this".
My second thought was "oh, right, the US effective rate is around 12%".
How will they actually guarantee they collect this rate, as opposed to just scaring off corporations or having them offshore/tax-haven their way to maintaining profits?
How will they actually guarantee they collect this rate, as opposed to just scaring off corporations or having them offshore/tax-haven their way to maintaining profits?
Exactly, they can't, and it already didn't work. Now they are looking to create additional taxes to collect more money.
The US effective corporate tax rate is over 25%, and it's also worth focusing on the median corporate tax rates.
That famous 12% rate leaves out a lot of things and is not valid. For example it only included profitable corporations with at least $10 million in assets, and it ignores state and local taxes.
"Tannenbaum cites a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report showing that, “the effective U.S. corporate tax rate is 27.7 percent, versus 22.6 percent for OECD countries excluding the United States.” However, he fails to note that those numbers were compiled for the period from 2006 to 2009."
"A more recent PwC report, conducted in conjunction with the World Bank, listed the effective U.S. corporate tax rate at 27.9 percent for 2014, while the OECD average was only 15.9 percent."
It would be interesting to know the impact this has in the country.
Do you know if Argentina has better equality and social mobility because of this? Or if the economy does better as a result? Are there private universities in Argentina? What percentage of the population go to college? and out of those who do, what percentage goes to public/free universities? How does the quality of education at those schools compare to private schools (if there are any)?
Yes, there are several private universities in Argentina. While some of them have a very good level, some are pretty much just a means to buy a diploma. That, and especially the fact that they are much older, is why some of the public ones are much more respected (UBA - Universidad de Buenos Aires, UTN - Universidad Tecnologica Nacional - Universidad Nacional de Cordoba) than the private ones.
The main problem with public and free higher education is that at least the first two years, there are A LOT of people assisting who will eventually drop out.
And students coming from poorer families are the most vulnerable, and tend to drop out in a much higher percentage, some of the reasons being:
- they have to work to help their families.
- they have children at a younger age.
- lack the money to take the bus or train everyday (no campus to live in).
- they lack of a solid high school education.
In the end, only the ones who can persist and really have the will to finish their studies will get the diploma. But if they can get it, they will surely have a much better life (economically speaking) than their parents.
Depends on the degree though: Medicine at UBA is a disaster, and other subjects like Accounting and Law don't have much prestige(maybe because it doesn't matter to those degrees).
UBA has its own problems with budget managing, building decay and internal governability issues. Not to mention that is not only free for Argentinians, but free for anyone, which presents extra strains on its budget.
Im all up for free college education tho, it would change the landscape in the US forever if colleges were non-profit oriented.
Many, I took a random class there and had friends there.
1) Decay is tremendous in Medicine: there are pests and cockroaches everywhere. Bathrooms are used very indecently and its not even safe. Girls dont dare go alone to several bathrooms in the building.
2) Under-budgeted: labs are unequipped and classes have an inordinate amount of people for the number of teachers they have.
3) Kafkesque paperwork and Draconian teachers : there are so many people going to medicine in UBA that students get no attention or assistance. The emotional health of med students is disastrous there, people break down a lot.
A few private med schools actually are pretty prestigious and when you study there, you can actually focus on studying medicine and not just surviving an ordeal.
Education quality is generally better in public colleges. A huge part of the population start college, either public or private, but very few finish because it is very hard to complete a career, often taking 8 or 10 years for an engineering degree.
What the hell? I'm chilean, born and raised. I've been in the US for about 9 years and this depicts the problem the US has interpreting latin american news.
Did you guys know Bachelet announced in an INTERVIEW she had asked for the resignations of all her ministers and in the coming days would work on building a new team? Whatever the single quoted person on this article saying Chile will have free higher education by March 2016 is looking for a job right now.
This government is so full of shit not even the president could stand her own ministers!
World: please do your reading first before posting about something you have absolutely NO idea. All this does is give more power to the socialists running these countries for their own power agenda and wealth.
Chile's economy is where it is thanks to Sebastian Pinera, go research it. Like the saying says ... Socialism is a great thing! Until you run out of other people's money.
No matter what Governments try to tell you, nothing is this world is free -- especially education.
There's a general rule in Economics that says whatever the government touches turns to shit. Even if you think that the higher education will be "free", it'll be completely inferior compared to free-market education. In addition, you now have to combat against Socialist propaganda on a daily basis.
It's time for humanity to learn how to solve social problems without a gun to the head.
> No matter what Governments try to tell you, nothing is this world is free -- especially education.
Education is a net-positive investment. That's the reason many people go to university at all. That means that you also will pay more taxes and effectively finance your education in the future. Note that this is no different to government-sponsered student loans, just without the indirection of loans.
> There's a general rule in Economics that says whatever the government touches turns to shit.
No there isn't. That's a political view of some people (more in the US than probably anywhere else in the world) but that's not a hard scientific fact that you make it seem.
> In addition, you now have to combat against Socialist propaganda on a daily basis.
What if I tell you that even in "socialist" Germany there are libertarian professors teaching in universities.
> Even if you think that the higher education will be "free", it'll be completely inferior compared to free-market education
Says who? Also, even universities that are completely paid for by the tax-payer can compete against each other. In fact they do in many countries.
> It's time for humanity to learn how to solve social problems without a gun to the head.
You certainly mean the gun of decade long student loan repayments.
The idea that education is a net-positive investment is completely wrong. Could it be for certain people? Absolutely. Is it for a lot of people? Ask the English majors in the States bar-tending full-time.
Education can be a great thing for certain people. However The idea that everyone should go to college is totalitarian in ideology. You're trying to mold society to what you "think" it should be.
Publicly funded entities by definition cannot compete since the profit loss mechanism doesn't exist. Governments can try to artificially "recreate" the free-market by passing laws, but at the end of the day favoritism exists. It's akin to the mafia allowing the different family bosses to compete for cities -- ultimately there is no competition.
The decision to take on student loan debt is completely voluntarily. Comparing that to a gun to the head is ridiculous. You know what is a fair comparison though? Governments forcing their subjects to pay for other people's student loan debt.
Your third point is the current case in Chile, but you still have to pay to study in those "public" Universities (U. Chile, U. Católica, U of Santiago, Concepción, etc.)
No, no it isn't. Internet isn't a human right. Human Rights to not require any transaction or service. Human Rights are inherent in personhood, they are observed and respected not provided for.
I have the Human Right to speak my mind, it costs you nothing.
I have the Human Right to defend myself, it costs you nothing.
I have the Human Right to own property, it costs you nothing.
Here in Mexico, it is declared in our constitution that it is a human right to have a decent salary... yet most of us Mexicans dont' have it. My point is, anybody can say what are human rights, and I think Chile has the whole right to say education is a human right.
Here in Finland, our education is also free (even for foreigners), but we are now starting to put limits on certain things, like the number of tuition free degrees you can have.
There is now talks of charging foreigners and even introducing basic fees for citizens.
Education is important here because the labour market salaries are strictly based on your qualifications and experience, not your experience or ability alone.
This is why I hope Finland never starts to charge for tuition fees, unless they do away with the qualification based pay scale.
In the future, I think free online education could replace paid education as long as the government recognised the achievements of so called 'self-taught' students. I realise you couldn't do this in full for just any profession though.
I am Chilean. This year I came to live to Bay Area and now I work in a Startup.
There are several misconceptions and thoughts that I want to express.
1. Getting a 'low tax student loan in Chile is easy'
That's BS. If you're in a good 'public' University, it applies. You can get -more or less from the Government- (which behind the camera acts as an intermediare with a Bank) what we call "Crédito Universitario". That is indeed low tax. However, most of Chileans don't go to the top 'Public Schools', it's hard to get in because you have to do well in what we have as a Standardized Test to apply for the University called PSU (University Selection Test). Most of the people in Chile end-up going to private Schools and to get a loan -as far as I know- you have to go directly to a Bank, and believe me, it's not low tax. I've know people having to pay up to 50% more than what their studies costed.
2. There's no class mobility in Chile.
This is true. It's virtually non-existent. The reasons are quite complex, but let me elaborate on one of the factors.
The Universitary Selection Test is a test much like SAT. There's Math, Language, Sciences (including social sciences), etc. When you apply to a university your presentation score is calculated from a ponderation between those tests and high school grades (9th-12th grade). In my case for example, for my Engineering School, it was something like 50% math test, 25% school, 25% Language test.
Since the School education in Chile is incredibly segregated, and there's only some decent schools, guess who are the majority of people who are doing well at this test? Yep, you guessed right, people that come from wealthier families that could afford to put their children in, more expensive and better quality schools.
That people is who get the best scores at PSU, fill up most of the capacity of the top Universities high-paying degrees.
And this is why in Chile, the best careers in the best universities are full of people who are already in a very strong economic position (and from more or less higher class strata). Yes, you will see some very smart guys with a University Credit here and there studying Medicine/Engineering in the top Universities, but they are more in the exceptional spectrum.
3. It's so bad that there's a market for studying for the PSU.
To take on this opportunity, in Chile we have private 'pre-universitarios' which are basically institutes that can charge even 4k a year, to better prepare you for PSU. People often go to them to improve their scores on their last year of School (after school)... again, guess who can pay them?
Personal Opinion:
We need a good educational reform in Chile. Sadly, the actual government is the worst we've had at executing on anything specific in a long time. They tried tackling a lot of very difficult challenges at the same time, and from what I've seen they have failed miserably.
The educational reform that will come out of this, will, most probably, be very watered down. People should pay, what they can pay for their education, that would fix part of the problems that the article correctly linked with the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. My father was born low-class and at his time, he could afford an education in a top university (costed him 0, then he had to work in the public sector to pay the state for his education). This is a reality, that simply doesn't exist anymore, at least not like in pre dictatorship.
But remember that this is not only a money problem, even if it's free... the PSU is still there acting as a filter, and without excellent and cheaper public schools things are not going to get incredibly better.
PS: For the ones suggesting that free internet and e-learning as a possible fix, I won't enter that debate but no, I don't think that can fix for any of this issues in Chile.
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