[StackRanker3000]

> For an extreme example: Harvard's tuition is nominally $60K per year, but for families earning $200K or less it's $0. Many prestigious universities follow similar patterns resulting in a large percentage of students paying no tuition, the middle ground of students paying some fraction, and a small number of students from wealthy families subsidizing everyone else.

As someone from a country (Sweden) that to a larger extent has decreased people’s reliance on their families, and grown the welfare state instead, it’s weird to think that your parents wealth or income should have any impact on things like tuition, once you’ve reached the age of majority

Once I finished high school, my parents had nothing to do with my business as far as any institutions were concerned, and vice versa. But uni was tax-funded and free at the point of use. And when they get too old to care for themselves, it will likely be the government supporting them financially, not me (unless I strike it rich first, in which case I suppose they’ll spend their sunset years in style)

[tptacek]

There's always this subtext that Europeans solve these problems just by caring more about human values, but the truth usually involves interesting sets of tradeoffs. So in Europe the norm, besides free university, is extensive tracking: in the US, your choice of major is essentially a consumer decision, where in many European systems it's fixed at a relatively early age by your performance on things like the Abitur.

I'm not saying the European system is bad. Certainly there's a lot to complain about with a system that asks 18 year olds to make life-defining decisions about both their career and their financial prospects. But the differences do go beyond whether or not you're on the hook for your tuition.

[cycomanic]

I don't quite understand what you mean by "tracking". Speaking of Germany, because you mentioned the Abitur. Yes your ability to enter certain universities and studies depends on your performance during the Abitur. That is to enter e.g. law or medicine at you chosen university immediately (there is a wait time multiplier, so you can wait if you don't get in immediately) requires a certain grade point average. However I don't understand how this is different from SAT scores in the US (except for maybe the ability to bypass SAT requirements by being super wealthy, but I'm not sure that would be a good thing). In my experience kids in the US tend to be obsessed about their university choices much earlier than the ones in Europe.

Also talking about Germany, unless things changed dramatically in the last few years, most natural sciences and engineering degrees don't require a grade point average.

[fn-mote]

I agree that European schools are heavily tracked, but I’m not seeing the connection between that and the tuition costs.

It seems like these are unrelated issues.

Does the wider freedom of choice in US education somehow cause college to cost more? Because more people want to go?? I don’t get it.

> Europeans solve these problems just by caring more about human values