[gonzobonzo]

> For those who don't attend the prestigious universities with large endowments, average in-state state-run University tuition is under $10K, though again a large percentage of students receive some form of aids or grants to bring that number down even further.

This is an extremely important point that keeps getting ignored. People keep comparing _public_ schools in Europe to _private_ schools in America.

To further your point, just about every place has a community college where you can do the first two years of your education for about half the price of the state school. The total tuition for this route (2 years at community college, 2 years at a state school) is going to average just under $30,000 for 4 years. Which is definitely in the "work your way through college" range.

And this is before any financial assistance, which the majority of students receive.

Foreigners talking about how crazy expensive college is in the U.S., but they're likely mislead by people who took out large loans to go to extremely expensive private colleges. There's an easy way to stop this kind of debt - don't allow federal loans for private institutions. But no one is really interested in stopping it.

[amarant]

>People keep comparing _public_ schools in Europe to _private_ schools in America

Not necessarily the case. In Sweden private schools are paid for by the government, assuming they have been approved by the CSN (central agency for study-support(rough translation))

I don't know how that works in the rest of Europe, because I've never studied outside of Sweden. But in Sweden it doesn't really matter if the school is private or public. The only instance you have to pay yourself is if the school isn't sufficiently good to pass muster.

Also, again in Sweden at least, but possibly other parts of Europe as well, the tuition isn't effectively $0. The government will pay any student enrolled in higher education a monthly support. Back in my day it was 10k SEK per month (roughly 1000usd), no strings attached. Not sure how it currently stands but I imagine it hasn't changed much.

This money is meant to ease the burden on students, so that they can put more focus on studies.

"Working your way through collage" over here means you'll have a 20% job to pay for your cost of living minus the 10k SEK mentioned above.

The difference in cost of study is quite real, even taking your comment into account