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[Graknorke]

And the job market means you better be prepared to take that 30k in debt in order to have a degree, which everyone has decided is essentially required. Why? Because of a fundamental misunderstanding of how higher education works. Back in the day, only smart people and rich kids went to college. Both of these groups tended to get successful jobs. Ergo, it is now "college = successful job".
Gotta love correlation being causation.

No, there's... less superficial reasons. In the countries most of us are in the job markets have shifted so that there is more demand for highly specialised labour rather than unskilled. The majority of these require some degree of higher education. It's not reasonable to expect to be able to do something that just anyone could do.

[Sergarr]

There is no one "EU" education system, sergarr.

Yet

Seriously though, wasn't Bologna a step in that direction? And as far as I can tell from all the whining everywhere, it appears to have failed miserably.

Fun fact: the Bologna system has been actually implemented for Russian higher education since 2010 IIRC. And there is whining a plenty around here about it. Mostly from professors complaining about how much more paperwork they need to do.

[mainiac]

And the job market means you better be prepared to take that 30k in debt in order to have a degree, which everyone has decided is essentially required. Why? Because of a fundamental misunderstanding of how higher education works. Back in the day, only smart people and rich kids went to college. Both of these groups tended to get successful jobs. Ergo, it is now "college = successful job".
Gotta love correlation being causation.

If only there were studies that looked into this.

[Owlbread]

Forgive me if I'm acting a little bit weird in consideration to the UK education system, but I'm used to Soviet system where most of higher education is not only free, but they actively pay you money to (theoretically) allow you to spend 100% of your time of learning things instead of taking half-time jobs and things like that. In the recent times, the amount of money they pay to you in stipend has severely decreased so that you can no longer simply live on that... and that's considered to be a bad thing.

But in comparison to UK/EU education system, it appears that we have it really, really good around here. More than 30 000 $ in loans? Jesus Christ. I'd never be able to get a higher education in a system like that!

The Scottish education system has more in common with the Soviet one than the UK one. We have free higher education just like you, although perhaps we have fewer grants than you do. I think we're all the better for it - having free education, I mean. I do wish we had as many grants as you.

The whole "rich kids paying for poor kids" thing is an interesting fantasy. I've got a story to tell about this issue, but I must apologise beforehand because I'm not English and I don't fully understand the system; I may make a few mistakes, given that I'm telling you this story second-hand from a friend.

A very good friend of mine from the South of England is starting university just now in his early 20s after having attended college on and off for several years. The problem is he still lives at home in one of the worst council estates in England with his mother/his mother's boyfriend; she works as a nurse, he's a tradesman. Due to the way that income is calculated, my friend sits just, just within the bracket considered "middle class" by the British state, therefore he is not entitled to any kind of financial support for attending university. His student loans are going to leave him in debt by tens of thousands of pounds before he's even 26, and even with further financial support from his mother (who is strapped for cash enough as it is), the need to pay for accommodation etc is going to leave him with something like -£12 (negative) for food. As a result, he was contemplating becoming homeless for as long as he could until he could get some kind of arrangement together with other students.

In order to avoid paying this debt (which he can never do realistically), he needs to earn less than something like £20,000 until he's 40 years old - then they'll write it off. He's doomed to earn less than that for the rest of his young adult life, in other words. In Scotland he wouldn't have to worry about any of this at all.

I know I'm not very clued-up on these things, but isn't it the case that the more disposable income younger people/young families have (i.e. money to buy things they want rather than need), the healthier the economy? Are the English not shooting themselves in the foot with this system?

[smjjames]

Sounds more or less like the US system. Except maybe the forced to work at less than x dollars until x age when they'll write off the debt, I don't know anything about that here.

[Sergarr]

The whole "rich kids paying for poor kids" thing is an interesting fantasy. I've got a story to tell about this issue, but I must apologise beforehand because I'm not English and I don't fully understand the system; I may make a few mistakes, given that I'm telling you this story second-hand from a friend.

In order to avoid paying this debt (which he can never do realistically), he needs to earn less than something like £20,000 until he's 40 years old - then they'll write it off. He's doomed to earn less than that for the rest of his young adult life, in other words. In Scotland he wouldn't have to worry about any of this at all.

I know I'm not very clued-up on these things, but isn't it the case that the more disposable income younger people/young families have (i.e. money to buy things they want rather than need), the healthier the economy? Are the English not shooting themselves in the foot with this system?

A higher education system that promotes the people who got it to stay in poverty?

What. That makes negative sense.

[lorb]

The original idea is to collect the debt from the higher earning that the higher education gives you. The problem is that some people can't earn enough for this to make sense. (Bad economy and stuff) Those have to somehow get out of the debt on another way. One way is to show them that the debt will never be collectible so it gets written off.

[Il Palazzo]

In order to avoid paying this debt (which he can never do realistically), he needs to earn less than something like £20,000 until he's 40 years old - then they'll write it off. He's doomed to earn less than that for the rest of his young adult life, in other words. In Scotland he wouldn't have to worry about any of this at all.

He's not required to pay ALL of his income above the cut off level! It's basically just an extra tax 9% on the amount you earn above the exempt minimum.

edit:
here: https://www.gov.uk/repaying-your-student-loan/what-you-pay

[miauw62]

I think Belgian higher education was recently raised to about €650 per year. With textbooks, that's about €1000 per year (excluding housing, transportation, etc). This is quite a bit less if you have a scholarship.
Source: a short look at the website of the University of Ghent. Uni costs are the same over the entire country.

[Sergarr]

The original idea is to collect the debt from the higher earning that the higher education gives you. The problem is that some people can't earn enough for this to make sense. (Bad economy and stuff) Those have to somehow get out of the debt on another way. One way is to show them that the debt will never be collectible so it gets written off.

This entire system sounds really unflexible and vulnerable to economy recessions.

Why do universities even need so much money per every single student? Can't they get them through other ways?

I think Belgian higher education was recently raised to about €650 per year. With textbooks, that's about €1000 per year (excluding housing, transportation, etc). This is quite a bit less if you have a scholarship.
Source: a short look at the website of the University of Ghent. Uni costs are the same over the entire country.

Wait, you guys pay for textbooks? We here just loan them for free in a library... 

[Sheb]

Well, you can borrow them, or just buy them to have your copy.

[MarcAFK]

No because they print new editions constantly and you're not allowed to use the out of date textbooks. A library wouldn't want to invest in 100 copies of a $300 dollar textbook that goes out of date in 5 years if each textbook can only be used by one student at a time, that would cost the library $60 per student, per subject, per year they're enrolled.
The whole textbook system is wasteful and overpriced, they should be completely free of errors considering the price and frequency of revisions, but In many cases Wikipedia is far more precise and up-to-date...
Not that I suggest somehow teaching people things through research and hard work, that makes no sense.

[Jopax]

Which is why I love the system most of our professors use here. You have most of the stuff online for free and you can get some of it printed out in small scripts which cost only a fraction of what a proper textbook would. We still have some dickbags who demand you buy textbooks though, mostly because they wrote them.

[Sergarr]

No because they print new editions constantly and you're not allowed to use the out of date textbooks. A library wouldn't want to invest in 100 copies of a $300 dollar textbook that goes out of date in 5 years if each textbook can only be used by one student at a time, that would cost the library $60 per student, per subject, per year they're enrolled.
The whole textbook system is wasteful and overpriced, they should be completely free of errors considering the price and frequency of revisions, but In many cases Wikipedia is far more precise and up-to-date...
Not that I suggest somehow teaching people things through research and hard work, that makes no sense.

$300 dollar textbooks? Are they made out of gold? Here, they cost almost two orders of magnitude less!

I knew that everything was costlier in the Western countries, but this sounds ridiculous. It's almost like the entire system is made to allow only rich people to get higher education, because no way the books should cost that much.

And nobody demands us to buy anything; we can simply loan everything from the library for free.

Is this how it feels to live in a land of communism?

[lorb]

Usually textbooks with that price tag are very specialized and they are so costly because there is only a small number of them printed but need a lot of experts and staff to edit.

edit: and the publisher often has a monopoly in his niche