A man I respect quite a lot used to say that college should pay a full-time wage to the students. It should be challenging, it should be a real education (which a lot of modern college is not), and in exchange for that, if you are improving your understanding of the world and your ability to contribute to society, that should be something that society pays you a pretty decent wage for, because it's a fucking valuable activity.
this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2025
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This may not be a popular opinion but I personally reject the belief that universities have a monopoly on education. In fact I think most are designed to create a more compliant employee.
That said libraries are free, piracy is free, YouTube hosts millions of lectures by experts in their field and can be downloaded to watch or listen offline. I personally have spent the past couple years learning about the affects of US imperialism and haven’t spent a cent on it
Self teaching isn't a replacement for structured education. Making children pay money for school because the library is free would see literacy rates drop and is a brain dead take.
In my country at least public education is free. Higher education is paid for, I don’t think it’s a radical belief that learning takes place outside of university
So why should the financial burden of education be placed on the uneducated. That's what I'm asking here.
Ok, well that’s certainly not how you phrased it in the original question man. You kept it pretty vague and relatively open to interpretation. Might have been worth narrowing the scope a bit
Formal education isn't for education but for the formal paper. There is so much information on the web, just learn from that. Also, libraries often times have material other than physical books
It doesn’t.
It takes time and effort to gain more knowledge. It has never been cheaper or more accessible to acquire knowledge than it is today.
To increase your intelligence, is another matter all together.
I would also add that damn near all of human information is free to be had on the internet for the low, low price of a monthly broadband bill. The real expense comes when you want a piece of paper that says you know all this that other people will take seriously.
Here in Sweden education is free, and the government provides a (small) monthly payout to students.
Here in Sweden education is free
Free at point of service. But it's 7% of Swedish GDP, with all of that coming from public coffers.
Compare it to the US, which spends only 5.5% of GDP on education, with the majority on the heavily privatized university level.
The math gets worse when you look at student/teacher ratios, administration overhead, building construction, and spending on extracurriculars like sports.
Americans spend less overall than their swedish counterparts, but far more on amenities that have nothing to do with the actual mechanics of education.
According to my American economics education, this proves the American system is actually more efficient. Swedes would do better to adopt our model, if they want to be A#1 Liberty Whiskey Sexy, like we are.
You can't just compare GDP spendings and call it efficiency without accounting for the output.
Does the USA educate the same fraction of their population as Sweden? Otherwise it's comparing apples to pears.
Not that efficiency is the top priority in my book, but sure, it's not an unimportant metric by any means.
edit: ... am I being Poe's lawed here?
Does the USA educate the same fraction of their population as Sweden?
I guess that depends on how you value "Business School" as an education model.