Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Free tuition at US public Universities?

I live in Canada where we are hugely influenced by U.S. media, I work for an American company and have many friends and family south of the border. I have visited 30 states but I don't live there so take all of this with a grain of salt.

I find it odd that a country that prides itself on the American Dream is in a situation where tuition costs are increasing far faster than inflation. In a global economy you need to have the best and brightest have access to a higher education, not just the subset that can afford it or can navigate the seemingly complex process to obtain a scholarship. Having people not be able to access education because of the cost or having them graduation 10's of thousands of dollars in debt completely goes against what I would think of as the American Dream.

I personally don't buy the argument that having more scholarships or decreasing tuition decreases the worth of the education. There were several posts early on in this thread from people in countries with free tuition and I don't believe any of them felt their degrees were any less because of it. Having free, or affordable, or more merit based scholarships doesn't mean you'll all of a sudden have 90% of the population getting a degree. It means that the people with the marks CAN apply to go to school. They still need to either put in the effort to get the marks, maintain the marks for 4 years and get the degree. The change is that you remove the "and afford it" from the above equation. The problem is that it is in the best interest of those currently with money to keep it as is when they can afford to pay. Having it more affordable will likely mean the bar will raise and perhaps exclude their kids.

I paid $7000 for my degree (would be ~$30000 if I were starting today) - that is all 4 years combined. The admission process was (and still is) submit 5 grade 12 level marks (some departments specify exactly which 5, others have things like 2 from this group and 3 from another). In grade 12 50% of the class mark for the core classes are based on a provincial exam so they can try to limit grade inflation and regional differences. They then rank everyone based on the marks and go down the list until they are full or they reach their minimum entrance grade. That's it. For top schools the bar might be in the 90's, the rest it is in the 80's. There isn't a write an essay, tell us all of the awards you've won or how many drowning puppies that you've saved part of the application. I paid for almost all of it with scholarships and some of those were based on essays and awards but many were just one thing - what is your GPA? I work with people who went to top U.S. schools and spent considerably more than that. Do I think my degree is worth less? No, I just got to the same spot with thousands in the bank to travel, buy a car and put a down payment on a house. Not bad.

Then again I've chosen to remain in a country where I pay way more taxes and I've paid for more than a few kids to go to university by now with those taxes. So perhaps my degree wasn't so cheap in the end I'm ok with that. We're all socialists and communists up here anyways