Originally Posted by indigo
Some may say that the 10% or more who do not go to college, yet pay taxes to fund college for other individuals (under the plan mentioned above) may be seen as a form of servitude or slavery: Taking advantage of less fortunate individuals to fuel greater gains and prosperity for more academically inclined individuals.
As I said we're all socialists and communists anyways so we're ok with that wink More seriously though, yes most people pay taxes but we have a far more progressive tax system so statistically speaking the ones that didn't go to university on average make less and pay far less in taxes than those who did go to university and on average make more. Our education isn't free either so they are paying for some of that as well. You have State schools that don't charge $50000 a year so presumably the real cost of education without subsidies is not $50000 but some schools can charge that so they do.

This however got me curious so I looked up how many people complete post secondary on both sides of the border - http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/090908/t090908b1-eng.htm In the 55-64 age group the U.S. ranked first with 30%. Looking at the 25-34 age group both Canada and the U.S. increased the percentage but dropped in overall ranking (the U.S. dropped to 8th place and Canada went from 4th to 12th) as other countries increased their numbers.

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Those who were attending college and receiving the benefits of higher education also paid the costs, which were rather reasonable until recent years. For decades, it was possible for students from all walks of life to work their way through college.
I totally agree with that. It is the concern that it is becoming unreasonable that seems problematic to me. I would argue that the U.S. is still producing a similar number of university grads but when they raise the bar of what afford means to a really high level I think they're missing out compared to countries with similar graduation rates that somehow kept the pool of possible candidates to draw from much larger.