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CTRH's avatar

Really great overview of the relative differences between the Finnish and American higher Ed systems. I've been reading Alex Usher's work on higher education here in Canada, he has a podcast on it called "The World of Higher Education". Do you know where I can get a breakdown/overview of thr Finnish educational system? I'm interested in the high school system as well.

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Steve's avatar

Back in the 1970s the U.S. had a better-balanced system for financially supporting students. Depending on your (or your parents') income level, you could potentially get a grant as well as funding for a "work-study" job in addition to loans. Students could also be eligible for food stamps. If you were careful you could potentially earn a bachelor's degree without going into much, if any, debt.

When Reagan was elected president he cut back on financial aid in a variety of ways. My impression is that those cuts have never been fully restored.

Meanwhile, tuition has skyrocketed even at public colleges and universities, which are generally funded at the state level. States -- which often have laws requiring them to balance their annual budgets -- have tended to see tuition increases (perhaps accompanied by increases in state-level financial aid) as politically easier to pass than cuts to other parts of the budget.

A big part of the reason why may be that a university has the ability to generate its own income through tuition and fees whereas many other government functions cannot. It hasn't helped matters that student loans are often administered by private, for-profit entities who would be quite pleased to grow their business.

Why not increase taxes instead of cutting budgets? That can be hard to do even in relatively "blue" states. The state where I live is usually controlled by Democrats but voters also often pass initiatives that make it much harder to increase taxes.

One could argue that the increasingly large amounts of student debt in the U.S. reflects a redistribution of society's costs onto young people. The financial burden has been making it more difficult to start families and buy homes, which hardly helps the economy. We also have worker shortages in some professions that require degrees. If we want more teachers and mental health counselors maybe we should make it more affordable to become one?

So, yes, I think your ideas are on the right track. It's just hard to fix our system because it is so big and complex . . . and political reactionaries have a lot of power. For example, I would expect the Supreme Court to unplug Biden's debt-relief plan for legally dubious reasons.

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