I was wondering about a certain aspect of free college that is offered throughout the world. I don’t want to debate what “free” means or the merits of different systems in different countries. Assume I’m talking about anywhere that tuition is free or almost totally subsidized. Use your own judgement as to which countries that applies to.
I’m interested in if whatever country you have knowledge of has what I’m going to call a “Shitty Student Clause.”
How do they handle prospective students who want to go to college but don’t have the academic background or even intelligence to handle college?
Do students that fail out have to pay any sort of penalty?
How forgiving is the government of bad performance? Are there various levels of academic probation?
How long do they keep paying for a shitty student?
If you meet the bare minimum how long can you keep going to school while the government pays?
Are there allowances for those who may have failed out at a young age due to lack of motivation, immaturity or circumstances to come back later and have a fresh start?
Basically how do they handle shitty students?
I know there may be many different answers depending on whatever country you are familiar with. All are welcome.
In Germany, if you lack the academic background, you don’t get admitted to the university in the first place. Tuition is free, but that doesn’t mean that just anyone can show up and enrol. You generally need to have graduated from a certain kind of secondary school geared towards prospective academics (as opposed to secondary schools that serve students intending to go on to vocational school or apprenticeships).
No, though they might get kicked out of the degree program, particularly if the repeated failures make it impossible for them to complete their degree in the allotted time.
I haven’t attended any institution of higher education in Austria, but may partner has, and says that the rules are similar to Germany.
I am going to explain the system as it works in one of those smallish peripheral European countries - Latvia.
We don’t have “free college” in principle but each year, the government awards many universities and colleges (both public and private) a certain sum in grants to cover the tuition of some of the students who are either citizens or residents of any EU/EEA country. The number of study slots thus financed is influenced by various factors - political and educational priorities, the demand for a specific program, its quality indicators, existing and predicted number of students etc. In addition, the institution usually accepts a set number of students (depending on available resources) who are paying out of pocket. So there may be, for example, 40 government-funded slots and up to 60 self-funded slots in a particular Chemistry BSc program, 15 government-funded slots and up to 135 self-funded slots in a BA English program, or 150 slots, all government-funded, in a computer science program.
Who gets the government-funded slots - or, indeed, even a self-funded slot in coveted programs with many applicants - is essentially determined by centralised nationwide exams in various subjects which are taken after the final school year. Universities assign various weighted grades to them to calculate the final result. Typically, no essays, motivation letter or separate admission tests are involved. The tests are held once a year and can be retaken later by anyone who wishes to improve their score for future university admission or any other purpose.
Typically, if a person whose studies are financed by the government fails a course, they lose this funding after the semester they have failed to pass all courses. However, this varies from place to place - some only evaluate this element once a year and if you fail an autumn course but manage to pass it in the spring (perhaps the professor decides to hold a repeat exam failed students have to pay to be admitted to, or the entire course is offered in both autumn and spring), nothing changes. However, even if you pass all exams, you may still end up losing the government-funded slot as they are reshuffled and reawarded to the best students of the previous study year. If you have to fund your studies for the next year, there is still an option to “reacquire” a government-funded slot by earning high grades in that period.
There are no limitations as to how often this can be repeated or when it can be started. In theory, one can apply to study every autumn, get in thanks to awesome grades in a nationwide exam a decade ago as these grades never formally expire, and later drop out on their own volition or be expelled due to unsatisfactory performance - rinse and repeat. No penalties are involved and this “educational history” is not evaluated in the admission process.
I knew someone who was admitted to medical school in Italy. Open admission: anyone who wanted could attend. There were a vast number of people in first year. They either dropped out or where excluded: 2nd year was for people who were continuing. The vast number suggests that it was “free” as well as being open, but I don’t have anyone to ask now.
My university education was free in Aus. I had to meet the selection criteria. Going backwards, university was free for about half the students: they met the selection criteria for government-paid places. More recently, I don’t think there are any free places (??? universities may give money to top students ???), but you need to meet the selection criteria for subsidized places. There is a relaxed selection criteria for full-fee places: how much relaxed depends on multiple factors, but there aren’t that many veterinary-science places that they are just selling them off.
These answers seem to apply to countries where students compete for a limited number of “free” slots, but if the US govt. we’re to suddenly start covering all tuition costs, which I understand to be analogous to the situation the OP is referring to, then I assume Princeton would otherwise still be Princeton, Podunk Community College would still be, etc. Wouldn’t admission, academic standards and the like still be determined by the individual institutions?
I wouldn’t assume that there is any country where the government covers all tuition costs including at private universities and those universities can make their own decisions about who to admit and how much to charge.* There are probably almost as many ways for a country to provide a free college education as there are countries that do so , but I doubt if there is a single one that simply pays for everyone to attend whichever college they choose to that will accept them , no matter how much the college charges in tuition or whether the college admits students who are unlikely to succeed.
There are some countries with government -financed but not government-run universities - they may make their own admissions decisions, but they don’t decide what to charge.
In many (most) countries besides the United States, the difference in the quality of universities is much less pronounced. You’re likely to get a decent education no matter where you go (provided the university is offering the degree program you want). Things start to differentiate more at the graduate level, where it’s research groups headed by individual professors and senior research scientists that pull in students interested in pursuing a certain, more narrowly defined field of study.
It’s worth noting that in many European university systems, including Germany, doctoral “students” are not technically required to register as students, which sidesteps the issue of tuition altogether (even though the fees aren’t usually more than a couple hundred euros per term anyway). Most doctoral candidates at such universities are employed as full-time (for STEM fields) or 2/3-time (for social sciences and humanities) researchers, at union rates that ensure a comfortable standard of living. For example, in Hesse, where I did my doctoral degree, doctoral researchers in science get a pre-tax salary of between €50,000 and €80,000, depending on their experience and number of children. Your doctoral thesis is expected to be based on the research performed in the course of your employment, and most professors will count time writing the thesis as part of your normal working hours. In such systems, doctoral students aren’t required to take classes.
It’s not a bad deal, though you can’t drag out your thesis (or subsequent post-docs) indefinitely. There is a law (at least in Hesse, maybe nation-wide) that says a given university can’t employ anyone more than six years without giving them a permanent contract. So if you’re not finished by then, you’re shown the door. (Individual universities may set doctoral thesis completion times that are independent of the employment rule.)
A different sort of “free” exists in the US. Some organizations and jurisdictions will give a “free ride”, paying all expenses, for medical training… IFF the recipient will practice as ordered for a period of years. I was a field medic; the Army offered me free med school for a six-year commitment but I took a different path. Another in my company took the offer for veterinary school. A cousin’s dental school was funded by the state of Nevada for a seven-year commitment IIRC and she stayed there. California’s Riverside County has such a program for medical students.
I assume other nations sport similar programs but I’m too old and lazy to look them up.
This is how the Fort Hood shooter became a doctor. He went to the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Is that where you would have gone?
For the record, I studied at an English University before the introduction of tuition fees in the late 90s/early 00s. University education in Scotland and Wales is still tuition fee-free.
We have admission requirements - required grades, interviews to pass, applications to submit. Don’t US colleges require certain academic standards, or is it all down to who can afford it? Because THAT I would find incredible.
If you don’t have the required academic training or intelligence, you don’t get in.
Each university - or course - has it’s own standards you are required to meet for entry. Otherwise we’d all be rocking up at Oxford and Cambridge on day 1.
No. It’s no different in this regard than school education.
Government has no involvement in judging your academic progress.
Yes. If the university deems you to pass whatever tests it throws at you along the way, then you stay. It’s down to the institution to judge if you meet their standards.
There’s no limit on how many courses you want to take.
They do, but the standards very much depend on what sort of institution we are talking about. I once worked at a for-profit “college” ( it did grant associate degrees) and the admission requirements apparently consisted of 1) have a high school diploma or equivalent 2) have a pulse 3) have the ability to pay, whether out-of-pocket or through need-based government grants and loans. I’m not at all sure this type of institution exists outside the US.
Is there any recourse for those who want to go to college but they are deemed not worthy? How about those who decide they don’t want to got to school at 18 but want to change their life at 35?
Doreen certainly has much more experience than I do. There are for-profit schools that set their requirements at whatever they want. Around here there are public county colleges that are much easier to get into and do give you a good education up to an Associates degree. They make allowances for students that don’t have the earlier academic background so they offer remedial classes that do not count towards a degree to catch the student up to where they need to be to advance.
Public colleges also do this. The University where my wife grew up would allow admission to any student who graduated within the valley it was located in (8,000 sq miles) and could pay or get loans. Since the valley is poverty stricken pretty much all of them qualify for loans equal to full tuition.
When I lived in SW Colorado The college there offered guaranteed admission to any member of an indian tribe who wanted to attend. There were 4 of the largest reservations in the country located within a couple of hours drive. In the case of this college they will waive tuition but not fees for any native american students.
Many US universities have very rigorous admission requirements. However, meeting academic standards is not sufficient to ensure success in college. Even in the best universities there are students who flunk out for various reasons - they can’t handle the more difficult course material without the level of hand-holding they got in high school; they don’t have the maturity to handle the sudden freedom of college with no one but themselves to set schedules and priorities; and so on. I suspect one of the OP’s questions relates to the future prospects of such students. Here is the US it is common for such students to go back to university at a later date, after a few years to mature - sometimes the same university, sometimes one with lower academic standards, and sometime one with programs of studies more to their liking.
In this regard students are no different the world over, but I think the point is that if you flunk out of a government funded course, no one is going to make you pay the funding back. And you can, of course, pick up your studies later in life.
(This is all a bit historic for the UK as a whole now, as higher education in England is no longer free. The government does set the maximum amount that universities can charge though - the elite universities don’t get to charge a high premium).
I meant to mention that- the difference between the public universities in my area with the same policies and the place I worked were that my employer charged a much higher tuition than the public universities (I think it was 3X) and they made sure you “met” the academic progress standards to receive financial aid until your eligibility ran out. Now, one of the reasons for the lower tuition at the public universities is that the universities were subsidized by taxpayers- but another reason was that there was no profit motive. The place I worked actually paid commissions to admission counselors.*
My realization that this and assorted other shadiness was going on is what prompted me to find a new job.
Yes, this is possible in some circumstances. Some federal states provide for a sort of “GED” that’s equivalent to the diploma you get from university-stream secondary schools. Alternatively, if you completed an apprenticeship and became a master craftsman (the highest possible professional qualification), then that’s considered enough to get into university. For everyone else, if you are over 25 then it’s possible in some cases to get into university by passing a standardized aptitude test, though there are very specific rules about who is allowed to take it. (For example, you need to have completed an apprenticeship or similar vocational education and then worked gainfully for five years, or you need to have completed the vocational-stream secondary school and then worked gainfully for seven years.)
Other than the state of Nevada, and Riverside County California, I don’t know of local programs that pay for medical-field education with a commitment. Such a program is not “free”, more like a loan, but the payback is service, not cash. I see jurisdictions offering grants and benefits to trained doctors, teachers, and other vital workers to perform in underserved communities. Who else pays for training?
In the Australian system, you can continue to get government-subsidized funding as long as you advance. You can work as a Uber driver after high school, then go back for a CERT I. Later you can take that to a CERT III, then a BA, MA, and PhD. And, I think, your university can allocate a subsidized place for you as long as they let you enroll – you can fail and repeat. But you won’t, I think, get a second degree, or go back from a BA to a (more useful) CERT III, on a government subsidy – you have to pay full price (or get a scholarship from the university).
Local degree mills at the CERT level, until they are caught and collapse. At the degree level, some suggestion that some institutions are approaching the ‘degree mill’ level for foreign students - it’s an export industry, and a major source of income.
Speaking of degree mills, India (a very large country with a wildly diverse education sector) is notorious for the diversity of quality of their degrees. One suggestion I’ve heard is that when hiring a graduate from India, you should always have a graduate from India on your selection panel, to help you determine that the candidate qualified from a reputable institution.