In my day, it was not unknown for Americans to do their degrees at European universities for free. There are still some countrieswhere this is possible, but access is now so restricted that you need monstrously good grades.
Many universities outside the US still offer better deals in terms of tuition fees.
Here’s my issue with all this - endowments.
Many prestigious universities are sitting on massive endowments. Rather than charge their enrollees $50,000 a year, they could afford to give the education away free, and pay the students while they are at it! They have got us all so spun around trying to figure out how to pay for education by mortgaging our entire futures yet they just pour it all onto their money piles. Fuck them!
Yes, of course, not every college or university is sitting on massive endowments. State and city colleges are certainly not. But the entire system is broken in major ways and we are killing ourselves trying to adapt.
University endowments are not a bad thing. While wealthy universities have a ‘sticker price’ many families will not pay that price.
The real scourge of higher education is the abundance of for-profit colleges. They accept everyone and charge exorbitant tuition rates. http://www.laweekly.com/2012-08-16/news/for-profit-colleges-federal-money-scam/
This is also an informative piece about for profit colleges. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/
Of course it may be necessary for parents to take out loans to pay for their child’s school but many take out loans who shouldn’t. http://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-govt-is-saddling-parents-with-college-loans-they-cant-afford
Or you could study hard in high school, get a scholarship, and work to pay the remainder of your living expenses while attending (a reasonably-priced in-state) school like I did and graduate with no student loan debt.
Reported.