I saw a post on Facebook today about how other countries (namely Germany, Finland and Denmark) provide free access to university education to their citizens. So I did a little research here.
While I agree that the nearly 7% interest rates on student loans is criminal, and I content that the availability of student loans has allowed the tuition of even public universities to grow at nearly 3x the rate of inflation for the last 30 years creating a situation where paying for college is a tremendous burden on the middle class who earn too much to qualify for “real” financial aid.
As difficult as it is for us to hear, the reality is that Germany, Finland and Denmark on income and sales or vat tax – are much higher than the US for comparable income. So if you want to pay 25% sales tax instead of 8% we probably could afford free universities.
I really don’t want to pay the kind of higher taxes that other developed countries pay. However, I think that in the information age, university education is becoming more and more essential for the kind of growth careers that are emerging.
Every politician says they want to fix it, but have you heard a concrete proposal from any of them?