posted by
LaminatorX
on Monday November 03 2014, @06:43PM
from the got-your-passport-all-squared-away dept.
from the got-your-passport-all-squared-away dept.
AlterNet reports:
Two-thirds of American college students graduate with college debt, and that debt now tops $1.2 trillion. By every indication, college is now more expensive than it has ever been, out of reach of not only poor Americans, but even middle class ones.
[...]there are many places abroad where [...] Americans can study for free or at very low cost--and in English!
Brazil
Germany
Finland
France
Norway
Slovenia
Sweden
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These 7 Countries Will Give You a College Education for Free
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(Score: 3, Funny) by francois.barbier on Monday November 03 2014, @06:49PM
'Murica first in college debt!
At least they got that...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by barrahome on Monday November 03 2014, @06:55PM
You forgot Argentina and Cuba too.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Tuesday November 04 2014, @08:37PM
Cuba isn't so much "free education" if I'm not allowed to travel there by my nanny state. But I like that out-of-the-box thinking.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Monday November 03 2014, @06:55PM
It will be a strange day when the United States provides educational resources to its children considered less than countries considered backwater and barbaric, and American children with means will leave the United States to receive top-notch educational resources in sophisticated multilingual countries instead.
I sure do hope when that day comes to pass, those lucky American children will bring that knowledge back to support our various industries and research institutes whereby they will receive generous living wages in a land of opportunity and justice.
Thank God, those countries listed aren't also filled with beautiful people, cultures, food, more equitable medical services, consumer and civil rights in general, and largely uninvolved with controversial world politics regarding their aggressively large and well used military in questionable foreign policies.
That might be bad for Americans.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @07:12PM
Education in the US is about money.
Of the about 8k we spend per student in the HS and bellow level less than 10 bucks ends up directly affecting the student. Where does the rest go hmmm?!...
(Score: 1) by DeathElk on Tuesday November 04 2014, @03:33AM
Certainly not into teaching basic english... spelling, punctuation...
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Monday November 03 2014, @07:19PM
That's probably the most depressing point I'll see made all week, and it's Monday.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday November 03 2014, @07:29PM
You can complain all you want. The "Police" in most international airports of the countries mentioned above carry Fully Automatic weapons. The US has been the favorite to pick on, but that doesn't make it the worst apple in the bunch. We have plenty of issues with High School kids in school that don't want to be there. Let's not create the same problem with College. Though, there are still plenty of people who Pay/Borrow for their education and don't study or pass. Just because you can figure out how to get to College doesn't mean that's what you should go.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Monday November 03 2014, @09:34PM
Considering how militarized the US police were in Ferguson after a teenager got shot unarmed by police, I think your characterization of largely EU countries as totalitarian and barbaric to be slightly hypocritical.
Brazil is the only one worth mentioning for having such problems, and even in their case, they clearly have something going on in the form of progress at least educationally. Brazillians are not stupid, and they have many things to be proud of from technical perspectives. So I'm not going to poo-poo them too much for automatic weapons and law enforcement.
We're the favorite to pick on because our failures are quantifiable, we are dramatically worse than world leaders in education, and we have fallen so far from expectations as a superpower educating its people in the last 50 years.
"Brain Drain" is not some inflammatory statement used to "pick on" the US. It's a result of looking at factual evidence for how our country can't both entice a foreigner to receive the valuable higher education and then stay to become a US citizen and make their contributions towards our society (at least economically).
Those problems are not separate. What you are stating is that High School is not wholly comprised of 100% motivated individuals that at least make it to higher education.
Motivation as a problem is not something that magically appears at 18. If you want to solve that, start much earlier.
You've expressed a problem not related to funding of education, but as to its implementation. Yes, if you can figure out how to go to College, you should *always* go to College. Always. Every Person. Everyone.
What you are talking about is changing College, or education in general, which is not an unworthy topic by any stretch.
Perhaps what you mean, is that the US should investigate alternate methods of teaching in which children are nurtured and offered choices as to where they wish their education to go. The merging of trade schools with higher education pushing out highly trained and capable people with well rounded general knowledge and valuable, perhaps niche, skill sets. That's become obvious since there is just too much information and too many skill sets to jam into a single person. We've the reached the point where a single person, no matter how capable and intelligent, is unable to hold the gestalt knowledge and sophistication of our collective race. Duh. Get more efficient in the information you put in your head, hence the selectivity.
By all means, we should start exploring other EU approaches to education as they are clearly world leaders at it, and we are raising a burgeoning nation of belligerent idiots progressively more dependent on other progressive groups of peoples that are getting tired of our shit.
So yeah, it's a complaint. A valid one.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @10:51PM
Why are you talking about the police in airports being armed? What's *that* got to do with anything? But if you're raising it, out of interest, have you ever spent time in Finland, Germany, Norway or Sweden? Trying to imply that they're dangerous, violent countries - from the point of view of the USA, of all places! - is disingenuous at best and downright ignorant at worst. Hell, even France has a significantly better record and there are large parts of urban France that I steer clear of. So there are police carrying automatic weapons in the airports! My God! At least they tend not to commit *too* many atrocities.
The police don't even always carry weapons on the streets in these countries! How many police on the streets in America are armed? How many people do they mistakenly shoot each year?
Tell you what, let's take a look at murder rates, as a loose arbiter of how dangerous or violent a nation is. According to Wikipedia, the US is at 111th in the world with 4.7/100,000. Norway is at 155, with 2.2/100,000. Finland is at 172 with 1.6/100,000. France is at 191 with 1/100,000. Germany is at 201 with 0.8/100,000. Sweden is at 205 and Slovenia at 207 with 0.7/100,000. Brazil, unsurprisingly, does very badly here and is at 18th, with 25.2/100,000. So even Norway, is surprisingly high for such a peaceful place, has less than half the murder rate of the US.
So which is the "worst apple in the bunch"? Finland? Sweden? Norway? Three of the countries regularly topping the list of the most equal and safe societies on the planet? Germany? France? Both of which - particularly France - have problems but both of which are even now significantly more equal and, indeed, significantly safer than the USA? This isn't even talking about people in glass houses chucking stones, this is someone who's, smashed every window in his greenhouse, run out of stones, and is pissing on the plants.
Are you just feeling pissy because you don't like Brazil?
(Score: 1) by Jiro on Tuesday November 04 2014, @05:12AM
Comparing murder rates can be subject to Simpson's Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox [wikipedia.org]).
In other words, if some subgroup of the US has a high crime rate, another country may have a low crime rate simply by having less of that subgroup, without the per-subgroup murder rates being much lower.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 04 2014, @07:35AM
No shit. There's a reason I said "loose arbiter". But if we're going down that road you might also want to consider why there might be subgroups in America with such drastically high murder rates that it apparently skews all those lovely places in America that are so much safer and more peaceful than Sweden or Germany or Slovenia. (And then consider that each of these have their own little subgroups with dramatically higher murder rates - as do Norway and France, and Norway in particular comes in a lot higher in the list than years of living in the country would suggest.)
(Score: 1) by Jiro on Tuesday November 04 2014, @08:01AM
"Why there might be subgroups with high murder rates that it skews the statistics" is an ambiguous question, because there's a difference between "why does that subgroup have a high murder rate" and "why is the subgroup large enough to skew the statistics".
The former could be blamed on something negative about the US. But the latter can't, yet the latter contributes to the statistics. In other words, you can praise Sweden for treating its black people well so they don't need to resort to crime, but you can't praise Sweden for not having as many black people, even if that lowers the crime rate. Likewise, you could point out that the crime rate among Mexican immigrants to Sweden isn't very high (actually I have no idea what it is), but the effect of that on the murder statistics is negligible compared to the fact that Sweden doesn't have any Mexican immigrants worth speaking of, so it really doesn't matter what their crime rate is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 05 2014, @12:05AM
ALL BLACK PEOPLE ARE MURDERING SCUM!
YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST.
Also, ALL MEXICANS ARE MURDERING SCUM!
You heard it here first.
Seriously, did you read what you wrote before you posted it? Or are you genuinely that much of a fucking asshole?
(Score: 1) by Deinfector on Tuesday November 04 2014, @12:44PM
I believe this guy [wikipedia.org] might have something to do with why Norway's murder rate is so high.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 03 2014, @07:39PM
You make is sound like sending out of state kids to UC Berkeley, or UW Madison, which doesn't really have much effect, back home.
Might be a matter of scale, of course.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Monday November 03 2014, @07:19PM
These 7 Countries Will Give You a College Education for Free
They won't offer me a free college education, because I'm not American, and I suspect I'm not the only non-American reading Soylent News.
Headlines that address "you" are usually an indicator of clickbait.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Monday November 03 2014, @07:42PM
Well, I don't know about the other countries, but in Germany the education is free not just for Americans, but for everyone.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 04 2014, @09:28AM
I don't remember any US students, though. Maybe they couldn't find Finland on a map?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by bearhouse on Tuesday November 04 2014, @01:28PM
Well I'm non-American too, but don't see why you're getting your knickers in a twist, old boy.
Whatever your nationality, if "you" are English-speaking, (or French-speaking, or Spanish-speaking...) then you'll probably have little problem getting into Europe and benefiting from the higher-education system, and indeed also the generally excellent health and social benefits while you are there.
Contrary to many alternatives, you'll probably also be able to pick up some work to supplement your income too. (Try doing THAT in many other parts of the world). Don't be put off by the hype - the b/s in the news about increasing racism and controls on "terrorists" is greatly overblown.
France is indeed one of the most popular destinations for non-native students, but well behind the world leader which is of course....the USA!
(But the food is much better)
Of course, if you're non-English speaking, I'm not sure what the hell you're doing here...
(Score: 4, Informative) by githaron on Monday November 03 2014, @07:20PM
Getting free college education is highly competitive in Brazil. People in Brazil take pre-college courses to help them increase their score in the entrance exams. The government there only pays for the top percentage of potential students for each major. Of course, that is the rules for the natives. I am not sure if the rules are different for foreigners.
(Score: 2) by hoochiecoochieman on Tuesday November 04 2014, @03:59PM
So? It's a lot fairer to filter people by their grades than their wallet.
(Score: 1, Troll) by crAckZ on Monday November 03 2014, @07:23PM
Another story about how other countries are doing something different or better than America. If you think it is nice and great than move there. no one forced you to go to college. Did you do well enough to get grants or scholarships?
Look at how many kids graduate with a degree they don't use. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/20/only-27-percent-of-college-grads-have-a-job-related-to-their-major/ [washingtonpost.com] only 27% are in a field that use their degree. maybe kids should think about what they want to do before wasting their money and then their don't won't be so high. It seems career students who just collect degrees is the way to skate through life.
As for me, i did not go to college. i worked my way up to higher management and made a decent enough income to have a nice house, 7 acres of land, and new sports car with plenty of money left over to pay my wife's student debt. you can actually have a great life without going to college.
Yes it would be nice but why can't we fix the problems we have before reaching for the stars? common core math http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/22/heres-another-impossibly-stupid-common-core-math-worksheet/ [dailycaller.com] is a huge problem. my wife is a certified teacher and even she does not want to teach anymore due to the curriculum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @07:35PM
(Score: 1) by crAckZ on Monday November 03 2014, @07:50PM
i get modded as a troll because of a pop-up that, doesn't even come up on my system, and you have a hard time. gee thanks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 04 2014, @04:14AM
I hate to see crackz get modded for dailycaller's bad work; however you do bring up a valid observation that dailycaller is in dire need of a decent webmaster.
I tried the link on Firefox/NoScript and just got a long wait followed by a blank page. I know better than disable NoScript. No telling what kind of mischief lurks in that page.
That site just screams "beware of toxic script".
I will post AC just in case I get some mod points and if I do, I can undo what I feel was an unjust dinging of crackz.
Crackz took his time and effort to compose a decent post - then he gets crapped on for adding his viewpoint. I do not want to see this site drop off because people consider posting a waste of their time.
I believe both comments are germane to this topic; however the adverse moderation was not. Neither will I adversely mod. Not called for.
We need to save bad mods, like car horns, for situations that really need it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by dyingtolive on Monday November 03 2014, @07:45PM
I'd love to move. Permanent citizenship is not always easy, though.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 1) by crAckZ on Monday November 03 2014, @07:56PM
check into dual citizenship. that is what i was going to do when i was moving to Panama
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Monday November 03 2014, @08:10PM
Just marry someone like http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=4688&cid=112700 [soylentnews.org] and get them to clear your debt. If you can get dual nationality at the same time then that's a bonus.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Monday November 03 2014, @08:08PM
27% of students use their degree because there is a huge market for undertaker studies or other ridiculous courses and the glut of STEM graduates/employers too cheap to hire them means that about 30% of people in tourism are there because they are unable to use a numerate degree [soylentnews.org].
1702845791×2
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @08:10PM
Didn't go to college, but worked hard at a self taught trade, retired at 50 with a paid off house. OTOH, I've met plenty of college grads dumber than a door-nail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @09:00PM
so you had a chance to get a degree when they were cheap and people actually respected them and you passed that up? congratulations
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @09:08PM
it's not really OTOH if you're just agreeing with what you've already stated
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @09:23PM
Quiet college boy! While you get off his lawn you can think about how smart he was to be born into a time of convenience and easy successes for twentysomethings.
(Score: 1) by fritsd on Monday November 03 2014, @11:39PM
I must say that after reading those rants from "dailycaller", I conclude that American math education isn't that bad, if the kids learn how to factorialize integers and calculate the Least Common Multiple, like in the school math books from my uncles from 60 years ago.
(google: Juanita stickers common core)
"Juanita wants to give bags of stickers to her friends. She wants to give the same number of stickers to each friend. She's not sure if she needs 4 bags or 6 bags of stickers. How many stickers could she buy so there are no stickers left over?"
She needs the LCM of 4 and 6, because that is divisible by both 4 and 6, with no stickers left over.
Now if Juanita does a prime factorization in her head (is there a simpler algorithm? I didn't have as good a primary school education as my ancestors, but at least I learned numeral systems when I was 12 and had finished all the math booklets), she'll find that 4 = 2^2 and 6 = 2 * 3 so the LCM(4,6) = 2^2 * 3^1 = 12.
Any multiple of 12. Except for the trivial solution 0, because then her friends would call her a cheapskate, if she just hands them an empty bag :-).
(Score: 2) by hoochiecoochieman on Tuesday November 04 2014, @03:56PM
So, what you mean is that "The Market" doesn't work when applied to education? Oh, the horror...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @07:57PM
One has to wonder how this country, with all its taxes and resources, is not able to provide free education.
Or worse, that they import talent and give them a free ride.
Made $22,000 in student debt for 2 years.
Then over many years paid it ALL back.
Just that week after payoff, the Canadian government announces all student debt dissolved.
So please add Canada to that free list anyway.
Make your debt.
Don't pay a cent.
Profit!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @10:25PM
the USA is broke... literally
the US government is borrowing money to pay interest on the money it already borrowed
by any standard that meets the definition of 'broke'
and anyone who thinks 'we can just print'... well by 'we' you mean the private
federal reserve, which loans the money to the US government, to be paid back in future with interest
the US government could declare bankruptcy, but that would pretty much kill the treasury market for decades, restricting the government to a fraction of tax receipts to pay its expenses (after interest payments on its already accumulated debt of course), so despite rhetoric from the democrats about defaulting on the national debt, it aint gonna happen... and decades of future generations will end up as debt slaves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fadrian on Monday November 03 2014, @11:58PM
the US government could declare bankruptcy, but that would pretty much kill the treasury market for decades, restricting the government to a fraction of tax receipts to pay its expenses (after interest payments on its already accumulated debt of course), so despite rhetoric from the democrats about defaulting on the national debt, it aint gonna happen... and decades of future generations will end up as debt slaves
And what magic system have you that magically prevents concentration of power to an extent that doesn't end in tears for the general populace? Bonus points if you can describe a transition plan that is (a) time-bound, (b) feasible, given the vagaries of human frailty, and (c) doesn't crash the society as part of the process. And, if you can do this? Mazeltov! You just produced a (de facto) government! Need a mechanism of exchange? You've just re-created money. And when you get both of these together, you better pray that your system isn't too easily gamed. Because it will be.
That is all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 04 2014, @01:18AM
google "ron paul"
he has answers to your questions
the real question is do you really want to hear them?
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Tuesday November 04 2014, @02:50AM
I've heard their plans.
To me, just about anything I've heard fails point (b) immediately because people aren't perfect (just like any political system based on all of our lovely "pure" ideologies), fails point (a) because they never say how long the transition will take pr be targeted for, and fail point (c) with high likelihood, because a change of that scale of magnitude will almost certainly be fraught with unintended consequences. So it's a fail. Tell me how you deal with point (b) for a start.
That is all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 04 2014, @03:36AM
humanity is imperfect, but so what? humanity is also innovative, compassionate and competitive, etc.
if you really don't care about improving anything then you'll sure as hell end up with people akin to hitler or stalin running the united states of communist america
if you decrease and limit the size and scope of government (decrease!=get rid of completely) you reduce the opportunity for corruption
you might have heard his plans, but who did you hear them from? if the answer is anyone but ron paul himself on youtube or in person, it is very likely you got a skewed perspective
(Score: 1) by Rich on Monday November 03 2014, @08:02PM
If you plan to study in Germany, and intend to pick up the local language along the way, you'll need to bring an iron will to force yourself to speak German. About everyone, as soon as they sense you might be an English speaker, will switch to talk to you in English. I have an English friend in Germany who told me she repeatedly got answers from complete strangers in English, even though she asked something in German in the first place.
So if your curriculum is in English, it may not help the task :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @08:12PM
That backwater hick state of Tennessee now gives all graduating high school seniors 2 years of free community college. [tennessean.com] So that pays for half of a bachelors degree and they also have a scholarship program for the remaining 2 years. That's better than any other state in the union.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @09:24PM
stop subsidizing the fucking colleges for a start... take that simple step and college fees will plummet merely to enable them to fill seats
by guaranteeing student loans, you're basically telling private colleges "hey it's cool, you can charge whatever you like and we'll pay it, even if the student eventually goes broke and can't"
paying for education seems like an honorable goal, but there are unintended consequences to guaranteeing that everyone gets a place
not everyone needs (or wants) a college education. trades are important, and so are on-the-job/vocational training, and what's the point of a college education if it can't get you a job (liberal arts) or there just isn't enough jobs out there?
small and medium businesses are the engine of an economy, but the government is making it very hard for them to operate, and this nanny mentality is destroying the middle class taxpayer, so with decreasing tax receipts you're gonna have to have the almighty private federal reserve bank print itself more money to lend to the government to be payed back with interest in future when your kids are trying to make a living
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @10:10PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXpwAOHJsxg [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 04 2014, @03:16AM
Is your YouTube link worth my time??
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 04 2014, @03:39AM
how do i know?
you seem content with spending the time to ask a dumb question, so a few minutes on a youtube video doesn't seem like a huge drag on your productivity
that being said, i can't be sure you'll understand the message in the video either, so if you're a bit slow you might be wasting your time
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday November 03 2014, @10:59PM
It's usually only free for EU, EES/EEA (Iceland and Norway) and citizens of Switzerland to study for free in most european countries. If you are not a citizen you pay. In Sweden a year of most STEM type subjects range from 20-40k USD + living expenses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 04 2014, @07:51AM
In Finland, it's free for everyone, but there is talks about adding tuition fees for non-EU/EEA students, but no fees atleast until 2016: http://www.studyinfinland.fi/tuition_and_scholarships/tuition_fees [studyinfinland.fi]