Quote:
Originally Posted by whomario
To offer an alternative from the far off realm of socialist ... Germany: Interestingly, in the mid 00s there was a push to inact admission fees and a few states did it. Only to then undo this a few years later as a failed experiment. Anyway, as i started after that i only had to pay my university 700 a year as an administrative fee and that not only, on top of paying for the administrative services, contributed to subsidizing meals on campus but also a public transport card for the whole state. So the school itself (as are 95% of universities) is almost entirely state funded or from grant money.
After an initial phase of paying from my previous savings (i first did an 'apprenticeship'/dual traineeship and worked fulltime for a few years after high school) i got about 700 a month in support from the state for rent and living expenses (and worked jobs for a about 350-450 a month), half as a loan without interest and half free.
The debt from the no interest loan is capped at 10k as well and then can be further reduced (from that 10k) for 1) finishing the degree(s) on time, 2) finishing in the Top x% of your class and 3) and further decreased if paid in full after roughly 2 years following the degree.
In the end had to pay back about 6.700 Euros of the roughly 30k i received (again, almost all rent and living expenses) which included support for a semester in New Zealand (though i also had to loan money from my sister as it was quite a bit over the cap of what is supported). If you could not pay it back in full you would pay back roughly 130 a month, which can be paused if earning less than amount X a month.
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My Dad told me how college was affordable enough that you could pay for it with just what you made in a Summer job (he was sorting mail/packages for the post office I believe).
What bothers me is that student loans are treated as some special entity by some where help should not apply. Watching people from some non-profit think tank (taxpayer subsidized) who took a PPP loan (taxpayer subsidized) and own a house (price propped up by taxpayers) complain about this is just eye-rolling. If college kids have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, so should everyone else.