The flip side is that the tax rate in ireland is huge, 21% on any item you buy (almost) and a personal income tax of 17% for the people making the lowest.

The other thing is the poorest don’t have to even pay the 750euro.

Paying $300 or w/e for university doesnt make it worthless. University is what you make of it. Its not what they fill your head with its who you meet and how you get on with them. You learn that very quickly on your first day of “real” work.

The rational for such filled classes is simple. Most people won’t continue to attened them the whole year around. Some of my classes started with 80 and only had 3 people attending during the term.

I agree that they should try to keep education free while they can. But even our high tax goverment is feeling the burden of paying for education due to the recession and the extremly quick demise of property sales.

The other side is as Shawn says when everybody has a degree unemployment can go up because well is somebody with a degree is too good to clean tables? I hope not..

If the government would stop printing money out of thin air, our money supply would go back to a sustainable level. With such loose lending standards, pretty much anybody can get a loan to go to school.

Still, should this change, I can’t say the schools will descrease their tuition overnight.

As it is now, our economy depended on cheap consumer credit – witness $1000+ TVs as the new normal, while people no longer have the credit needed to purchase this stuff. The prices haven’t gone down any even though the reasons these prices were predicated on turned out to be false.

Nobody has a right to that education. By extension that means you force someone to teach that person at whatever rate the state is willing to pay.

Anything you claim to be a right that obligates someone else to act on your behalf is not a right, it’s a privilege. The only thing you have a right to is a negative right – that which does not imply action on someone else’s part.

Wikipedia: A positive right is a right to be subjected to an action of another person or group. In theory, a negative right forbids others from acting against the right holder, while a positive right obligates others to act with respect to the right holder.

Saying you have a right to a free education means that A)you force someone else to pay for it and B)force someone else to provide it, perhaps at a rate they are unhappy with.

You force someone else into servitude because you think you deserve a free education. That’s wrong.

Sidenote

We wouldn’t need government funded education if the government got out of the way. The minute the government began printing money out of thin air and providing student loans, colleges/universities increased tuition because they knew people could get the funding.

Government funded college is just another way for more people to be dependent on the state instead of making their own way. As it is now, it is basically impossible for anyone to pay their own way through school in the U.S. If the government would restrain its spending, this wouldn’t be as big of a problem. But that’s a big if.

Maybe i’ll take the time to mention the problem with paid further education we’re having here right now. Students who want to attend university are having massive financial problems. Student loans aren’t being paid out, grants are delayed, scholarships aren’t being handed out etc. Many students are having to drop out of uni because they simply can’t get hold of the necessary funds. Are these people who shouldn’t be in school anyway? Do they not have a right to that education they’re being denied because of financial issues beyond their control?

It’s central europe my friend, it is consensus that the state has to provide the education for it’s population. We don’t like the anglo-american of a social system model. Social equality is an important value here. We also don’t demand circumstances like you find it at Harvard, but we demand better circumstances to study – and those would be easily possible.

Additionally the problems in our system would by no means be solved, if you introduce fees – so your rant is pointless anyway. Austria is generally spending far less money on education than most other European countries. For decades the budget was reduced and got a smaller and smaller share of the GDP.

(And when we had to pay fees, the government just cut the same amount that was brought in from their part of the budget.)

Plus: The protests are not only directed against the introduction of tuition fees, but also against the de-democratization of universities, non-transparent budgets, and the permanent budget cuts in schools, kindergardens and universities, that we experience for many years now.

I’m pretty sure that something could be simply arranged like the NHS here with National Insurance. Have a life long tax to fund government funded education for everyone.