It’s worth understanding the trade offs countries like France make to offer near free university education: https://voices.uchicago.edu/euchicago/the-problem-with-frenc...
The French state spends 6,700 euros per public student per year, but up to thirteen thousand euros can be spent per student enrolled in Grandes Écoles, despite their only accounting for five percent of total students. Thus, though they only teach five percent of French students, these Grandes Écoles receive 30 percent of the government’s education budget.
6,700 euros is not a lot of money. It’s about $7,300. U.S. public universities and colleges spend on average over $28,000/year.
What do you think is wrong with that paragraph?
If we accept the premises as true then, depending on whether the 6700 is the overall average or the average not including grande ecole students, the % should be either 9% or 10%. No sensible calculation from those figures yields 30%.
It’s just saying that limited funding is disproportionally directed to the Grande Ecoles, leaving the other schools with much less funding.
6,700 euros is not a lot of money. It’s about $7,300. U.S. public universities and colleges spend on average over $28,000/year.
Even if I were to have a 1:1 tutoring session every single weekday (260 weekdays/year), that would only cost $26k/year, and I'd still have $2k/year to pay for books and tests.
Now, if I had only $7,300/year, I'd probably need to pay the tutors $140/hour, and have daily 5:1 group lessons.
Unfortunately the total costs - including additional fees, living expenses, health insurance, etc.) add up, so in-state costs are around $46K total (or $33K estimated for students living with relatives.) Add $30K for non-residents.
Community colleges are usually only two years, but their tuition is something like $3000 for the academic year, and there is no hefty fee if your parents live out of state.
A) the prices universities charge
B) the costs universities incur
C) the reasonable costs of providing a quality education, given current market prices of the important inputs
My comment was meant to illustrate the large gap between B and C.
You are talking about A, which changes in lockstep with B.
That's pretty obvious to anyone who understands that people tend to not place value on things they get for free. Like public high school education in America.
So how does one compare the "free" (tax paid) Danish universities to the US/UK ones? By citations? Nobel laureates? Amount of foreign students? Salaries of alumni? Patents? GDP per capita? Number of high value companies per capita? I think you'd find that as a whole, Danish, and other Scandinavian universities, easily compete with Anglo Saxon universities, and that the main drawback of Scandinavian universities is the language.
When I refer to "free", I mean more than just no cost in terms of money. If there is a cost in terms of the university being very difficult to get admitted to, then humans tend to value it. This sounds from your post like it may be the case here.
American public schools are valued so little that truancy laws (for 1-8) were passed to force attendance. Large numbers of high school students simply drop out and wander off.
On the other hand, becoming a Marine is free (they'll even pay you!). But the selection process is grueling, and hence the status of getting through that is valued. Even more selective services, like the Navy Seals, have correspondingly more status and value.
In the Air Force, being a fighter pilot is the hardest to achieve, and has top dog status, despite being paid to go through the process.