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Comment by Mordisquitos | Hacker News Reader

> Do you plan to enslave the people who would provide this education? Do you not subscribe to the saying "You get what you pay for?". Public education through High School (in the US) has been free for many generations.

Do you believe that the people who provide public education through High School are enslaved? If yes, how? If not, why do you assume providing free public college education requires enslavement?

> Public education through High School (in the US) has been free for many generations. Ever wonder what would happen if you make the next 4 years "free"?

No need to wonder. Tuition for bachelor's degrees is free in multiple countries, for instance Germany, Finland, Sweden, Scotland and Norway. What happened there?

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I assume the “enslave” question is meant to allude to the fact that, since nothing is actually free, when demand outstrips supply, at some point “making it free” can only mean forcing people to provide it (financially or personally).

If “x should be free” was a solution to anything, why stop at education? Let’s make everything free!

Are people being forced to provide free public education up to High School in the U.S.? Are they being forced to provide free University education in the countries where it is free?

If something being free implies forcing people to provide it, to the point that "enslaving" them is a reasonable analogy, why have anything free whatsoever? Let's have nothing free!

> Tuition for bachelor's degrees is free in multiple countries...

For the longest time, it used to be free for state residents attending State colleges in California.

In Germany it is common to get kicked out of free university on a technicality and you have to sue to get back in. I am told they do this to keep class sizes manageable and to filter out those who are just there because it’s free and they have nothing else to do.

That sounds like a 'Germany' problem, not a 'free university' problem. There are trivial ways to keep class sizes manageable.

One way is for universities to limit the available places in each degree for first year enrolment, and assign these places based on entrance exam results (as in Spain, where tuition isn't free but is very cheap compared to the U.S.). Another way is to have unlimited first year places, but restrict places from second year onwards to a given number n, allowing only the top n students from the first year to progress (as in France, where tuition is not technically free but averages to < 200€ a year).

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