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Comment by jo_ | Hacker News Reader

I've been digging through this thread and can't seem to find any information on the impact of 'free tuition' on tuition costs. In the US, we saw an increase in loan availability result in a significant uptick in the price of attendance to universities. If the government is paying the cost of tuition, how is the cost of tuition kept in check?

Disclaimer: I love the idea of free public education. I wish it would take hold in the US. My only concern is how Universities will react to being paid almost arbitrary amounts of money per-student.

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I live in Germany and from my experience, the system of free education worked ~40 years or more (not counting the last years, that we had those fees, which where invented I guess in the 90s or 00s). We had excellent education for several decades without fees and it worked fine, until the gvnmts (not only the German) got the idea, that there are more important things than education (for example military, big corporations and banks).

Of course you should not just "pay arbitrary amounts" to the universities but hold the people accountable for what they spent.

> My only concern is how Universities will react to being paid almost arbitrary amounts of money per-student.

This is absolutely not how it works over here. The state is not saying "go learn wherever you want, if they send you a bill, we will take care of it", it is funding the universities who have to accept students who bring the educational prerequisites. Funding is certainly coupled to number of students in some way, but the rate is set by the state and universities have to compete for students within their budget.

(more like "hey, university, you seem to be quite popular with the students, you can employ up to X professors, we will pay them for you at our standard rate. Just don't forget to keep serving those students")

Thank you for the reply. I understand much better now. An intuitive understanding of the price/demand/negotiation dynamics still eludes me, but this has helped a lot.

> If the government is paying the cost of tuition, how is the cost of tuition kept in check?

By the government negotiating costs? I'd say a single payer has more bargaining power than individual students. Same as with public healthcare.

I'd completely forgotten about the single-payer negotiation aspect. That makes sense.

What the article describes applies only to public universities. It doesn't apply to private universities, which do require tuition in some cases comparable to what you would have to pay in the UK or the US.

However there are not a lot of private universities in Germany and they have a bad reputation in general.

> If the government is paying the cost of tuition, how is the cost of tuition kept in check?

The government pays what it wants. If the government refuses to pay, what is the university going to do? It's not like it can compete with free.

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