Fiddle-dee-dee!

Hmmm.... a good way to picture it is.... with the exception of Sweden- every developed country with “tuition free” education has MUCH higher tax rates than a country like the USA- so “college debt” from the perspective of such a country could be thought of as.... “You can choose to take a HUGE life long tax savings if you decide to not get a 4 year degree from a higher learning institute.” If you decide to go to school- you pay.... less over a lifetime than you likely would if you were being taxed at a higher rate. Basically- people who don’t decide to go to school don’t pay for other people to go to school- and people who decide to pay for themselves if they can’t qualify for government aid or a merit based free education.

It works pretty well but isn’t perfect. A contributing factor to this system- is unlike almost all other world leaders in education- then united states tends to have much higher rates of college attendance. The UK for instance only has about 2.2 million students in colleges a year vs. the US with 17.5 million students it would have to pay for IF rates didn’t increase with “free” college. When we look at Sweden- things get worse. The “average” debt per student graduating the “free” school system there is $19,000. Better than the average of $24,000 in the US “paid” system but not by much considering its “free.” But... while about 50% of US graduates carry debt- 85% of Swedish students do! Wow. What’s worse is that the debt to income ratio is higher for graduating Swedish students who don’t go abroad.