For $100k, you could pay the tuition fees for 4-10 (depending on exact school choice) of the best universities in Europe outside the UK combined - and I'm talking of the foreign student fees, not the much lower tuitions that EU citizens get.
That's great, but you've missed my point. I get payed more in the US, so I can afford the extra cost for university. And once that university bill is paid, I can pocket the extra.
There are still reasons why high university costs can be a problem. Teachers, for example, don't get paid near enough to be able to cover university costs in a few years like I was able to. But becoming a teacher requires just as much investment.
But even then, the cost of college loans is far more manageable for even teachers than an unexpected $195k visit to the hospital. University cost is a problem in the US, but I don't think it's comparable to the problem we have with health care costs.
That's true for a handful of jobs, but not so much in general. Sure, in CS and medicine and Wall Street you get salaries that are huge compared to typical EU salaries. But this doesn't apply at all to all white collar work - certainly not at the 10x - 100x difference in college tuitions.
Not to mention, I also gave the example of the tuitions for a Swiss university, and Swiss salaries are typically at least comparable to US salaries, even in CS.
> certainly not at the 10x - 100x difference in college tuitions.
The full time tuition rate at the university I got my engineering degree from is currently $11k /yr. I can't imagine that's even 10x a typical EU university - let alone 100x.
My local community college's full time tuition is currently $5.8k /yr. Either way it's a lot of money, but lets not exaggerate things too far. We're worried about affordable access to education here - not getting everyone into Harvard.
The tuition rate for any public university in France (for EU citizens) is €250/year. So your tuition was not 100x, it was just 44x what you'd pay for those.
Let's say that's unfair, since the state pays your tuition (though this is the common experience for most French students!). In Amsterdam, one of the best universities in the world, TU Delft, charges €2k/year tuition. Your tuition was less than 10x this, true, but not that far from that. Also, for a common 4 year bachelor's degree, that's €8k in total - your $100k total is more than 10x this.
