The nice thing about living elsewhere: you can compare and contrast.
Belgium has one of the best, and cheapest, education systems in the world ("cheap" of course being "mostly paid for by the government"). A year's studying at our best university costs about €600 (say $800 or so). Some post-university degrees are more expensive, but anyway - getting a Masters will cost you about €3000 over 5 years. And even so, for those who have trouble paying, there's scholarships all over the place and tax returns and whatever. Basically, anyone who can and wants to can get at least a Bachelor's, probably a Masters. It's one of our country's most socialist endeavors and one of our greatest accomplishments, really.
The downside, however, is that pretty much everyone wants to get a degree. And of course, most people don't actually have something specific they want to do. Sure, interested in animals, become a vet. Interested in French? Become a Romanist and teach. Turns out, most people who can't quite decide go do something like communication sciences, or psychology, or educational sciences, or cultural management. We're swamped in humane sciences degrees, and we have a continuous lack of, say, nurses, car mechanics, welders, carpenters, good hard-working laborers, etc.
In fact, nurses in some hospitals and retirement homes are getting cars in their benefits package, and a higher pay than the doctors working in the same institutions, simply because we can't find any. We have too many unemployed high degree people who "don't want to work below their level" (aka "get their hands dirty"), along with the opposite, the ones who dropped out and never got anything, and far too little technically savvy people and people who are willing to work. There's a lot of complaints about immigration, but the fact of the matter is - they're doing jobs our local youth doesn't want to do anymore.
Anyway, I'm a fan of the Belgian system, it's certainly better than a system designed to indebt all bright young minds while closing off college/university for anyone who can't afford it - but some sort of regulations/checks are somewhat in order. It's far too easy to stay a student and live off of society for far too long (a friend of mine just graduated in film studies at 32. Yeah, that's going to be a useful and contributing member of society!)
Belgium has one of the best, and cheapest, education systems in the world ("cheap" of course being "mostly paid for by the government"). A year's studying at our best university costs about €600 (say $800 or so). Some post-university degrees are more expensive, but anyway - getting a Masters will cost you about €3000 over 5 years. And even so, for those who have trouble paying, there's scholarships all over the place and tax returns and whatever. Basically, anyone who can and wants to can get at least a Bachelor's, probably a Masters. It's one of our country's most socialist endeavors and one of our greatest accomplishments, really.
The downside, however, is that pretty much everyone wants to get a degree. And of course, most people don't actually have something specific they want to do. Sure, interested in animals, become a vet. Interested in French? Become a Romanist and teach. Turns out, most people who can't quite decide go do something like communication sciences, or psychology, or educational sciences, or cultural management. We're swamped in humane sciences degrees, and we have a continuous lack of, say, nurses, car mechanics, welders, carpenters, good hard-working laborers, etc.
In fact, nurses in some hospitals and retirement homes are getting cars in their benefits package, and a higher pay than the doctors working in the same institutions, simply because we can't find any. We have too many unemployed high degree people who "don't want to work below their level" (aka "get their hands dirty"), along with the opposite, the ones who dropped out and never got anything, and far too little technically savvy people and people who are willing to work. There's a lot of complaints about immigration, but the fact of the matter is - they're doing jobs our local youth doesn't want to do anymore.
Anyway, I'm a fan of the Belgian system, it's certainly better than a system designed to indebt all bright young minds while closing off college/university for anyone who can't afford it - but some sort of regulations/checks are somewhat in order. It's far too easy to stay a student and live off of society for far too long (a friend of mine just graduated in film studies at 32. Yeah, that's going to be a useful and contributing member of society!)
