<story><title>NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/nyu-offers-full-tuition-scholarships-for-all-medical-students-1534433082</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>talltimtom</author><text>That is like saying you only want to pay taxes towards the roads you drive on yourself.&lt;p&gt;Would you be better off if all publicly funded roads where instead private and required you to pay tolls per usage? You would defiantly get an bill more matching your usage, and people who don’t drive would pay less. But it at least feels like we are better off with public roads because they all add value to society as a whole.&lt;p&gt;The same goes for education. You don’t care about Akkadian studies, but perhaps someone does who thanks to his education can focus on that and earn enough money to buy a car from you auto mechanic keeping him in business making life better for you.</text></item><item><author>avip</author><text>Always replace &amp;quot;free&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m paying for you&amp;quot;. I don&amp;#x27;t know what&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;obvious&amp;quot; about me paying your tuition fees. For once, I may be happy to fund your auto-mechanic studies as I know I&amp;#x27;ll need you to fix my car. But if you&amp;#x27;re studying ancient Akkadian I&amp;#x27;m less inclined to pay your bills.</text></item><item><author>geff82</author><text>What a surreal discussion about something obvious: University and college should be free for everyone. First, this is a great equalizer in the positive way: it does not depend on how wealthy your parents are, so you get an equal opportunity. Second: the society as a whole benefits from well educated people. Accounts need well trained doctors, doctors need well trained accountants, both need an engineer to craft them a reliable car, etc etc...&lt;p&gt;Countries like Germany show that university&amp;#x2F;med school can both be free and high quality. Od course also in Germany some private elite universities exists where you have to pay (it is ok, I like diversity). But to get a perfect career, a state run university is all you need.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>neap24</author><text>Indeed, many do advocate that paying for the roads you drive on through tolls would be a much better system.  I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s unreasonable to not want to subsidize certain fields of study with public money.&lt;p&gt;In the past, when a smaller percentage of people were &amp;quot;educated&amp;quot; the marginal value of educating an extra member of society was very high.  It seems much lower to me now that information is cheap and freely available.</text></comment>
<story><title>NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/nyu-offers-full-tuition-scholarships-for-all-medical-students-1534433082</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>talltimtom</author><text>That is like saying you only want to pay taxes towards the roads you drive on yourself.&lt;p&gt;Would you be better off if all publicly funded roads where instead private and required you to pay tolls per usage? You would defiantly get an bill more matching your usage, and people who don’t drive would pay less. But it at least feels like we are better off with public roads because they all add value to society as a whole.&lt;p&gt;The same goes for education. You don’t care about Akkadian studies, but perhaps someone does who thanks to his education can focus on that and earn enough money to buy a car from you auto mechanic keeping him in business making life better for you.</text></item><item><author>avip</author><text>Always replace &amp;quot;free&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m paying for you&amp;quot;. I don&amp;#x27;t know what&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;obvious&amp;quot; about me paying your tuition fees. For once, I may be happy to fund your auto-mechanic studies as I know I&amp;#x27;ll need you to fix my car. But if you&amp;#x27;re studying ancient Akkadian I&amp;#x27;m less inclined to pay your bills.</text></item><item><author>geff82</author><text>What a surreal discussion about something obvious: University and college should be free for everyone. First, this is a great equalizer in the positive way: it does not depend on how wealthy your parents are, so you get an equal opportunity. Second: the society as a whole benefits from well educated people. Accounts need well trained doctors, doctors need well trained accountants, both need an engineer to craft them a reliable car, etc etc...&lt;p&gt;Countries like Germany show that university&amp;#x2F;med school can both be free and high quality. Od course also in Germany some private elite universities exists where you have to pay (it is ok, I like diversity). But to get a perfect career, a state run university is all you need.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mdorazio</author><text>You&amp;#x27;ve basically just described Dallas (although it&amp;#x27;s mostly just the freeways that have tolls), which a lot of Americans seem to be fine with.</text></comment>