SubmitIt
Posts: 13
Joined: 7/18/2010 Status: offline
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I am from a country (Ireland) where education, including college courses, are fundamentally free. (there are registration frees, but talking sub-1000 per year, even waived if lower income). Our workforce has become highly educated since the last 60s when secondary (ie. high school) education became free, and on into university/college, part of the reason for the growth in the Irish economy was due to having a highly educated workforce with a low cost base. The courses are results-assigned, you compete for a place in a course, each of which has a maximum size -- all done through a single agency and a single set of exams -- the universities know nothing about the students, they tell the agency how many spaces (X), the agency looks at the results from the exams and ranks the highest results in descending order, and the top X get into the course -- then there's second choices, third choices, etc -- until all spaces are filled. Only then are the names released and linked to the colleges. Nice way of ensuring no favouritism. In Ireland if you go to 'private' college, i.e. you pay for it, there's the idea that you weren't smart enough to get into a public college/university. If you fail a 'year' of college, it's no longer free for the year you need to repeat, you pay for that yourself, if you pass, then you can continue back into 'free' education. Having no overhanging debt at the end is great -- it keeps the cost of wages down, and ensure a more competitive workforce than if people are struggling to pay fees. Ireland also ranks 8th the top universities per capita in the world. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_uni_top_500_percap-universities-top-500-per-capita
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