I have a friend who contiues to claim that the highly taxed Europeans have caused schools such as Oxford and Cambridge to be the best schools in the world at a very affordable price. And says that if American government spends more on education, we too could have schools like that. Our Harvard and Yale and Stanford are super expensive compared to the situation that European students attending the "Oxbridge" universities have to face. What's the deal in this situation? I don't know much about European schooling.
Most universities in Europe are horrible. Oxford and Cambridge have been historically highly regarded universities. And yes, European countries tend to almost completely subsidize their higher education -- for what I pay for books every semester I could afford to go to university in Madrid.
Well, for one thing, if you look at virtually any ranking of the world's top universities, the U.S. dominates. Even given the subjective (and more or less unscientific and inherently flawed) nature of trying to rank institutions of education, and regardless of the country that does the ranking, the U.S. usually maintains at least a plurality of the list, as well as of the top 10. Now one might argue that that is simply due to the superior population size, meaning the U.S. simply has more universities and therefore has a greater chance of taking up space on the list...but even still, I think a list with the top 2 ranked being non-American is a rarity, and again, most of these lists don't go above 50. Certainly there are more than 50 universities in most of the countries that claim a spot in the ranking.
And what's more, this is not a lottery. One would have assume any sort of ranking would actually have some sort of benchmark and standards to serve as a litmus test and determine the quality of a potential candidate...meaning simply having more people and more universities doesn't automatically mean a greater chance of having the best ones in the world.
I mention all this because it sounds like this friend of yours is operating under the assumption that European universities are the best in the world, and virtually any ranking out there begs to differ. Again, there are approximately more than 300 higher learning institutions in Britain and even most educated people outside of that country can only name two (the two he brings up). Contrast that with the U.S. and I guarantee most people could name at least 3-5, and with some help I bet they would recognize the names of closer to 10 at least. Again, this isn't scientific to be sure, but the point is there is a reason a university is known all over the world.
That being said, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your friend doesn't provide any data as to how much the British government spends on education versus the U.S. government. That might be relevant to this discussion. He also assumes more money mean means better education (as it sounds like he is claiming Oxford and Cambridge are superior institutions to Harvard and Yale and Standford.) He also assumes that having people who don't get to go to college subsidize those who do, is a good thing. I'd be interested to hear the ethical and moral justification for that.
Third, one has to understand why American universities have such a high price tag. And here's a great article that outlines some details of how programs raise the price tag. Also, see these:
"A Little Market, a Lot of State"
"The Education Bubble"
"Competition and Higher Education"
Just came across this...felt it was relevant: