International economics, student edition

My third week in Istanbul, I met a Boğaziçi student who had just returned from studying at a Russian university for two years, where he had planned to finish his degree. Prior to that, he had been pursuing a philosophy degree at Boğaziçi when he decided that the subject wasn’t really for him. But after he had to leave Russia as relations soured between Russia and Turkey (a subject that really merits its own series of posts), he came back to Istanbul and had just started at an entirely new institution, meaning he would graduate in four years after four years of schooling already.

By no means is this a course I would recommend or commend, but anyone who attempted to follow the same path in America would likely be in six-figure debt, at least, unless they were extremely wealthy. People are already in six-figure debt trying to finish one degree in three or four years, for God’s sake. But alas, things are different in Europe, where public universities are generally tuition-free, and private universities charge fees at rates that are ridiculously low compared to the States.

For example, at Boğaziçi, a public university and one of Turkey’s best (slight digression: a Turkish student told me some parents come to bury their child’s umbilical cord in the trees surrounding Boğaziçi in hopes their child will gain admission), tuition is free for four years. After that, students must pay a nominal fee, the equivalent of about $350, to finish their degree. This is ridiculously low in the United States, and not expensive either for middle class Turks.

“I probably won’t finish in four years,” a Turkish student told me. “But I feel bad making my parents pay when I could have done it for free.”

Yup, you read it here folks: she feels bad for $350. Try to avoid comparing that to your tuition rates. And Turkey is not at all a democratic socialist state like the vaunted Nordic countries we keep hearing about. Neither is Australia, where college costs are also several times lower, and the Australian students I’ve spoken to, like others from across the world, react with varying degrees of shock and disbelief at how much we pay. A French girl told me that because her university was private, it was very expensive. Her answer when I asked how much: about $10,000. One of my friends studying abroad in London told me she was shocked when she sat in a session with some British students who were giving very blunt critiques of a professor they felt was not up to par. Their response when she told them she was surprised? “We pay £9,000 (~$12,700) [per year] to attend, so we deserve to have our concerns addressed.”

Pretty simple I guess – you pay for a service and you want to get the most out of it.

Now, I’m not arguing that university educations should be subsidized to the point where there is little incentive to actually graduate. But it seems pretty damn fair to demand a system where students will be able to actually pay for the costs of their education, perhaps while working part-time, or by taking out small, low-interest loans (comparable to current interest rates if not lower for students) that they can realistically start paying back incrementally with entry-level salaries that they will probably get upon graduation. Older adults accuse millennials all the time of being lazy, whiny, etc. — but times have changed, and some stubbornly refuse to accept that. It cannot be financially impossible for the America to address its higher education costs or reform education laws when its economic output is several times that of countries who are already doing the same.

And in fact, there was a time in the United States. when students could put themselves through school by working. My own father, who arrived in America in 1978 on a student visa, was able to put himself through six years of school (learning English and transferring from community college) with minimal family support by working jobs that included a stint at a gas station in Barstow and a country club in Arizona. He tells me he actually finished college with savings, and in the last few years of school, he refused the money his parents would try to send him. Imagine that: affordable college education, promoting growth and social mobility, in capitalist America. Maybe I’m hopelessly naive, but it can’t be impossible to put policies in place that would allow current and future students to have this option available to them as well.

At Boğaziçi, students are active in all areas of campus life. A few years ago, students staged a sit-in at the Starbucks on campus because they didn’t want expensive products being sold on campus (tea and coffee from other shops is much cheaper). The space was later converted to a quiet study hall. This week, students are boycotting the dining halls in support of the dining hall workers.

I can’t help but compare this level of student action to issues at USC, where the student body, for various reasons, often doesn’t engage in the way that our peers at other American or international institutions do. With attention in recent days to USC’s yearly tuition breaking $50,000 per year, and further thousand dollar increases scheduled in years to come, there are certainly some issues that need to addressed. And we need to put USC in a place to address them. Outrageous college expenses shouldn’t be part of American exceptionalism, but from I’m hearing from students across the world, it unfortunately seems to be.