The reason why student debt is basically unheard of in Denmark since college is free (although to make that happen, the Danish government poses high taxation towards citizens like they do in order to maintain stable social security nets like subsidised healthcare and public housing, also why they have less homelessness).
Mainly Danish, Swiss and European citizens are eligible to study without stressing over student debt upon graduation. It stems from this: Danish government is more on for the people while American government is more on caring about themselves plus nepotism on the side (MORE & HIGHER TAXES TOO ON TOP OF THAT).
One problem seems to be that Americans treat education as a for-profit business. Universities must make money, text book publishers ask for horrendous amounts because they know the students have no other chance than to comply and there are probably many more places where money gets funneled away.
Many European countries on the other hand treat education as a service to society and an investment into everyone’s future. We already have a shortage of well-educated professionals so we want to reduce the number of roadblocks that smart people have to overcome to reach their full potential.
In Germany, most universities have an administrative fee of about 100-200€ per semester that may pay for things like mandatory insurances, a students union and in the case of my old university, a psychological help service. For a couple of years, we had a 500€ per semester fee on top of that but it turned out that wasn’t very popular. I think the first state to get rid of it was Baden-Württemberg when the Greens won the state election.
In america we have 1 administrator for every 2.5 students. And we have 1 faculty for every 30 students, and half the faculty are not full time.
It takes a lot of people to run the sports facilities, the healthcare clinics, the support services, the DEI offices, the grants admin, the labs and computer facilities, etc.
Education is not the point of our universities. What it is is making sure each student that attends is a very happy little camper. And that’s exactly what our uni system has become, sleep away camp where you fill you days with fun activities, clubs, and sports, and you only spend about 10 hours a week doing anything educational.
Then we lament that our graduates lack basic job skills and can’t read, do mathematics, or write…
Not to mention that most colleges have basically become real estate businesses with a school attached to them. In most college towns the college itself is the largest land owner. They are able to use small government to force sales and pick up real estate at small cost and later sell them for huge revenue. The rich schools aren’t using their billion dollar endowments to benefit the school employees or students any more, they’re using it to buy property.