saticmotion

In Belgium we have enjoyed a relatively cheap tuition fee for a number of years: ~600 euro without scholarships. However, with our new (conservative) government this is set to change. They want to cut 413 million euro of government funding, and the only way to recuperate this loss is for institutes to increase tuition fees.

The arguments from both sides boil down to:

In favour of a higher fee: "We don't want to pay for someone else's tuition" and "Higher education should only be for a certain elite". And from the populist side "students should get jobs and stop drinking and attending festivals" or "other countries are way more expensive than Belgium" (mostly pointing towards the USA or the UK).

Against a higher fee: "Everyone should have a chance at higher education" or "look what happens to students in the USA, they start their career with a huge debt" and "in Sweden and Finland there are no fees, and it works as well". And also fear that a new class of citizens is going to appear, who earn just a little over what's required for a scholarship, but won't be able to pay these higher fees.

But these arguments seem too simple, so I was hoping to get stronger arguments on HN for either side. I don't really know which side to choose here, because our tuition fees would still be low after raising them.