Living in a country, where there basically is no college tuition in the US sense and scale, this sounds all so alien to me. There's nothing "utopian" about it. From my perspective, it's more of an ideological problem than anything else.
While you can go into a huge amount of debt in the US getting a college degree, you can also graduate with little to no debt just using the many programs and scholarship available and being strategic on where you go to college. Yes there are always going to be people paying $80k per year to go somewhere, but you'll also have a lot of people getting there degree while spending very little or (if they are good academically) nothing.
You're just confused over who's paying for it. Someone is, I can guarantee you that. And it's not student labor.
I'm not differing on the point that free tuition might be a good thing. The (unspoken) point of this story was to suggest that student labor might be enough to make a college solvent.
If I put out a sign that says "free chocolate", it would be silly to respond by saying that somebody must have paid in time and/or money to produce the chocolate. Because that's entirely obvious, and not the point. When somebody points out that "free tuition" or "free healthcare" have monetary inputs, that's a pointless response to a strawman misinterpretation. Saying that we should have "free tuition" isn't at all a statement that education should somehow magically be done without any effort on the part of society. It's a statement that the costs of education shouldn't be shouldered by those receiving the education.
This is even referred to in loquation's post, by describing it as an ideological problem. I agree, and would pose the ideological question as follows: Should education be treated as an individual investment or a societal investment? If it is an individual investment, then it should be paid for by the student either up front or through debt, and that investment is recouped directly through higher income. If it is a societal investment, then it should be paid for by society as a whole (i.e. publicly funded through taxes), and that investment is recouped indirectly through opportunities that require a more educated society.
Not only that, but the OP mentioned tuition specifically. Tuition is the fee you may have to pay to attend college. If there is no such fee to pay, whether the money comes from donations, taxes, a trust fund, a lottery, intellectual property royalties or what have you, there is indeed no tuition.
> Living in a country, where there basically is no college tuition in the US sense and scale, this sounds all so alien to me. There's nothing "utopian" about it. From my perspective, it's more of an ideological problem than anything else.
was responding to my perception that his or her written / implied sentiment was conveying that it's so strange that students would need to work to be able to afford to go to college. That we should have a system where students have a special right to get something for free as an entitlement of society.
Now, whether that is a good policy is a legitimate question. My response was to point out that the above kind of thinking regards students as a special class of people who should be insulated from having to work. While implicitly, it is ok for other people to have to work or pay taxes to fund that privilege. Often that attitude is easy to adopt when you forget who's paying the bills.
> students as a special class of people who should be insulated from having to work
You already believe that, you just disagree on the definition on student. Or should we take 14 year olds out of school and send them back into the coal mines?
