That's exactly what's happened and what will happen - setting goalposts and then moving them. In Europe, specifically Germany and France, it's common for people to go for a Bachelor's and Master's back-to-back since there aren't any student loans to worry about.

While the lack of student debt from studying so much sounds all nice, the reality is you get a bunch of 26-28 year olds graduating with Master's degrees and ZERO working experience, bar some internships which may or may not be useful.

There are two sub-problems here: "Free" education (not actually free when you see how much taxes are) allows Europeans to take their sweet time in graduating, so it's common for people to be done with their Bachelor's at 24 or 25, while their American counterparts graduate at 22/23 because of the (financial) pressure to finish on time. A combination of high taxes, encouragement from peers/uni to "study abroad" instead of work and from companies to keep their student status to stay interns, means there's also not much motivation to transition to full-time work.

Make no mistake about education quality here, it's not better than America, in fact it might be worse. The population here complains a lot on their local education quality (though you'll rarely ever hear it on the Internet - see last paragraph on why). A lot of memorization from books for things you'll rarely, if ever, use after graduating, lots of partying and bumming around. "Study abroad semester" is nothing more than a proxy term for "4 month vacation for sex, drinking, parties and roadtrips while the taxpayer takes care of the host country's evil out-of-state tuition (usually US, Canada or Australia)" - see for yourself with those "Erasmus" (exchange) students from Europe doing their exchange program in America.

There's a misconception commonly spread in Germany that staying as a student to work means you pay less taxes - kinda true, but technically it's because you get paid so little, you stay in the non-taxable <9000 EUR/year bracket - so you have people postponing graduation or enrolling in a new university without taking any courses after graduating to keep their student status.

Student/internship wage exploitation is turning into an epidemic because of the large student population that remain students for such a long time paired with legal loopholes that allow many companies to get away with hiring a bunch of cheap students instead of one full-time employee.

I've been living in Europe for a few years and they are not immune to the problems that Americans complain about. They do a good job complaining about America on the Internet while downplaying their own problems and spreading positive vibes (cough propaganda cough) on how Europe is superior/more human/ethical than America though.

user:	ToxicCorgi
created:	September 21, 2017
karma:	9