Higher education should not just be free but everyone should get financial support while doing it.

[tante@tldr.nettime.org]

Higher education should not just be free but everyone should get financial support while doing it.

Do what you want and get paid to be able to. Doesn't matter if it's STEM or art or humanities.

[rustynail@floss.social]

@tante sounds like another "hot take" for a second then you remember scholarships exist

[amici@fribygda.no]

@tante

That's partially how it works in Norway.

Phd is a paid position.
Any adult taking education gets a stipend (up to 8 years, or more of you need to finish high school as an adult, like me). This stipend is half of what you get for living expenses, the other half is student loans.

[amici@fribygda.no]

@rustynail @tante

or as I said, Norway and the other Nordic countries exist

[raphaelmorgan@disabled.social]

@rustynail @tante yeah, but they require a shitton of work to get. People aren't being paid to go to school, they're being paid to write long emotional essays about why they should be allowed to go to school. I, for one, was struggling to just do the school part with untreated ADHD, and didn't have time or energy to spend on scholarship hunting. So I ended up dropping out when I couldn't afford school, and boom another biomedical researcher doesn't exist.

[raphaelmorgan@disabled.social]

@tante this, just like paying people (or at least offering for free) to do CPR and first aid training, would benefit literally everyone including people who don't want to go to school. Educational expenses weed out most e.g. doctors without enough privilege to be entitled assholes who don't listen to their patients. If everyone who wanted to go into medicine was able to, it'd be way easier for the rest of us to find a good doctor who's kind enough and not too overworked to do their job well

[raphaelmorgan@disabled.social]

@tante obviously this applies to pretty much every field and not just doctors--I figured doctors would be one that most onlookers will understand. But it's just as important that people who care about education, all sorts of research, and pretty much every other field be allowed to work in it. They're going to do the best at it, and most of us are never given the chance to do it at all.

[chogbro@masto.ai]

@tante and that's how it was when I went to higher education in the 1980s in England. No fees and my student grant (not loan) was enough to live on.

[estelle@mstdn.social]

@tante every scandinavian country ever

apparently for a time it may have been like this in other countries but i'm hearing about "student loan debt" from the UK now, so i'm assuming they're on track to full privatization now too