On the pain of growing student loan, et al...

I feel the pain for the younger generations who have to borrow heavily in order to get themselves a decent education.

To be sure, I grew up in Hong Kong, and back then before Hong Kong turns basically every community college and second tier education institutes into a full university, being able to get admission into either Hong Kong University or Chinese University of Hong Kong is like winning a lottery ticket. Affordability is not the question, but it's the sheer demand for the highly limited supply of university seats. Most families who want a better education for their kids would scrap every cent to fund their overseas study, either to England or Canada or Australia or US. That's just the way it was. Unlike Americans, Chinese families rarely borrow externally (eg. banks) for their kids' education. Most fundings are from within families and relatives, and they don't charge interests for this. That lessens the burden tremendously. Although it's not universally true anymore, back then if you have a university degree from overseas and have a decent command of English, you're almost certain to get a very decent paying job in Hong Kong.

I started my university study later in life. As I didn't really know what I really wanted to do, I worked for a few years before I decided that I wanted to do either computer science or journalism or law. (Don't ask me why these three vastly differing subjects, but they appealed to me in various aspects at that point.) I got admitted to a few universities in England to study computer science and law. I never applied for journalism anywhere. Maybe it's not as hard to get as CS or law, and my competitive spirit had me dropped it subconsciously. In those couple of years, I managed to my salary 2 times (changing jobs often certainly helped). So, I saved all I could, enough to pay my own tuition. I was lucky to never have to ask my parents for any help in tuition since they would not be in a position to, given that my older brother and one older sister had used up most everything in fundings that our family could afford, sending them to Australia. Both my parents had been very supportive for my endeavor.

After I got to England, I was lucky enough too, to find part time work in one of the university faculty who was able to formally sponsor my employment. I never like working grey-market jobs or under-the-table. I said it's lucky too, since this was in the deep recession in UK in early 1990s, and unemployment was very high at the time.

In the middle of my study, when my family eventually migrated to Australia, they asked me to join them. Although I love the academic environment in England, funding the tuition and accommodation for myself as an overseas student continued to be a great challenge, where I literally spent more time working the part time jobs than studying. Moving to Australia would mean I would study as a local student, with much reduced tuition. All things considered, I moved from England to Australia, and finished my bachelor degree there.

I'm forever indebted to Australia for the chance that it afforded me. I was able to defer the tuition payment, with no interest penalty. With Austudy and the girl-friday I got in a computer graphics company, I was able to support both myself and my younger sister who's studying at university with me. I could focus on my study, for a change, without having to worry about whether I would have enough money for the next tuition payment. In the junior year, I was luck enough to get an internship with an investment bank. In my course, the internship component is a mandatory requirement for graduation. During the mid 1990s when Australian economy was in the ditch, there're some 350-400 students (probably 97% in all) in various stages of their study in my course who couldn't find internship and were unable to graduate due to that. Shortly after the internship started , the investment bank offered me the position full time and paid for my tuition (so I didn't have to repay the tuition of the classes that I was doing when I was with them). That gave me a much welcomed head-start on gaining relevant work experience. Although I had my full time work, I continued to take full-time course load for each semester (and in one of the semesters, I was doing 1.25x normal full-time load). That allowed me to graduate ahead of most of my class, while accumulating experience in the field.

During my study in Australia, I had never needed to worry much about money or health care coverage (since Medicare provides universal coverage for citizens). Eventually, after I graduated, I repaid the government all the tuitions that I deferred.

When I look back at my own experience, in comparison with the younger folks in America now who struggle with tens (oftentimes even hundreds) of thousands of dollars of tuitions and other higher education costs, I'm flabbergasted. The article rightly points out that, instead of much needed debate and potential reform to higher education, all the government can do is to dough out more loans, which completes the feedback loop to the colleges and universities about what kind of increases they can charge to the tuition and others. Afterall, if students can keep (borrowing and) paying, they can keep charging. It's a vicious cycle on a downward spiral.

It's true that taxes in Australia are outrageously high, which is one of the perpetual complaint of working class folks downunder. When you consider all the taxes you paid in totality in US, those in Australia are not that much higher. If you factor in the health care that you pay in US, the taxes you pay in Australia can seem even downright cheap. Much as the argument against the welfare states in Europe, while people would complain that the welfares in Australia remove the incentive for people to work, one can also argue that it allows the labor market flexibility (since one does not have to consider simply based on whether the job provides health coverage or not). Indeed, I would admit that I was once somewhat resentful of the obscene amount of taxes that came out of my paycheck back then in Australia, it doesn't look too bad in introspect.

The longer I live in America, the more I have come to realize the flaws in the "capitalist" way in America. Americans have very low threshold to anything that has the smell or label of socialism, but most of them do not realize how much they have been on the short end. Given the total amount of money that Americans have been paying health care and other services, and the poor services provided to its populace at large, one has to wonder why so many people are willing to maintain the status quo. With airheads like Sarah Palin, the debate on reforms like health care and education is not going to go anywhere. If only these ignorant folks could be shipped out to live in different overseas countries for a period of time, and experience the different kinds of systems out there in the world (without the filters from media and lobbyists), they would perhaps come to realize how stupid they've been all along.