Back at the Oxford conference, an academic from Finland listened to 3 American scholars discuss their universities and exclaimed, “This is unbelievable! If I tell people back home that Americans also have problems with funding, nobody will believe me. Aren’t American universities supposed to be rolling in money?”
Rolling
Clarissa's Blog 
I’ve encountered something similar with Germans. The German media love to do profiles on the amazing facilities at American universities, but the articles are always about Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, and occasionally a top public university like UC Berkeley. If the media outlet is conservative they will suggest that German universities could all be this amazing if they just charged tuition. If the media outlet is leftist they will suggest that these amazing universities are only available to the wealthiest of the wealthy and that normal Americans are all crammed into horrible, crumbling commuter colleges. I’ve read lots of German articles about American universities and every single one has been filled with huge distortions. I bet something similar is going on in Finland.
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Yale isn’t rich because of tuition. It’s rich because it’s a corporation that invests massively into all kinds of business ventures. For instance, when I was a student there, it invested into private prisons.
On the other hand, maybe I should post photos of the local community and commuter colleges. They are incredibly beautiful.
So you’re right, simplifications always distort.
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You and I know the wealth is in the endowments, but the conservatives in Germany who think university students should be paying tuition don’t want to hear that.
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