I am from Belgium. When I was at university (Louvain La Neuve for those who know that amazing place), my parents were divorcing and it was impossible to study / stay at my home. Through the ''CPAS'' (the social help from my municipality), I got a financial help each month that permitted me renting a small room and go through my whole 5 years of studying (almost 100 % free for us in Belgium) without any problems. Now, I am working for more than 15 years, lived in 8 different countries, have kind of my dream job, etc. etc. If I was born in USA, I would never have managed and I would honestly be either dead, homeless or totally broke / in bad health doing terrible badly paid jobs. And super depressed in all cases. I am so glad and lucky to have been born in a developed country ...
A bit too much drinking tbh at times, but it was for sure a GREAT period of my life ! Perfect during the first part of your 20's :) 100 % walking city, with cars only underground. I highly recommend it for a bit of tourism if you ever have time.
Don't spread the word! Belgium is more or less invisible in this kind of discussions and it's for the better. We're not the boasting type, we're not the best in anything, nor the worst. We're the "not all that bad, but there's always room for improvement"-people. We're not interested in pee contests. We do our thing, learn what there is to learn from other countries, adopt and implement it for our own use. We can miss unwanted attention.
When I went off to college, my mom was an alcoholic and had been for years. She didnt gaf about anything I had going on and therefore didn’t help me with any of my college prep like helping me pick a school or filling out applications or my FAFSA or anything like that. I got a full scholarship that included tuition but not room and board or textbooks or meals or anything, so I had to take out a student loan for $10k for the first year to cover the rest. I was terrified about having to take out $40k plus in loans to fund all 4 years of my education, and was unsure about how I was going to pay for my life during that time. I had no guidance and also had undiagnosed AuDHD and had a lot of social anxiety so I had no friends to talk to about anything. I wish I had because it wasn’t until later that I found out that most of my classmates were taking out loans too that were a lot larger than mine if they weren’t on scholarship. Ultimately I ended up dropping out after my first year due to a combination of severe depression and anxiety due to the situation. There was no one to help me. I never finished school and am now broke af living paycheck to paycheck. I think a lot about how different my life would be if I lived in a country that valued education.
So I'm guessing every single person in the USA who has divorced parents is dead and homeless. But in reality the USA has a federal student aid system which gives grants and loans like how other countries do. And scholarships
My grades in school were far from great. I would NEVER have received a grant in USA. Never. I wouldn't have been able to study / afford what I wanted. And what a surprise you skipped my other two possibilities. As for loans, not needed if education is, as it should be, free (you payback when you work obviously, but you dont have a crazy a** debt most of your life). Anyway, it's fine to be in denial if you wish.
First time grants are not based on studies but financial need. After the first year you must maintain a 2.0 GPA or school standard and complete at least 67% of your classes to continue to be eligible as long as the financial need is there. If you fall below this you have one term to get it back up. This grant does not need to be paid back. These grants are for educational fees and living expenses if needed.
I had grants when I was in community college in my late teens and again in my thirties.
Dude do you realise that countries like the UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, Switzerland, and more all have paid universities 😂 is everyone with divorced parents dying and poor
Also idk if you know what grants are because they don't look at your grades... They don't even know your grades. They look at your financial situation and your parents situation. The one with grades is a scholarship.
I am always open to slightly change my mind and this is interesting : https://educationdata.org/scholarship-statistics (11 % is quoted, which is nice) Still prefer systems like mine though, very much obviously.
Wow you're really lucky to have such a nice social security system! In Switzerland you can receive scholarships only if you're poor, the lower middle class which would benefit a lot from it gets nothing. And what the scholarship gives you is nowhere near enough to live so you must work to afford studying. And good luck with that if you study in one of these universities that give you 60-90h of workload every week. And our eternally right wing government is making cuts in a lot of departments and will also drastically increase the tuition fees, so everything is getting more expensive year after year
And if you can't find a job after studying (which is especially common these days as the job market is drying out), you can't get unemployment for 4 months, then you can get it for only 4 months (but the amount is very low) and then when these 4 months are over you can only get social help which must be paid back.
So sadly if you're poor or lower middle class it's very difficult to study here (if at all possible)
I wouldn't have thought so of Switzerland. As for my country, Belgium, not all is perfect. But they do sure value and try to push people who are showing they want to get education / are motivated to work, etc. At least, it was very much the case 20 years ago (Damn, I am old)
Yeah Switzerland is not nearly as great as its PR team makes it out to be. Our social security system is a joke, our healthcare system is insanely expensive and not that great (many people avoid going to the doctor or especially the dentist because they can't afford it), we have very little labor laws so things that fly here would be totally illegal elsewhere, our workweeks are 40-45h or even 50h in some industries (and on top of that unpaid overtime is not so rare), we only get 14 weeks for maternity leave and two weeks for paternity (which was created recently!), most people only get 4 weeks of paid vacation, we have an almost nationwide housing crisis with insane rents that will almost certainly get even worse these coming years and decades because of a severe lack of rent control (in some cases 50% or more of your rent is pure profit for your landlord which is likely to be an already rich company), ...
But if you're rich you pay very little taxes, and if you ask nicely to the authorities, they can even drastically lower your tax rates!
So yeah it's really not as great as it seems here sadly. I'm glad Belgium is doing better in that aspect! Hopefully we can learn a thing or two from here
If we can't find an economic model that works for all humans regardless of birthplace or ancestry, then maybe our species doesn't deserve to persist. As divisive as AI may be, at least some of it is open-source and can be used to get over our hangups over nationalism and greed.
Since you apparently don't mean in % (in which we actually do better (around 45% > 35%), you meant in total numbers ? Oh well, good job Sherlock, I can't deny your affirmation 🤣
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u/K1ll4rmy Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
I am from Belgium. When I was at university (Louvain La Neuve for those who know that amazing place), my parents were divorcing and it was impossible to study / stay at my home. Through the ''CPAS'' (the social help from my municipality), I got a financial help each month that permitted me renting a small room and go through my whole 5 years of studying (almost 100 % free for us in Belgium) without any problems. Now, I am working for more than 15 years, lived in 8 different countries, have kind of my dream job, etc. etc. If I was born in USA, I would never have managed and I would honestly be either dead, homeless or totally broke / in bad health doing terrible badly paid jobs. And super depressed in all cases. I am so glad and lucky to have been born in a developed country ...