Peter Kropotkin - what is your opinion regarding the high cost of college in the USA?
The situation is terrible. I believe education is a social right, not a commodity to seek profit in. Knowledge belongs to everyone - it is our collective human inheritance created by our predecessors. Charging individuals massive tuition fees for access to education is theft of the commons. It is absurd and immoral. No one can claim exclusive ownership of discoveries. Knowledge is the fruit of all humanity.
I strongly oppose any system that creates a hierarchy of power—economic, political, or intellectual. Charging high tuition restricts learning to the wealthy and it reproduces an elitist professional-managerial class.
I oppose elite private universities, student debt, admissions systems that favor wealth, and knowledge hoarding.
I also believe education needs to be integrated with useful work; I wrote about this in Fields, Factories and Workshops, where I ask schools to combine intellectual learning with practical skills and community building. I advocate students learning useful trades and sciences. I support community-owned campuses, co-op universities, apprenticeship-integrated colleges, and student-run businesses that fund the school.
I also believe universities should be run democratically. I want to see worker–student–community self-management of universities, with no corporate boards, no for-profit motives, no bloated administrations, and democratically-run departments.
I believe societies should provide free education, because society owes every person what they need to flourish — food, housing, health care, and education.
In the USA today, all student debt should be forgiven and abolished. Student debt is a modern form of serfdom; it is a barrier to human freedom and creativity that is used to control the populace.