My experience of the UK and Germanic systems:<p>In the UK, you can do any degree and people will still hire you for a graduate job. Something like a bank or a consultancy won&#x27;t care whether you did Engineering or Classics. They might care more which university you attended. The idea seems to  be that anyone fairly smart can do anything.<p>In the Germanic world (Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia) doing a degree is choosing a life path. You&#x27;re an Electronic Engineer? Great, you can apply for jobs in EE. Nobody else can. And you&#x27;ll have a hard time doing something else, relative to the British EE student. There&#x27;s a real belief that studying something somehow makes you competent at a job.<p>Neither of these views is entirely true, of course. Your Classicist  will find it harder than your CS guy to write good OO code. Your German EE guy may well find himself getting by on soft skills.<p>What does this mean with regard to tuition fees? I suppose the Germanic system requires a certain number of graduates in various sectors, and employers would feel justified in complaining if society does not push out a sensible number of engineers. Likewise, you will hear the occasional voice in the public debate about too many people being allowed to do courses with no specific purpose. Since society is paying for this, everyone who can write to a newspaper has a voice in what young people get up to. As a young person, you really need to be on the academic path quite early to beat the selection system.<p>In the UK, where having a degree is a sort of entry pass to the middle class, the debate is more about fairness than economic goals. If you make it expensive, poor kids have a hard time getting those nice desk jobs that allow you to buy a house and car. On the other hand, it&#x27;s individual whether you want to take out a loan, a risk that&#x27;s up to each 18 year old. If you want to climb the ladder, you can pay up and give it a shot.<p>So there&#x27;s a big question of what university is for. Is it so that society can fill out certain jobs? Or is it a vehicle for individual advancement? Of course it&#x27;s a bit of both, but there are legitimate arguments for higher or lower fees, and pros and cons on both sides.