alt Hacker NewsAt least the good part about the US situation is that people are still free to choose for themselves. The cost isn't redirected to the whole population at large via taxation. In the EU it's much worse, because the same reality is materialising, but it is still advertised as "free". Of course, this is the path to a form of soft communism and all systems are becoming dysfunctional and unable to create real value at the same time. The "solution" has been to create ever more taxation and even more debt that is to be paid by the next generation.
It seems that the US will course correct but the EU seems to be declining into authoritarianism and proto-communism.
The EU is aggressively neoliberal or liberal-conservative, and that is the reason universities have begun to be more expensive. It's related to austerity, privatization, the aggressive revision of tax codes, and New Public Management.
The left has not been popular in the EU since the 70s, which is why this development has gotten increasingly aggresive in the last few decades. You cannot seriously suggest that the EU has moved left in any meaningful way. The EU commission is currently trying to implement that every new regulation can only pass once an old regulation can be removed. It's a neoliberal dream, where the amount of regulation can only go down, and public funds are allocated to private companies more and more.
This is especially true for universities, where public funding programs for research has begun to be funneled to startups instead of research groups.