This is nearly a strictly American problem. Much of the rest of the world has realized that society requires and is capable of supporting advanced education for all -- after all we want humanity to be advancing, right?
I think foreign colleges have stricter entry requirements and fewer amenities compared to American colleges. So yes, college may be free in Japan, but also much harder to be accepted.
College is, overall, cheaper in Japan than in the U.S., but it isn’t free [1]. You might be thinking of some countries in Europe.
The top schools in Japan are indeed quite competitive, but there are also universities that admit almost any high school graduate. A few decades ago, a lot of new universities were established just when the birthrate was starting to drop. Now some lower-tier private universities are struggling to attract enough students to survive.
In Germany, the overall entry requirement is a not horrible high school degree (type of high school intended to prepare for an academic career) for engineering. You can just go and sign up to the university of your choice. The flip side is that you then sit there with hundreds of other students that will be weeded out by a harsh curriculum and zero advisement. That said, whoever gets through that system will be worth their price later on when you hire them.
>I think foreign colleges have stricter entry requirements and fewer amenities compared to American colleges. So yes, college may be free in Japan, but also much harder to be accepted.
Yeah this is problematic, on one hand you have people who work harder for it pass the entrance exams and get in (like in France for example where some engineering schools like Polytechnique and ENS have a super difficult entrance exam but then you know everyone studying there earned it), but on the other hand you get some people who are just lazy or not good at physics get filtered from top tier positions in CS because the entrance exam had Math and Physics equally attribute to your grade.
I think foreign colleges have stricter entry requirements and fewer amenities compared to American colleges. So yes, college may be free in Japan, but also much harder to be accepted.