Columbia Law student bids $8000 plus for lunch with Amal

Are they married?

Ladybug - Is who married?

PAN - I've never known a college student who could afford $8,000 for lunch! Columbia is an expensive school and does have its share of wealthy students, but even so, that's a lot of money for lunch. Maybe they all chipped in. I wouldn't. They said the money would be used to support the students. Maybe they'll get reimbursed!

Ladybug is who married?

The money is going to the students so that's a good thing.

The person who paid the $8000.

It was a student and the article says she is bringing six friends with her.

Interesting...

If you read the whole of the article, this was a charity auction and includes the leading professor in the human rights faculty too - and I suspect that the six of them all clubbed together to find the money. (Maybe their parents are doing well on the Stock Exchange! I would guess that you have to pay for university education in the States anyway - here in the UK the students get a loan based on parents income and pay back once in work and earning a certain amount)

Yes you have to pay and it is not cheap. The loan's aren't the worse part here it's the interest which is just way too much.

PAN - It works the same way here. There are state colleges and private colleges. They all charge tuition, but the private colleges are more expensive. If you can't afford tuition on your own and aren't lucky enough to get a scholarship that covers your education, you can apply for a loan and pay it back after graduation. Sadly, that means that most kids graduate from college with a pretty hefty debt to pay back.

Lizzy, we don't have any private universities bar one here - Buckingham, which was set in the Thatcher years and has charitable status.

So, Oxford and Cambridge are publicly funded (ie. paid for by the government)?

Yes, they are Lizzy. Though obviously some of the research institutes attached to some of them may have sponsors or former graduates will leave bequests for specific areas.

So at the time Amal went to Oxford, students did not have to pay fees either. A bit different from when my children went to university more recently - in most cases now parents make up the fall and the children have student debt payments back to government once they reach a certain earning capacity and it gets taken from their monthly salary much like any other tax

Sad to say it's the same here. For many of our kids a higher education is out of reach without incurring almost lifelong debt. It's become so serious that it's an issue in presidential election politics.

Thank God here in Italy it's totally different.

The debt's not quite that bad in the UK, Lizzy. One of my children attempted to pay the government loan off a lot quicker once she was earning a reasonable salary. Turns out the system to do so is extremely difficult...