There are plenty of people in America who believe a college education should be free for everyone.

What they don’t understand or perhaps just refuse to admit, is that nothing is free.

Christopher Denhart of Forbes reports.

There Is No Such Thing As A Free College Education

Following Wednesday’s decision to overturn tuition and fees in Lower Saxony, Germany, all universities will now be tuition free. According to The Times, Europe, Germany will now be 100% free of charge to students, national and international, as political figures call tuition fees “socially unjust.”

Dorothee Stapelfeldt, senator for science in Hamburg, states “Tuition fees are socially unjust” and that “they particularly discourage young people who do not have a traditional academic family background from taking up studies.”

Germany, in 2006, lifted a universal ban on tuition and fees, which led to the charging of tuition in seven states. This decision fully retracted that earlier ban.

According to the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Germany has the second highest income tax burden of all OECD’s 34 countries. Of course this is not surprising considering Germany is the father of “Sozialstaat” or in English “Social State” founded in 1870 under Then Chancellor Bismarck’s reforms.

Add on more state subsidies to keep higher education free, and the 2012 tax burden figure of 49.8 percent of income is sure to increase.