What I find funny in these discussions on HN is how most people seem to be completely oblivious to the obvious solution, proven to work in many developed countries around the world: have the state directly fund universities and don't charge tuition to students (or charge them a small amount). Why is the assumption "universities are private endeavours that should make a profit" something that goes unchallenged on HN?
> have the state directly fund universities and don't charge tuition to students That's how you end up with "Education" being the first cost element of the French budget (about 72 billions EUR per year) despite pretty poor academic results (that can be easily observed in the ever-decreasing level of the national exams). When government manages everything in one field, that field becomes mismanaged (trains: SNCF alway…
And while your examples are also true, I would argue that it's actually normal for rail and post to be in the red. This is because their primary purpose is not to generate revenue for the state, but to provide a service to taxpayers. For example, unprofitable train routes have to be kept because they link remote areas to cities.
In fact, when private industry handles these type of public services, users tend to have poorer service and higher costs, because there is a natural monopoly.
For train service, take a look at the UK, where different companies "compete": service is worse than France at a higher cost.
La Poste has been a publicly traded company for about 10 years if memory serves. Service has been getting worse ever since.