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Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

timeshighereducation.co.uk

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Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#101

Post by andreasklinger »

vapourismo wrote: post #74
taejo wrote: post #37

I'm a student at a German university, and I don't pay tuition fees, but I do pay about 400€ a year in "semester fees", of which the two largest components are "student services" and a compulsory season ticket for regional transport; student union membership and some kind of insurance contribution are also included.

400€ per year or per semester? Where? I am at the Institute of Technology in Berlin and I payed 290.37€ this semester, which includes 179.40€ for public transport.

so you paid 80€ more ?

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#102

Post by bratsche »

raverbashing wrote: post #73

I find the "American model" and the "European model" dichotomy very interesting. American model: individually centered, "pay for what you want", development is driven by small companies and individual decisions (most of the time). "Works for me" European model: centered on the community, social support, development by committee/government/consensus. Slow but directed improvements Germany could not have produced Faceb…

Even if what you're saying is true (which I'm a little skeptical of), what provides more value to people? Facebook or free education?

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#103

Post by 2ion »

jbangert wrote: post #64
GolfyMcG wrote: post #57

Why has no one brought up how the top German university is "ranked" 55th on this list: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-ranki... I'm not saying this list is definitive or that the US tuition prices are reasonable, but it stands to reason that the best of the best of anything is going to be exponentially more expensive than it's next closest competitors.

Without going into the metrics that these rankings use and their flaws, the German university system unfortunately focuses less on "elite" universitities, instead trying to create a good average experience, so most of the universities are actually fairly on-par with each other in terms of funding, and therefore also research output, teaching, etc. That being said, my experience with high-prestige american universitie…

The aversion towards the promotion of a few selected university is also apparent in the fact that the only wide-scale national program for financing elite structures, the "excellence initiative", is subject to quite a bit of criticism (recent piece in the Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/exzellenzinitiative...).

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#104

Post by raverbashing »

melling wrote: post #83
raverbashing wrote: post #73

I find the "American model" and the "European model" dichotomy very interesting. American model: individually centered, "pay for what you want", development is driven by small companies and individual decisions (most of the time). "Works for me" European model: centered on the community, social support, development by committee/government/consensus. Slow but directed improvements Germany could not have produced Faceb…

Building a high-speed rail network has nothing to do with our "model". It's 50 year old technology with commercial use before man first set foot on the moon. There are a dozen countries with it. Spain, for example, has a few thousand miles. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-speed_rail_lines

I'm not talking about the technology, I'm talking about the implementation.

Doing this requires a lot of collective work: investment, property acquisition or licensing, railway building, etc

This requires collective vision and goals

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#105

Post by flexie »

raverbashing wrote: post #73

I find the "American model" and the "European model" dichotomy very interesting. American model: individually centered, "pay for what you want", development is driven by small companies and individual decisions (most of the time). "Works for me" European model: centered on the community, social support, development by committee/government/consensus. Slow but directed improvements Germany could not have produced Faceb…

If Germany couldn't have produced Facebook it's only because of the language. User content on facebook is mainly a written language thing, and it would have been hard spreading a website with mostly German content to English since so few Americans and brits speak German. On the other hand, most young Europeans speak English so Facebook had little trouble spreading from American universities to Europeans.

Skype started in Europe (Swedish/Danish co-founders, Estonian devs, offices in London, company in Luxembourg). No "committe/government/consensus" there.

Also, Apple and Google are examples of American companies that started with public funding.

Finally, many European countries rank higher than the US when it comes to social mobility. Don't most European know several millionaires who "came out of nothing" (or at least from a quiet European middle class background)? I think so.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#106

Post by eli_gottlieb »

raverbashing wrote: post #73

I find the "American model" and the "European model" dichotomy very interesting. American model: individually centered, "pay for what you want", development is driven by small companies and individual decisions (most of the time). "Works for me" European model: centered on the community, social support, development by committee/government/consensus. Slow but directed improvements Germany could not have produced Faceb…

Speaking as a born-and-bred American, America did not produce Facebook. Its content is mostly user-created: the world created Facebook.

If we want to talk about specific public policies conducive to the formation of web start-ups, California created Facebook by refusing to enforce noncompete agreements -- building an environment in which "Take this job and shove it! I'll start my own company!" can't be met with "You'll never work in this industry again!"

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#107

Post by iammyIP »

cmdkeen wrote: post #88
iammyIP wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"[...] way past the point of marginal returns in terms of social or cultural advancement [...]" - how do you measure that? We have just started. More free education is always better, and as a bonus it forces society to automate mindnumbingly boring jobs when there is nobody left willing to do them. Imagine all People on Earth would have a university degree, good all-around education and culture would explode with the…

Firstly the large number of graduates in non graduate job belies this. It's a massive con that there are anything close to the same benefits accruing to everyone who gets a university education. What should be happening more is people learning a trade. Germany's economic powerhouse status is not due to graduates nearly as much as skilled technical workers.

yes, it seems there are not enough paid places in society especially for cultural / liberal arts educated people and they end up as baristas or similar, but i dont see this as a bad thing. It puts pressure on automation, on re-thinking how a barista gets paid, it fuels anger and frustration of those affected and helps eventually changing thesed things to acommodate better to the current and future situation. The worst solution is to get less people educated, so we can sustain some after-ww2-status-quo.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#108

Post by VLM »

pjmlp wrote: post #17
shmerl wrote: post #9

Impressive. I wish US would do the same.

From an European point of view, the US university system is crazy. In many European countries the value of state universities over private ones is very high regarded, that except for a few well renowned exceptions, private universities are seen as places where you buy a title, not earn one. As they mostly get the students that weren't able to go through the national exams for the state universities.

"places where you buy a title"

We have public community college systems for this.

The "night school" programs have tolerable rep, although associate degrees are vocationally worthless in the economy usually there are well established credit transfer programs.

The day students are the ones who partied too hard to get into a "better" school or people with severe financial or personal issues. Or weirdos like me. I have an economically worthless associates degree in electronics from the very early 90s, but another way to look at it is I only paid about $4K cash out of pocket for 56 transfer credits which is about $70/credit. I work near a private regionally well regarded engineering school and their optimistic web page claims $47240/yr total today in 2014 (certainly real world would cost more) which works out to about $1475/credit.

(edited well this is embarrassing, I didn't correct for 2014 tuition at the community college where I got the A.S. in electronics in the early 90s. 2014 fall tuition is $125.85/credit, $4.50 mandatory minimum materials fee per class, $7.55 student activity mandatory fee, $6/semester mandatory accident liability policy fee. Shockingly they got rid of their technology fee and parking permit fee, nice. So about $140/credit in the fall of 2014, to compare apples to apples).

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#109

Post by raverbashing »

psychometry wrote: post #84
raverbashing wrote: post #73

I find the "American model" and the "European model" dichotomy very interesting. American model: individually centered, "pay for what you want", development is driven by small companies and individual decisions (most of the time). "Works for me" European model: centered on the community, social support, development by committee/government/consensus. Slow but directed improvements Germany could not have produced Faceb…

Why do those philosophies have to be mutually exclusive? Can't you apply principles of social welfare to the public sector while allowing entrepreneurship in the private sector?

They don't have to be. But it's complicated.

And sure, entrepreneurship is allowed, but then you'll have to convince your family of why are you not getting a nice job as a government clerk or something.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#110

Post by DasIch »

VLM wrote: post #79
Shivetya wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am more concerned with good seats going to students who will never complete their degree, or the degree is not needed in the market and you end up with hobby and not a job. While the idea of removing costs sounds good there are just so many negatives. Means testing should still be done, raise the bar so that the truly well off are the only ones paying and not the lower income levels. The second "means" testing woul…

"or the degree is not needed in the market and you end up with hobby and not a job." There are more destructive forms of welfare than academic credentialism. Its an interesting idea to think about... if you can't get a job, go to school for free collecting degrees and certifications until you get a job. I've checked the numbers and in terms of accounting overhead and criminal justice system overhead it is somewhat ch…

Universities are not just factories that produce workers. Having a well educated society and people studying is desireable no matter how employable the people are afterwards.

A well educated society is essential to an effective and efficient democracy and I would argue beneficial to culture and quality of life overall.

The US is actually a very good example for what happens, if a significant part of your population is not well educated.

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