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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

#131

Post by jiggy2011 »

maemilius wrote: post #114
jiggy2011 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But could that not also be extended to any other programme which benefits the more wealthy disproportionately? If you have two people who earn the same amount of money and one receives a service (university education) and the other does not. Does it make sense to split the costs of that service if the one who received it can afford to pay on their own?

When put on small terms, like this, subsidized education always starts to look bad. Scaling it up makes it seem much more fair. As an American, I understand the concept of doing it yourself and not paying for things that don't benefit you. That said, I also understand that paying extra taxes to get more kids in better schools has more benefit to society than letting me keep that money. Personally, I'd be happy to sub…

But if you allow the tuition payments to be deferred, as is the case in the UK then the question of who can "afford" tuition changes from being predicated on their economic position before they go to university to their expected economic position after university.

If student loan repayments are capped at X% of income and you do not believe that getting a university degree will raise your earnings by at least X% then it probably is not in your best interest to attend university. The same math applies regardless of how much money you have before you start university.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#132

Post by rbehrends »

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.

That is actually a bit more complicated.

(1) Germany traditionally hasn't done "elite universities". Even in the early 20th century (i.e. until about 1933), when Germany was a Nobel Prize factory, it was often individual departments that stood out (such as mathematics in Goettingen), not universities in their entirety. There's currently an attempt to change that (Exzellenzinitiative), but we'll see how that goes.

(2) Until a while ago, it was difficult to become a full professor at a German university unless you were German (because you basically became a civil servant, part of the requirements for which was citizenship); German also wasn't the lingua franca of science anymore after WW II, which made it difficult for German universities to attract foreign academic talent.

(3) In lieu of elite universities, Germany these days has hundreds of research centers (such as the Max Planck Institutes), which do attract the cream of the crop.

(4) High college rankings do not actually seem to translate into better adult education [1]. Part of that is, of course, that American students enter college with 1-2 years less education than other developed countries [2], and that's really a problem of secondary education. But on the other hand, a Bachelor's degree in many European countries takes only three years instead of four (in part for that reason), so that should compensate.

In this context, it's worth noting that the methodology that the THE uses for calculating the teaching score is imperfect, to say the least. It comprises the following factors [3]: (1) a survey of the perceived prestige of the institution, (2) staff-to-student ratio, (3) doctorate-to-bachelor ratio, (4) institutional income compared to staff numbers.

While I do think that the German university system could be improved upon (no secret, pretty much all German professors I know think the same), this is an apple-to-oranges comparison: especially at the undergraduate level, there are fundamental structural differences in the two college systems that renders most of these factors meaningless as a basis for comparison.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/upshot/americans-think-we-...

[2] http://www.vox.com/2014/7/5/5868791/does-america-have-good-c...

[3] http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-ranki...

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#133

Post by luch »

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.

As a French I'm always find those rankings entertaining : for exemple the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) is ranked 65 with a research score 37.1 .

The ENS has outputted 11 Fields winning mathematicians (20% of the world's laureates) and 10 Nobel prizes. In comparison, Cornell Uni. (19th) count 13 alumni which has won the Nobel.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#134

Post by aianus »

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.

> From an European point of view, the US university system is crazy.

From the US point of view the European system is crazy. Call me a selfish prick but I don't want to pay 50% taxes for the rest of my life subsidizing arts majors' parties because I chose to study something useful.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#135

Post by this_user »

nhaehnle wrote: post #39
jiggy2011 wrote: post #19

Has there been any extensive research done on relationship between university fees and social mobility? On one hand it seems obvious that if you reduce costs of attending university you remove a barrier that would prevent economically disadvantaged people from attending. But on the other hand, university students, especially those at the best universities disproportionately come from better economic backgrounds and t…

Social mobility in Germany is very low, doing consistently worse than e.g. the Scandinavian countries (I remember seeing sources claim that it is even worse than the US, but there seems to be no agreement on that). However, as far as education is concerned, it would be wrong to blame universities. The German school system is very stratified, "locking in" a child's destiny at a young age. Via parents who understand th…

Social mobility is low that is a well-documented fact, but I disagree with blaming the educational system for that. There are always paths to work your way up in the system even if you were not always in the highest tier. I personally know several people who did it that way. There are more than enough high-profile examples e.g. former Chancellor Schröder who started with a retail apprenticeship, then passed his Abitur, got his law degree, then became Prime Minister of Lower Saxony and eventually Chancellor.

My point is that there is always a way to advance if you have the brains and the drive to do it. In addition to that you can easily receive financial support from the German state if your family is unable to pay for your desired education. I don't think the system can do much more as it already offers all the opportunities you could hope for.

So this then leads to the question of why social mobility is still low despite all of this. Possibly it has more to do with the people's general mindset. Parents with academic degrees are likely going to push their children in the same direction. Parents without a degree, on the other hand, may very well tell their children that an apprenticeship has served them just fine and that there is no need to get an academic degree. This, I think, is the big difference. In the US there is this idea of advancing and making more of yourself (even if that has become more difficult, but that's not the point here) while German society is much more static. I think this is the real reason for low social mobility that people are simply not that driven to chance their circumstances and not even free education and financial support can change that.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#136

Post by walterbell »

colordrops wrote: post #128
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…

I'm not so sure that Facebook is the best example. It's not clear whether its existence has made a positive mark on the world or a negative one. Also, Linux was created in another socialized state, Finland. I would argue that the impact of Linux is at least an order of magnitude more profound than Facebook.

Another example, Tim Berners-Lee and the WWW.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#138

Post by jre »

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.

Germany has things like the Max Planck Society[1] (with 32 Nobel Prized), but it's not directly affiliated with a University, so it doesn't count in the rankings. It seems to me those rankings favor very large institution; are the score even normalized by number of students/faculty ?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Society

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#139

Post by wffurr »

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…

That's not the American model–it's the American myth.

You're leaving out the parts where Americans are enslaved to their corporate jobs through employer-provided healthcare, lack of unions, and a weak safety net. Combine that with regulatory capture by corporations, extreme concentration of wealth, and legalized bribery of legislators, and now you've got the American model.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#140

Post by cafard »

mkaziz wrote: post #38
cafard wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After one of Mark Edmundson's op ed pleas for students and parents to consider college as non-vocational, I had a look at the University of Virginia's tuition and fees from the late 1970s to recently. Comparing this against the minimum wage, I found that a student could have earned the 1978-1979 tuition and fees working a bit over eight weeks at the minimum wage. For the 2011-2012 school year, it was more than 38 wee…

Is this before or after tax? 38 weeks seems short to me.

Before. I ignored tax, mostly because at the minimum wage you don't pay much.
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