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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

#161

Post by DasIch »

thedaveoflife wrote: post #153

One "problem" we have occasionally in Berlin: People enrolling as students without actually attending classes to get all the added benefits of being a student in Germany. Almost everything over here carries a student discount.

The student discounts you get isn't really worth it. The semester ticket for public transport though costs about 1€ a day. That is incredibly cheap compared to the regular tickets.

Other universities have the same problem though. In NRW you can practically travel through the entire state with a semester ticket at roughly the same price.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#162

Post by Kurtz79 »

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…

Your analysis is very black and white, and reality is probably more nuanced, but I generally agree that Europeans tend to be more risk averse than Americans.

It is also true that something as "simple" as starting your own company or working as a freelancer it often involves a lot of paperwork and upfront costs, which discourages a lot of people.

Still, I believe things are changing (in some countries faster than others), at least on this account.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#163

Post by raverbashing »

walterbell wrote: post #136
colordrops wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

WWW is actually 3 things: URL/URI + HTTP + HTML ;) Created based on the preceding ideas like Gopher, telnet, etc and some others as well

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29

"On 30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone, with no fees due.[24] Coming two months after the announcement that the server implementation of the Gopher protocol was no longer free to use, this produced a rapid shift away from Gopher and towards the Web. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web

Btw, I'm not disagreeing with you, the European idea of making things for "everybody" got into play there.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#164

Post by vasilipupkin »

Kesty wrote: post #75
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.

Not really. 14 place ETHZ (Switzerland) https://www.ethz.ch/en/studies/financial/tuition-fees.html $600 at semester = $1,200 (1 school year) 15 place John Hopkins(USA) http://www.collegecalc.org/colleges/maryland/johns-hopkins-u... $45,470 (1 school year) Obviously it's US against Switzerland, it's completely different and very hard to compare. But bigger fees doesn't really means better university.

Yes, but there are plenty of scholarhips and need based funds at John Hopkins. So this way a rich student has no problem paying either through loans or cash, but a poor student will be subsidized to a large extent. Also, if you want to major in something that is not in high demand then great, do it but why should everyone else subsidize your choices?

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#165

Post by DasIch »

smm2000 wrote: post #111
VLM wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

It's useless to send most criminals (especially minorities with 1/3 jail ratio) to community colleges. Majority of them could not even finish high school and still read at fifth grade level after graduation. It's a noble idea but unfortunately education is not for everyone. The only result of sending unprepared people college, will be making college less safe and destroying quality of education for kids who are prepa…

You do realize that the obvious logical conclusion of this line of thinking, is to put "most criminals" behind bars for the rest of their lives -- or to be more economical sentence them to death?

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#166

Post by shkkmo »

Retric wrote: post #86
jiggy2011 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if they do make more, does it not make sense for the university grad to pay that cost after they have graduated?

This get's into some really complex cost benefit analysis. They directly pay more in taxes with that extra earnings. However, something like smoking has negative externalities so a specific tax on smoking is justifiable. But, education has positive externalities so subsidizing it is justified. Consider, a doctor might make more money but the value of the lives they save is greater than their income. So, it's really a…

Actually, calculations on the social cost of smoking are complicated. We pay more for their healthcare initially, but they die younger so we pay their social security for less time. Depending on how you calculate it, smoking can be seen to be cost neutral, or even to save the country money.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/08/how-much-does-smoki...

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#168

Post by xixixao »

thro1237 wrote: post #77
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…

I can only provide anecdotal evidence. I come from a poor family and studied in India in a government university by paying $20/year. The cost of providing that education was estimated at $1000/year and private universities used to charge as much. If the government had not provided that subsidy, I would not have taken a loan to the tune of $1000/year because that would have been too risky. I would have opted for the l…

It's not so much anecdotal as circumstantial. If everyone was taking the loan, you probably would too. It is the same in England, were students took loans for 3,5k pounds a year and now even 9k a year.

Now I am not saying that the British system is the ideal (pros and cons) but I can certainly provide some more anecdotal evidence of many people who study for free (in the Czech Republic) and are basically wasting the system resources (both in terms of taking up spaces in classes and having the tax status of a student). But possibly even better argument for tuition is the level of funding for universities. It certainly seems greater in tuition based systems (I know the US and UK one) vs government sponsored one (like the Czech one).

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#169

Post by JoeAltmaier »

shkkmo wrote: post #166
Retric wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This get's into some really complex cost benefit analysis. They directly pay more in taxes with that extra earnings. However, something like smoking has negative externalities so a specific tax on smoking is justifiable. But, education has positive externalities so subsidizing it is justified. Consider, a doctor might make more money but the value of the lives they save is greater than their income. So, it's really a…

Actually, calculations on the social cost of smoking are complicated. We pay more for their healthcare initially, but they die younger so we pay their social security for less time. Depending on how you calculate it, smoking can be seen to be cost neutral, or even to save the country money. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/08/how-much-does-smoki...

Ignores the value of a healthy productive member of society. What was that essay about burning Hobos for fuel?

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#170

Post by jiggy2011 »

alphydan wrote: post #156
jiggy2011 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> 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 I was unaware that the role of university was to take your salary from X to X+Delta. What if you are a better citizen, a nurse (earning less than a secretary, but contributing more), a street artist? What if you earned more as a construction worker, but inst…

In that case , if these professions are valuable why not simply pay them more? If someone with a science degree only does science part time then that money should be diverted to people who intend to do science full time because there is a much better ROI.
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