Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn • Hacker News Board

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#171

Post by JoeAltmaier » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 4:02 PM UTC

xixixao wrote: post #168

thro1237 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe a free education, but add a screening process to measure the psychology of the student, help choose a profession or trade that will not be a waste of their time.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#172

Post by bovermyer » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 4:02 PM UTC

xixixao wrote: post #168

thro1237 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That seems like a really low amount to pay for tuition. In the US, many universities charge upwards of $20,000 per year, some as high as $100,000 a year.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#173

Post by daviddumenil » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 4:02 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #53

nhaehnle wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 very low in France as well and education is pretty much free.

France has relatively high Social Mobility.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/22/social-...

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#174

Post by shamney » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 4:03 PM UTC

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #160

It should be noted here, that in the past (10-20 years ago), Germany did not have any tuition fees ... and fared very well with this model for many decades. Only lately, because the German govnmt wanted to save the costs for the universities, they invented the fees with the argument, that with more funding, the quality of education could be better. But many universities just used the money to cover costs, that where…

student loans in the UK are provided by the government at relatively low interest rates. There is a minimum earning threshold before repayment can begin and a hard limit on the total proportion of income that can be taken for repayment. So no one is "at the mercy of the banks" and only a small number of people have been discouraged from attending university.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#175

Post by jiggy2011 » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 4:04 PM UTC

pedrosorio wrote: post #159

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…

And in that case, for the average 18 year old, the choice of attending University becomes a gamble (if you're poor) or business as usual (if your parents have money).

Why would it make any difference how poor your parents are? The only difference I can think of is that parents of rich students can afford to subsidise their offspring in studying a degree for which there is a negative ROI but why do we want people doing these degrees at all?

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#176

Post by Kurtz79 » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 4:05 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #129

jiggy2011 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the core of my question. Is there evidence that lowering fees does increase participation in university from poorer people and does this still hold true if the fee paying can be deferred? More to the point, does it increase participation of poor people in the best universities and the best (as reflected in higher salaries) degree programmes?

> Is there evidence that lowering fees does increase participation in university from poorer people The Italian experience is that free universities were (are) routinely oversubscribed. They opened loads of new universities in poorer areas, and still were eventually forced to introduce limits with entrance exams. The most in-demand institutions eventually reintroduced fees, although much lower than UK or US rates (we…

I think it also depends on the degree.

How many graduates in Political Sciences and Literature are there ?

How many job openings that require this specific knowledge ?

Most of my collegues graduating with me in Electronics were working in Italy within weeks/months of graduation.

But I generally agree that being available to everybody the degree in Italy is somewhat devalued.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#177

Post by digikata » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 4:05 PM UTC

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 may be low, but is the range of social/income disparity as high as in the US?

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#178

Post by sambeau » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 4:06 PM UTC

brianmcc wrote: post #41

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…

In some parts of the UK, you mean :-) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-23279868

This isn't such a simple story.

The current Scottish Government has been widely criticised by opponents for using cuts in the College budgets to fund their free tuition policy for Universities.

As colleges and universities are, sadly, still stratified by class in the UK this could have a detrimental on effect for social mobility in Scotland.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-2387...

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#179

Post by smm2000 » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 4:06 PM UTC

djur wrote: post #158

smm2000 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The point is to send them _before_ they become criminals.

Before they become criminals, they fail (statistically) in high school which is already free.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#180

Post by DasIch » Wed, Oct 01, 2014, 4:07 PM UTC

luch wrote: post #133

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.

Research as well as number of graduates with noteworthy awards is a rather questionable metric, for someone chosing a university right now. The number of awards is particularly problematic due to the timeframes involved not to mention the fact, that you are probably going to study something different and thereby at a different faculty than those successful graduates.