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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

#281

Post by PythonicAlpha »

jo_ wrote: post #274

I've been digging through this thread and can't seem to find any information on the impact of 'free tuition' on tuition costs. In the US, we saw an increase in loan availability result in a significant uptick in the price of attendance to universities. If the government is paying the cost of tuition, how is the cost of tuition kept in check? Disclaimer: I love the idea of free public education. I wish it would take h…

I live in Germany and from my experience, the system of free education worked ~40 years or more (not counting the last years, that we had those fees, which where invented I guess in the 90s or 00s). We had excellent education for several decades without fees and it worked fine, until the gvnmts (not only the German) got the idea, that there are more important things than education (for example military, big corporations and banks).

Of course you should not just "pay arbitrary amounts" to the universities but hold the people accountable for what they spent.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#282

Post by sillysaurus3 »

praxulus wrote: post #235
jcampbell1 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has a similar system to the UK called Income Based Repayment. It is not the default option, but I think it works similarly in principle.

I believe that can only be used on government loans, not private loans. Yet another reason to avoid private student loans if at all possible.

If you want to go to university, and you're not from a privileged economic background, avoiding private student loans isn't really possible, unfortunately. Doubly so, because people from disadvantaged economic backgrounds have no idea how to find government money to help them attend college in the first place. And government loans usually don't cover all of the expenses related to university anyway, so private loans become necessary.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#283

Post by thedaveoflife »

DasIch wrote: post #161
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.

The Studenten-BahnCard saves you a ton of money on train travel too

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#284

Post by ginko »

jo_ wrote: post #274

I've been digging through this thread and can't seem to find any information on the impact of 'free tuition' on tuition costs. In the US, we saw an increase in loan availability result in a significant uptick in the price of attendance to universities. If the government is paying the cost of tuition, how is the cost of tuition kept in check? Disclaimer: I love the idea of free public education. I wish it would take h…

> If the government is paying the cost of tuition, how is the cost of tuition kept in check?

By the government negotiating costs? I'd say a single payer has more bargaining power than individual students. Same as with public healthcare.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#285

Post by FlyingLawnmower »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #164
Kesty wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Just because a middle class student can pay for university through loans doesn't mean they should have to.

Colleges advertise about their highly generous financial aid policies, but for most of the middle class whose parents earn say 120=150k together, little to no aid is given outside of loans.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#286

Post by wirrbel »

aschreyer wrote: post #125
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.

In Germany the cutting edge research is usually done by specific research organisations that do no or only very little teaching such as the Max Planck Institutes, Helmholtz Association, Fraunhofer, etc. Of course, as a student you do not really benefit from that at the undergraduate level - those world-class researchers are usually too busy to teach and leave it to their assistants.

however they do teach and you will attend their lectures as a grad student!

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#287

Post by saool »

I wish the debate focused less on cost-benefit analysis and on ways to engineer a just "chargeback" using loans or taxes and more about the idea that maybe people should be encouraged to pursue education just for the sake of it, to become free men and free thinkers, regardless of whether they'd be economically better off by taking electricity at trade school just to quickly join the assembly line at Volkswagen so that they can make money to buy a bigger plasma TV. /rant

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#288

Post by tokenadult »

mrxd wrote: post #271
tokenadult wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there been any extensive research done on relationship between university fees and social mobility? Thank you for asking for data to inform our discussion here. Yes. There are a number of scholars of the economics of education who work full-time researching this issue. You are correct that university admission generally takes in young people from more prosperous families all over the world--because young people f…

> The best evidence from international studies suggests the policy announced by Germany is not the best policy for ensuring access to higher education. That's not true. The report you linked to is trying to "strike the right balance between keeping student charges reasonable and finding sufficient funding for their higher education systems." The goal is to simply reduce government spending on education by transferrin…

I think you should read the study[1] more deeply to be sure to check what other countries are already doing and what the results of their policies are. Anyway, there are already lots of demands on government spending, and if the same level of government spending can provide more benefits to the populace by some participation of private spending to meet the goal, that allows government revenues devoted to some other worthy purpose to be spent in greater amount, perhaps for something that cannot be as well provided with participation by private spending.

[1] "OECD research suggests that student financial support systems that provide both loans with income-contingent repayments and means-tested grants not only promote access and equity at the front end of higher education, but also lead to better outcomes for students at the back end."

http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/49729932....

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#290

Post by ajmurmann »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #171
xixixao wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In Germany you can in theory study anything you want if you have a high school/Gymnasium degree. However, places are limited and they are given out based on your GPA. Every semester you wait for a spot your GPA gets lowered for the purpose of this calculation. So if you have bad grades and want to study psychology you might have to wait 10 years. So either you are a great student or you are super dedicated. I think this is a decent filter.
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