Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

timeshighereducation.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 536 posts

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#301

Post by saool »

acadien wrote: post #291
saool wrote: post #287

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 tha…

I agree with everything said above, but what about the fact that society will always need plumbers, garbage collectors, fast food employees etc.? I'm not even sure that this is a counter point to what is mentioned above, just more thinking out loud. Is it possible to have a high functioning/efficient society in which there are no economic pressures to motivate people?

That's what The Market should be for, to make those jobs compensated attractively. Plus, people will be more likely to take a part-time job flipping burgers to fund their writing/music/open source project/whatever if they don't have pressure to pay back debt or don't have to worry about health insurance (another can of worms).

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#302

Post by zwieback »

Another point: US universities look very different from German ones. I live in Corvallis (OSU) now but grew up and went to school in Stuttgart Germany. Compared to the German universities our US schools are country clubs: dorms, restaurants, coffee shops, fitness clubs, green spaces everywhere. Don't even get me started on the sports, it's an outrage how US schools have become sports franchises.

I'm guessing most US students would be shocked by the reality of German public universities which basically consist of giant rooms with blackboards and there's not much general ed to speak of. At the graduate level it gets more interesting but that's in years 5-8. My first 4 years studying ME in Stuttgart were almost 100% lectures with a final exam at the end of the semester. Virtually no tutoring and very little corrected homework.

You don't get what you don't pay for. On the other hand, you don't really get what you pay for in the US either since the universities have become so good at sucking up more and more student loan money without really improving on their core mission of providing higher education.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#303

Post by aidenn0 »

melling wrote: post #219
aidenn0 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US population density: 34/km^2 Germany population density: 226/km^2 The Northeast US has a fairly good railway system despite it having a lot of legacy constraints not around in Germany. Most of the rest of the US is far to sprawling for railways to be effective.

YES, this has been discussed a million times before. Please don't waste our time discussing the population density of the entire US. It's irrelevant. Can you give us the population density of Southern California vs Spain, for example?

It doesn't matter since Southern California isn't a political unit. Any significant rail improvements would require state and federal funding to be feasible.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#304

Post by acadien »

saool wrote: post #301
acadien wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with everything said above, but what about the fact that society will always need plumbers, garbage collectors, fast food employees etc.? I'm not even sure that this is a counter point to what is mentioned above, just more thinking out loud. Is it possible to have a high functioning/efficient society in which there are no economic pressures to motivate people?

That's what The Market should be for, to make those jobs compensated attractively. Plus, people will be more likely to take a part-time job flipping burgers to fund their writing/music/open source project/whatever if they don't have pressure to pay back debt or don't have to worry about health insurance (another can of worms).

I suppose this is the challenge all societies are grappling with; how to compensate fairly so everyone is comfortable while still better compensating jobs that require more skill or 'contribute more' to maintain demand.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#305

Post by ibebrett »

zwieback wrote: post #302

Another point: US universities look very different from German ones. I live in Corvallis (OSU) now but grew up and went to school in Stuttgart Germany. Compared to the German universities our US schools are country clubs: dorms, restaurants, coffee shops, fitness clubs, green spaces everywhere. Don't even get me started on the sports, it's an outrage how US schools have become sports franchises. I'm guessing most US…

That sounds perfect to me (an american who tends to like learning through MOOCs)

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#306

Post by dalke »

raverbashing wrote: post #163
walterbell wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nor am I disagreeing. Only pointing out that Linux was also created based on preceding ideas like Unix, MINIX, etc., themselves based on even earlier ideas ... just like HTML comes out of SGML, and has its own long history.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#307

Post by beachstartup »

bane wrote: post #246
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…

American here, after age 10, I grew up fairly poor and very rural. Within a half hour drive (on highways) from the home I grew up in, all the jobs were either in farming/agriculture, similar industrial (quarries or steel factory), grocery stores or gas stations. The notion of going to college was virtually inconceivable to me and I was pretty sure I'd end up out in a field or a factory someplace. For a while I did od…

pardon me for asking, just curious - what year did you graduate?

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#308

Post by mxfh »

sauere wrote: post #127
eqdw wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> of which the two largest components are "student services" I also had to pay for student services at my (Canadian) university, for things like meal plans, supplemental health/dental/vision insurance, subsudized bus fare, etc. It cost about $300 a year, if I recall correctly. However, I was given the option of opting out. Are you not also given that option?

The fees (student union and transport subsidies) that he mentioned are mandatory. There is no opting out.

There is no general rule.

As the transportation tickets are normally negotiated between the student body and the transportation provider it whats mandatory and whats not wholly depends on the negotiation skills and priorities of the student union body of the institution you're at.

With no opt outs the tickets simply get cheaper. My former institution allowed opt-out and before had complicated mixed system of buying a base tickets which allow travel on weekends only and buying monthly tickets for a little more than 30 EUR/month. After hanging a vote of all students this changed to a flat fee per semester.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#309

Post by meentsbk »

rthomas6 wrote: post #297
acadien wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with everything said above, but what about the fact that society will always need plumbers, garbage collectors, fast food employees etc.? I'm not even sure that this is a counter point to what is mentioned above, just more thinking out loud. Is it possible to have a high functioning/efficient society in which there are no economic pressures to motivate people?

If you believe some people, one day all those jobs will be automated away.

This video by C.G.P. Grey is, at least for me, thought-provoking on this matter:

http://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#310

Post by ginko »

raverbashing wrote: post #155
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.

Well, Linux started with Minix, and of course, after its (initial) creation it had a lot of input from everywhere. I agree it's a more "European" model of development, sure.

>Well, Linux started with Minix

which Andrew Tanenbaum created at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

Post reply on HN