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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

#331

Post by OGC »

flexie wrote: post #105
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…

If Germany couldn't have produced Facebook it's only because of the language. User content on facebook is mainly a written language thing, and it would have been hard spreading a website with mostly German content to English since so few Americans and brits speak German. On the other hand, most young Europeans speak English so Facebook had little trouble spreading from American universities to Europeans. Skype starte…

Actual German here.

There actually was a Facebook clone (among others, with millions of users) very much in widespread use here before Facebook officially started here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StudiVZ

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#332

Post by coryrc »

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).

Why do they deserve the broadly desired services of doctors, nurses, professors, etc for free while doing very little for those doctors, nurses, or professors in return?

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#333

Post by bane »

acmecorps wrote: post #261
bane wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wow, congrats on your hard earned life! :)

Thanks, but I definitely want to emphasize this takeaway, I could have worked harder than anybody else in history, and if it wasn't for a few people giving me opportunities to jump on, I'd be a farmhand today.

From the guys who hired me into my internships and helped me afford school and payed me enough to get by, to some nameless group of politicians who passed the laws that helped subsidize my schooling and put in place the grants that made it all possible.

Without all of those people coming into play at just the right time and in just the right sequence, I'd be hardworking, just in an entirely different life and at a greatly reduced standard of living.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#334

Post by SEJeff »

krylon wrote: post #318
SEJeff wrote: post #289

Do all professors become employed by the government then?

In Germany (where I live, I am not sure how it works in other countries), that is how it works. There are some private universities, but not many (and they tend to focus on "cheap" subjects in the sense of "cheap to provide training" - training a medical doctor or a chemist apparently is far more expensive than training an MBA) - Professors teaching at private universities, are, of course, employed by those universit…

Wow totally jealous. I'm of German descent (last name: Schroeder, 3rd generation in the US), but we have it very bad in comparison.

We have these parasitic institutions called "for profit" colleges that are typical capitalist greed. Their goal is to extract as much money out of students who can't do math so well and end up with unbelievably large loans. Most state ran colleges are respectable, but the most all of the best colleges in America are private or private "Ivy League" colleges. Becoming a professor requires a PHD and many years to attain tenure. I simply don't think the pay is competitive for public colleges vs private "for profit" colleges that are money making machines. Most of the best professors work for places you've likely heard of like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. None of those are state colleges. That being said, some state colleges are wonderful (USC is a great example). It is just different, and unfortunately a lot less of a possibility for much of America's working class.

US primary and secondary schools are mandatory and free, but college/university (no differentiation in the US) are becoming prohibitively expensive for all of the lower class and much of the middle class. It is bad.

The US has a few military colleges such as westpoint and the US Army War College, but those are only open to soldiers and officers, so are a different thing altogether.

Note that I work in technology and didn't go to college. Not because I couldn't afford it, but because after 4 years of military service, I was able to trivially get a job in technology. I get paid to write code.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#335

Post by adrianN »

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…

I studied in Berlin (Berlin has very little money) and while nearly all my undergraduate education was in the form of black board lectures (which I like very much), all my homework was corrected and every lecture had a tutorial session where homework was discussed and you could ask questions about things you didn't understand in the lecture.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#336

Post by superuser2 »

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…

>dorms

If efficiently managed, dorms shouldn't represent a significant burden on students above the price of living in off-campus housing.

>restaurants

Generally make a profit.

>coffee shops

Generally make a profit while employing unskilled students.

>fitness clubs

Okay, these are probably excessive, but fitness is fairly important.

>green spaces everywhere

I'd be really surprised if this accounted for an appreciable percentage of institutional expenses, except maybe if the campus was located somewhere with very expensive real estate.

I'm guessing that the real story is that German universities bring in a lot more taxpayer money and employ fewer people.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#337

Post by coryrc »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #282
praxulus wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which is why we have community colleges, which are heavily subsidized, focused mostly on paying careers, and affordable to people making little money.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#338

Post by guard-of-terra »

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…

Don't they have practical courses? Do experiments?

Soviet and post-soviet education systems were modelled after german ones, but lab practice makes around 30%. For more abstract topics, practice/discussion/seminars.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#339

Post by PythonicAlpha »

raverbashing wrote: post #211
PythonicAlpha wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the connection here. In the US you have millionaires came out of "nothing" (of course, from nice universities, nice contacts, etc), people jumping at opportunities, while in Europe this would take 2 meetings, 3 viability studies and 4 months. That is a really narrow view and a myth that is just not applicable to the majority of people. Besides extreme things like Facebook, most people of the US are stick…

You didn't read anything from the '(' on where I mean exactly what you explained.

Possible. It was a little short in my opinion and the reader could get the impression, that the US model is superior, because so much "wonders" are coming from it. But the wonders do not have anything to do with the education system, in my opinion.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#340

Post by crusso »

rthomas6 wrote: post #294
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…

But then they wouldn't buy the bigger TV because they'd realize it wouldn't make them happier, and the TV makers would suffer. /s

I love my big TV. Playing games on it on a Saturday evening after my kids have gone to sleep puts an ear-to-ear grin on my face.
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