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

381–390 of 536 posts

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#381

Post by Florin_Andrei »

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…

> 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.

If you laser-focus on making money, then eventually you become pretty good at it.

If you laser-focus on educating people, then eventually you become pretty good at it.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#382

Post by aianus »

inclemnet wrote: post #341
aianus wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From an European point of view, the US university system is crazy. From the US point of view the European system is crazy. Call me a selfish prick but I don't want to pay 50% taxes for the rest of my life subsidizing arts majors' parties because I chose to study something useful.

You don't have to be a selfish prick, merely deluded if you thing much of your taxes would end up in parties for people doing art degrees.

They're the only ones that need handouts. The debt is not bad at all if you graduate from a decent school with a STEM degree.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#383

Post by iammyIP »

meentsbk wrote: post #309
rthomas6 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

nice video, i think its pretty much spot-on.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#384

Post by ahomescu1 »

andrewfong wrote: post #380
ahomescu1 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] just for the sake of it, to become free men and free thinkers [...] You're assuming that one can only be a free thinker or a free man after 4 years of university, as opposed to the ignorant slaves that are the rest. What makes you believe this?

He didn't say that 4 years of university was a prerequisite to being a "free thinker", but I think it's probably useful. You get to live and work with fellow students who hail from sorts of backgrounds and have different goals and aspirations from you. Most universities offer classes in a wide range of subject areas, and many even require you to take classes outside of your specialization. There's a high concentratio…

> conducive to "free thought"

"Conducive to" is the same as "required for".

> He didn't say that 4 years of university was a prerequisite to being a "free thinker", but I think it's probably useful. You get to live and work with fellow students who hail from sorts of backgrounds and have different goals and aspirations from you. Most universities offer classes in a wide range of subject areas, and many even require you to take classes outside of your specialization. There's a high concentration of intellectuals to interact with. And you get a lot of time to think about life, the universe, and everything.

My point is that none of those are required to be a "free thinker" or a "free man". To be a free thinker, one only needs a brain. To be a free man, one only needs to live in a free society.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#386

Post by Dewie »

peteretep wrote: post #120
troebr wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

University rankings are full of manure if you will pardon my French. The model they use favors big general universities with a strong research department. Also how do you evaluate the learning environment? Number of flat screen tvs per student? Number of millions spent on sports facilities? Teaching: the learning environment (worth 30 per cent of the overall ranking score) Research: volume, income and reputation (wor…

Sure, but German universities are also surprisingly mediocre considering how good the Germans are at everything else.

> Sure, but German universities are also surprisingly mediocre considering how good the Germans are at everything else.

Which just puts into question how useful elite universities are, on the whole.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#387

Post by virtue3 »

iammyIP wrote: post #365
virtue3 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the case at one point in time. But only the independently wealthy could afford to do this. As much as I wish your sentiment could be true, it's just not realistic in an economically driven world :/

Yes, how do we get the focus off the all-is-economics and refocus on the bigger picture of humanity which also includes all the "useless" non-profit activities that contribute to our culture and humanity, arts, free programming, literature. How is it possible that corporations use free software without giving anything back, or that a local arts scene which enriches the places where we live in a hard to quantifieable…

Don't even get me started on the abusing free software stuff. It's the main reason I left my last company (they wouldn't even let me put out changes/ports to new mobile platforms I made to our originally opened source code).

The whole idea requires us to move away from placing value on things arbitrarily. Or at least having the basics put down as important. I think we're getting close. There's a big reverse urban flight movement going on. We're moving back away from the suburbs.

Unfortunately most of it just goes into bullshit lifestyle choices and unsustainable spending on high end foodie/hipster lifestyles that I've seen.

It's sad but it really seems like in order to have a thriving art scene you need the cheap affordable housing and everything that comes with it. Once you lose that your artists all slowly leave and get replaced with entrepreneurs and people looking to make it big on a plan instead of just trying to make themselves.

tl;dr - assigning value is a bitch when it no longer becomes a "transaction" between two individuals.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#388

Post by walshemj »

iammyIP wrote: post #369
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?

plumbing, garbage collection, food serving and many more things can be done by machines.

So you have a robot that can perform as well as a human plumber and work in extremely variable environments with installed plant that may go back 100's if not thousands (London still has some roman pipe work) of years.

Even Mr Finch isn't that good at building AI's

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#389

Post by justinlloyd »

rbehrends wrote: post #362
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…

To go into more detail, here's the typical lecture format at a German university (note that this is "typical", not universal, and professors have a lot of leeway in how they can structure their courses). There'll be a lecture twice a week (four "semester hours", 2 times 2 * 45 minutes) and a two semester hour exercise session. The lecture will be held by a professor [1]; the exercise session for undergraduate courses…

I've attended four different higher education colleges and three universities in the UK, and two universities in the US. Mostly STEM, some business and law courses.

My UK experience is pretty much in line with the above summary from my college life between 1986 and 1995. Lots of blackboard lectures, practical coursework where necessary, one, occasionally two exams per subject. Coursework grades determined whether you would be permitted to sit your exams. Broad spectrum of skill and knowledge levels at the start of the course, very even distribution towards the end. You either figured it out, or you failed.

My US experience was more like school, lots of handholding, lots of silly child-like exercises, broad spectrum of skill levels and knowledge at the beginning and it remained so right through to the end. Lots more negotation between students and professor about assignments and when they are due, and skirting the rules, especially on the business courses for an MBA I was enrolled in. The pace on the MBA could be described as "plodding" at best.

This is also my ancedotal experience and also probably not universal.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#390

Post by walshemj »

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…

And until recently get sorted onto the vocational track in Germany and you were radically limited on where your career could take you.
Post reply on HN