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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

#391

Post by justinlloyd »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #344
rthomas6 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Garbage collection could be automated tomorrow if we wanted. Fast food is just a matter of us not trying hard enough but plumbers is a difficult one. Not saying it couldn't happen. Two scenarios I could see are everyone lives in a prefab home, when things start to go wrong you just replace it. That leaves all the plumbing to just cutting and bending pipes to pre-built designs and installing it in prearranged steps. I…

"Two scenarios I could see are everyone lives in a prefab home, when things start to go wrong you just replace it. That leaves all the plumbing to just cutting and bending pipes to pre-built designs and installing it in prearranged steps. I could see that being possible."

Currently we live in Microsoft houses, eventually we might live in Apple houses. That is a terrifying thought either way...

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#392

Post by walshemj »

tomp wrote: post #238
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…

> 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 system resources (both in terms of taking up spaces in classes and having the tax status of a student). That's more of an anecdotal evidence of a shitty public university system. I don't know how it works in the Czech Republic other than from your comment, but in Slovenia,…

the NS is free at the point of delivery which is great but we do pay NI which pays for the NHS and other benefits.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#393

Post by walshemj »

edent wrote: post #23
cmdkeen wrote: post #18

There's a big difference between no tuition fees and "free" education. All this means is that the cost of education is passed on to all tax payers. Now this can be justified, there is utility in having an educated workforce and society. However when everyone is paying there is a need to have a decision about how many people need that education to provide the benefits everyone gets. The UK is seeing these problems wit…

They don't harm your credit rating, but... * You have to declare them when trying to get a mortgage (or any other loan) and so may reduce the amount you are leant. * If you go bankrupt - the loan does not go away. * Want to launch a funky startup? Now the graduates you want to work for you start demanding more money because a higher percentage now goes back to the Student Loan Company. I fought hard against the intro…

why should a "funky" start-up not pay its fair share of training costs - a major structural problem in the UK going back decades.

Bring back the training levy which paid for proper vocational and associate professional training - none of the apprentice baristas fucking crap

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#394

Post by Quanttek »

garagemc2 wrote: post #85
taejo wrote: post #37

I'm a student at a German university, and I don't pay tuition fees, but I do pay about 400€ a year in "semester fees", of which the two largest components are "student services" and a compulsory season ticket for regional transport; student union membership and some kind of insurance contribution are also included.

Hey quick question - are comp sci courses in Germany taught in English throughout?

As the other repliers already said, the amount of English classes is limited, though you should be able to get your Bachelor without having to take German courses. That, of course, will be a bit harder to find the right lectures etc

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#395

Post by superuser2 »

kenko wrote: post #358
superuser2 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

It doesn't matter if restaurants, cafés, etc. generally make a profit; that's not what the university should be concerned with.

Whether you believe they're what a university should be concerned with or not (and that's just, like, your opinion, man) the fact that they turn a profit means you can't point to them as wasteful spending or a culprit for high tuition.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#396

Post by toyg »

sanderjd wrote: post #276
jahewson wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but no. We know that there is 40% attendance at university, so 3,194 of the less well-off people would have kids who attend.

Ignoring the made-up numbers, that means that 60% of people are contributing to the education of that 40%, unless those 60% of people are exempted from a certain kind of tax that the 40% have to pay, which is exactly what the thread starter was calling a "graduate tax".

> that means that 60% of people are contributing to the education of that 40%

... and? These are the future business and political leaders of their country. Don't they have an interest in educating them properly, so that they'll be ruled by competent people?

Besides, some of them will have been "poor people" who managed to squeeze into that 40%. We are not talking about hypotheticals here: it happened in Britain for a while, just go check the life stories of droves of modern civil servant and politicians and you'll find people who made effective usage of their free education to better themselves and their country. This will inevitably happen less and less, now that poor families with smart kids are forced to take on 27k of debt - a deferred graduate tax which, being regressive (as all flat taxes are), is disproportionately affecting people from poorer backgrounds rather than well-off families (who, in the UK, are used to pay even more for pre-university education anyway -- for them it's just another drop in the water).

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#397

Post by Tehnix »

_of wrote: post #222
s_dev wrote: post #13

Whilst tuition fees in Ireland have not really risen - registration fees have gone from €200 to €3,000 over the 08-14'recession. In the UK fees have also risen. Finland and Denmark are free. I'm not that familiar with Southern or Eastern Europe. I think free third level institutions are important but I'm not opposed to the "free now tax later after certain pay threshold" education systems like Australia. Also [image]…

Sweden is also free. Plus you get 1100 SEK/month in assistance from the government.

You get a nice 5900 DKK/Month (7217 SEK or 1000$) here in Denmark :)

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#398

Post by ajmurmann »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #338
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.

It depends on what you study. In my CS classes we had a few lab sessions where we had to implement small programs and sometimes even larger projects. However, a friend of mine studied chemistry and she never got to leave the lab.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#399

Post by Quanttek »

raverbashing wrote: post #152
flexie wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If Germany couldn't have produced Facebook it's only because of the language No. Most Germans don't even care for FB (or twitter). Or they use it with a limited purpose. They think it's silly. Skype is a nice example, but is one of fewer companies like that. > Apple and Google are examples of American companies that started with public funding Are you sure? A lot of SV companies have had public funding but I'm not…

> No. Most Germans don't even care for FB (or twitter). Or they use it with a limited purpose. They think it's silly.

Not really, atleast from my experiences. Almost the complete youth & young adults atleast use Facebook and a considerable amount Twitter (more Twitter user, the older they get). Older adults and eldery only use FB/Twitter partially (I'd say 20%) and realtively inactive

Though, yes, in Germany - on average - Facebook & Twitter are less used, mostly because of privacy reasons

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#400

Post by DasIch »

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…

What the article describes applies only to public universities. It doesn't apply to private universities, which do require tuition in some cases comparable to what you would have to pay in the UK or the US.

However there are not a lot of private universities in Germany and they have a bad reputation in general.

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