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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

#421

Post by MikeKusold »

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 even get me started on the sports, it's an outrage how US schools have become sports franchises.

I graduated from a very large sports school (tOSU), and our sports program enables us have a relatively low in-state tuition. The 2010-2011 football season netted OSU 51.8 Million. 2011-2012: 48.7 Million. They also serve as a great way to get alumni to donate to their alma mater (in order to increase your odds of getting football tickets, you can donate). It is anything other than an outrage.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/sportsmoney/2011/05/31/a-close-l...

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#422

Post by wtbob »

MikeKusold wrote: post #421
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 even get me started on the sports, it's an outrage how US schools have become sports franchises. I graduated from a very large sports school (tOSU), and our sports program enables us have a relatively low in-state tuition. The 2010-2011 football season netted OSU 51.8 Million. 2011-2012: 48.7 Million. They also serve as a great way to get alumni to donate to their alma mater (in order to increase your odds of…

This source (http://businessofcollegesports.com/2011/06/01/how-profitable...) indicates that after expenses are factored in, the OSU athletic department nets $93,678.

And that doesn't work in the moral costs of supporting an athletic program. What merits it, if a man win the world but lose his soul?

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#423

Post by welterde »

aidenn0 wrote: post #314
raverbashing wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See the average speed of Acela trains (time vs distance) compared with TGV/Thalys/ICE And don't you think Germany has more legacy constraints with a higher density and older tracks?

Acela trains share track with freight, TGV and ICE certainly don't. This includes the requirement for safe collision with a freight train, which adds a lot of weight.

The ICE shares tracks with freight trains as well. Only the TGV has completely dedicated tracks afaik.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#424

Post by rando289 »

ahomescu1 wrote: post #384
andrewfong wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

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

No it's not.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#425

Post by jwiechers »

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…

> You don't get what you don't pay for.

True, but I would argue besides the point: the US universities/colleges offer a more integrated experience because many have a somewhat different tradition more in line with the "monk-like" experience from UK universities such as Oxford and Cambridge than with the public university systems of continental europe which assumes that many of these amenities are provided by other actors.

They also have to make up for massive differences in educational level, meaning you have a lot of foundational courses that are plainly unnecessary from the perspective of the German educational system with its, previously, 13 years of schooling -- and Germany is a lot more homogenous in that respect compared to the US, so the system works without all that much hand-holding.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#426

Post by whatusername »

sanderjd wrote: post #264
MarkMc wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would not have taken a loan to the tune of $1000/year because that would have been too risky. I would have opted for the less risky option of herding cows. What if the loan repayments were a percentage of your salary, rather than a fixed rate? I wonder why these types of loans aren't offered...

Do you mean the monthly payments or the total payment? They offer salary-adjusted monthly payments (in the U.S. at least), but obviously you pay (a lot) more in interest that way and usually end up indentured to the loan for nearly your entire working life.

barring recent changes -- the system in Australia worked quite well.

For government subsidized university places (read - most places for Australian students) - tuition amounts were capped at specific levels. These could be deferred by All students on a loan - that charges CPI (Inflation) as it's interest rate. Repayment kicks in once the student earns a certain level - and goes up as a % depending on their income.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#427

Post by FractalNerve »

bane wrote: post #333
acmecorps wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hello Bane, I'm from Germany and have read all your comments on this thread, because they piqued my interest and I admired your ambitious fight to reach beyond what live offered you. There was one thing that I really couldn't understand and I've heard a voice in my head that said: "And then he considered moving to Norway, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands or similar to graduate much cheaper and then return with a masters degree to his family. He would then be able to upgrade his family's from the poor class to the upper-middle-class". But you didn't. Why?

Btw. tuition fees were 500€ and you paid about 280€ for the University every 6 months.

While I've the great chance to ask the right person, would you mind telling me how a German student with a masters degree in Computer Science is seen in the USA. I mean what common prejudices do exist, are the prejudices in favor or against one. No worries, I'm very open minded about that =) I am at my late 20's and have been thinking that it would be a great decision to move to the USA. Would you recommend moving to the USA and if so, which state and city should I migrate to?

What would I earn there without work experience other than as IT-freelancer? And would that be by other americans as a lot or normal pay? I heard that the health system is very expensive over there. Is there a reasonable number of salary that I'd have to earn to not have to worry about that kind of problems? This question might sound weird, but in Germany you only pay 80€/monthly into the state-issued health-insurance and that easily covers most of the regular stuff. By that I mean to say that you don't worry about getting broke, if you have to get an operation.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#428

Post by usrusr »

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?

In Germany, the liberal arts programmes are mocked as "taxi driver courses" all the time, ranging from libertarian hate for any form of public spending all the way to happy self-deprecation by those who elect to be taught in a field they like at the risk of not benefitting from their education economically. But aside from a few outliers in the most extreme corners of conservativism, antiintellectualism and leftism most people tend to consider the general availability of those programmes to people who are willing to take that economic risk (high enough even without student loan debt) as an important piece of freedom.

Of course it helps that educating in those fields isn't terribly expensive: you basically pay infrastructure and a few greybeards, the lower ranks are nearly working for free due to the low market value of their education and the resulting attractivity of maybe becoming one of the greybeards themselves. Also, some people might even understand that the greatest thinkers, just like the greatest sportsmen, are unlikely to be produced by focused training of a tiny elite selected by circumstances or a superficial entry test. Talent is rarely visible before a considerable amount of training has been applied.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#429

Post by SamReidHughes »

MikeKusold wrote: post #421
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 even get me started on the sports, it's an outrage how US schools have become sports franchises. I graduated from a very large sports school (tOSU), and our sports program enables us have a relatively low in-state tuition. The 2010-2011 football season netted OSU 51.8 Million. 2011-2012: 48.7 Million. They also serve as a great way to get alumni to donate to their alma mater (in order to increase your odds of…

The football team doesn't pay its employees.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#430

Post by seanmcdirmid »

sheltgor wrote: post #418
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't run those, they generally contract them out to Sodexo or similar company. The only reason they are there is because students spend money on them. You should have more of a problem with student free spending ways than with the universities just providing for their habits.

Big problem with this. Particularly with dining plans, many of which don't refund at the end of the term/academic year and are required for the dorms. You want to be thrifty and only spend 600 or the 800 you had this spring? Too bad, you're going to have to splurge the last 200 somehow or you're not getting it back.

I was never rich enough to live on campus with a meal plan. But I lived in apartments provided by the university (UW) and they always had kitchens.
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