Earlier quoted context omitted.
Greetings from another Stuttgart expat! :)
Hope you have a good source of Laugenbroetchen, one of the specialties that are hard to find or recreate here.
Hah, and I love your user-name :-)
Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn
451–460 of 536 posts
Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe a free education, but add a screening process to measure the psychology of the student, help choose a profession or trade that will not be a waste of their time.
In Germany you can in theory study anything you want if you have a high school/Gymnasium degree. However, places are limited and they are given out based on your GPA. Every semester you wait for a spot your GPA gets lowered for the purpose of this calculation. So if you have bad grades and want to study psychology you might have to wait 10 years. So either you are a great student or you are super dedicated. I think t…
> However, places are limited and they are given out based on your GPA
That's mostly a thing of the past and almost only applicable to human medicine anymore.
Today universities are free to set their own admission standards and procedures, and while school grades play a big role in it, you have realistic chances to get in based on some other measure of merit. Or even luck in a lottery.
Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn
#453Has 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…
Not research, but in Sociology 101 I picked up that the US have a traditionally high upward social mobility and even poor kids can go to college (if only through student credit) and have a good career afterwards. I've heard that recent financial crises, and the bad job market prospects of liberal arts graduates have changed this somewhat.
In Germany, tuition is almost non-existent (usually some fees of maybe 150€/semester, although a few years back there was a phase of actual student fees of - still laughable - 500€/semester), and if your parents don't make much money, or if you have many siblings, you can even get a half-credit/half-scholarship from the government (AFAIK even without interest, called "Bafög"), so especially for poor kids it's as easy as nowhere else in the world to go study. In smaller towns you can also get a student dorm room for under 200€, and overall living (esp. groceries) in Germany is quite cheap.
Yet Germany has a very low number of working-class students, for whatever reasons. Usually I think it's the parents' influence (but don't ask me why).
We also now have student credit now, in case you don't qualify for Bafög money, but unlike consumer credit which has become quite common, student credit doesn't seem to find many friends. People don't want to go borrow 10-30k for a college degree, but they'll happily finance their 25k cars or their 300k+ condos/houses.
Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 ave…
IME very many German people are on FB (but yes, many also aren't, because they don't care and have their circle of offline friends). Twitter, almost nobody.
Among younger (20-30) Germans, I think almost everybody is on FB (and even more are on What's App).
Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
From an European point of view, the US university system is crazy. In many European countries the value of state universities over private ones is very high regarded, that except for a few well renowned exceptions, private universities are seen as places where you buy a title, not earn one. As they mostly get the students that weren't able to go through the national exams for the state universities.
> 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.
I'd say most Germans with average income pay 20-25% in income tax, another 15-20% in health insurance/unemployment/retirement taxes, and 19% sales tax (7% on groceries).
Just to give a perspective. I think the more expensive US states aren't that much better, but the cheaper ones are (much better).
Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn
#456Jump on the time machine and read about university concerns when the city of Hamburg joined this trend in 2011 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/15/german-universi... Is there any German here that can tell us how it is turning out to be? Thanks.
I think all German states have abolished tuition fees after lots of public outcry about them (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studiengeb%C3%BChr#Deutschland). It says that Niedersachsen decided to abolish fees for the 2014-2015 semester as the last state in Germany to do so.
Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn
#457Not sure free education provides absolutely net positive results. More data might be required. If you look at a country like Argentina, where university level education has been free probably since the country was founded you see issues. Running 10x more people through universities does not create 10x more prosperity. Lots of Medical Doctors in Argentina almost starve. Engineers drive taxis or own pizza joints. The o…
Free shouldn't mean that everybody attends college. Degree inflation sucks.
I observe the same problem in Germany - more and more people attend school/university for more and more years, but don't turn out any brighter overall.
Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn
#458Another 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…
> there's not much general ed to speak of If by 'general ed' you are referring to optional classes that are not necessarily related to your core subject or electives, I would like to say that you have very much the option (and in most reformed Bachelor-type programs it's a requirement) to take such classes and choose among many types of seminars ranging from communication and negotiation coaching to optional language…
>Also note that in contrary to (or so I think) most for-profit US universities
Most US Universities aren't for-profit. In 2000 (the latest stat I could find) about 6% of college students were enrolled in for-profit universities). For-profit schools also generally have rather dubious reputations.
Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
For a rural American, "moving to Norway" sounds like crazy talk. Like, is that in Africa or something? Do they have cannibals there? Do the Norwayish people have their own language? I'm struggling to figure out how to convey to you the level of lack of consciousness of Europe that is present there. (You think I'm exaggerating, but I've had a couple of friends from the US — the urban US! — tell me they want to visit m…
> they want to visit me here in Buenos Aires because they've always wanted to visit the Amazon. They didn't realize they're closer to it than I am
Well, not quite. You're in Argentina which borders Brazil. While Brazil is a huge country you are definitely still closer to the Amazon area than somebody in the US.
(I've travelled in Brazil and the Amazon and am fully aware how big it is and how long it takes to get from S to N!)
Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Wow, a lot of good questions I'm not entirely sure I'm totally qualified to answer, but I'll give you my best opinion: 1) He would then be able to upgrade his family's from the poor class to the upper-middle-class". But you didn't. Why? In my case at least, there were complicated family problems. One of the difficulties with "making it" when everybody you grew up with didn't, is that they all start wanting you to hel…
This is an extremely intelligent and well-written post, thanks for taking the time to write it! As a European I agree strongly with your comparison of the US to the Schengen/Eurozone, it definitely feels very much like that. Degrees of federalism.