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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

#491

Post by ekianjo »

sergiosgc wrote: post #476
ekianjo wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you laser-focus on educating people, then eventually you become pretty good at it. I don't think you can call putting 500 people in an amphitheater in front of a single person and a blackboard remotely "pretty good at educating". It's one of the worst ways ever to transmit knowledge. And it shows.

This is a myth. A common myth yet still unintuitively false. I once reviewed statistical data for high school level success metrics across countries. It is statistically observable how small a correlation there is between class size and education quality A good teacher can engage 50 students as easily as 500. Some of the best classes in my life have been in 200 people packed amphitheaters.

It's not about the class size, it's about the environment. Amphitheaters suck bad. A normal classroom is much better, and an online class is way better than an amphitheater.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#492

Post by taejo »

vapourismo wrote: post #74
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.

400€ per year or per semester? Where? I am at the Institute of Technology in Berlin and I payed 290.37€ this semester, which includes 179.40€ for public transport.

Per year.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#493

Post by justaman »

sedachv wrote: post #406
justinlloyd wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The pace on the MBA could be described as "plodding" at best. Mirrors my MBA experience at a Canadian university.

This was also my experience as a recent BBA grad. However I think that business schools expect a certain level of flexibility to be beneficial to its students as several (hopefully) will be partaking in entrepreneurial activities.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#494

Post by bane »

davedx wrote: post #460
bane wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks! I try to visit Europe at least once a year now and I'm often struck with how the EU/Eurozone/Shengen arrangement is starting to feel more and more like the U.S. arrangement. Countries which don't participate in one of the three pieces really stand out as high friction places to deal with. (cough cough Switzerland!). It's less pronounced with the U.K., since as an Island there's lots of interface friction there no matter what, but I remember a trip to Ireland, then going up to Belfast for a day and having to change some currency just to buy some beer before going back South. It seemed a little ridiculous when I could go from Spain to Finland pretty much without having to do the same.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#495

Post by taejo »

tehabe wrote: post #237
eqdw wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> of which the two largest components are "student services" I also had to pay for student services at my (Canadian) university, for things like meal plans, supplemental health/dental/vision insurance, subsudized bus fare, etc. It cost about $300 a year, if I recall correctly. However, I was given the option of opting out. Are you not also given that option?

Those fees have no drop out, if the semester ticket had a drop out I guess nobody really wants to do that. You get to use all public transport of the region for a very low price. (Only exemption is, when a student goes abroad and can't use it anyway it the student can be exempt, usually there is also the possibility for poor students that the ticket is paid by the student body. At least we had the possibility to do t…

> Those fees have no drop out, if the semester ticket had a drop out I guess nobody really wants to do that.

If I could drop out, I would consider buying the semester ticket in winter (when I take the bus to uni) and not in summer (when I cycle). In summer, most of my use of public transport is recreational (take the train to some swimming pool or hiking area). I could easily replace this with more cycling and occasionally buying one of DB's weekend special tickets.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#496

Post by ajuc »

Poland has both paid and free universities, state-run universities are free (but just for the daily courses, there are also evening courses and weekend courses that are paid).

Free courses are paid by taxes, and universities have a limit on how much students they can admit on paid courses depending on how much they admit on free courses.

There are also private universities with just paid courses, but they are much worse quality (they admit almost anoyone for money, so better students go to the state universities to study for free, and worse students only get admited to the paid ones).

The end result is - almost everybody go to the university and do M.A. in something. The education is usually OK, but not great (especially on the worse universities). Everybody have M.A. so it isn't advantage in the job market, just a requirement (there were postman job offerings requiring M.A. for example :) ).

The problem is - Polish universities don't do much science, they are mostly for education, people call them M.A. factories.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#497

Post by warfangle »

ibebrett wrote: post #311
sean-duffy wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've completely missed the point of what university is for. University is to study something you're passionate about at a high level, it isn't neccesstily a gateway to a job. There are plenty of people who study something such as art or history but then never go into careers in any way related to those. Dictating people's university choices is a terrible idea.

Right but a huge amount of students are taking loans (because they cant afford school at the moment) for college so they can pay it back when they have increased job prospects. It doesnt make sense to spend 60K on school if you will never be able to pay it back.

Very true.

We held up 'having a bachelors degree' as a requirement for getting a job, no matter what the job is. It's a way of narrowing the applicant pool.

And it completely distorted the purpose of university.

IMHO, everyone who qualifies academically should have the opportunity to - free of charge - go to university. It raises the level of cultural discourse.

On the other hand, trade schools are completely stigmatized in this country - and many of them are simply scams that don't do a very good job at training you at all (see: ECPI).

Post-secondary education in the USA is completely ass backwards, with conflicting priorities, an upside down profit motive, and a cultural perception of either being absolutely necessary or absolutely lib'rul and evil intellectualism that's-a destroyin' amurka.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#498

Post by undergroundhero »

aidenn0 wrote: post #403
melling wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First you use the argument that the entire United States is not as densely populated as Germany, which I pointed out is flawed. Now, you're trying some political tangent. First, we should agree that it is worth, or not worth, being built on technical merits then we can discuss the politics that follow. Jumping around in a scattershot discussion is not effective, unless your goal is to derail the conversation. Pun int…

I thought we were discussing why Germany has better passenger rail infrastructure, not whether there are technical merits for building it.

You were, he's looking for an argument.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#499

Post by dubbel »

thejdude wrote: post #453
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…

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€/sem…

> 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).

I think there are two reasons:

1. Three-tiered school system: German children are separated after the fourth grade and go to three different schools (Hauptschule, Realschule, Gymnasium) and only if Gymnasium graduates can go to universities. In theory this should happen depending on their academic abilities, but in practice it depends on the ability of your parents to support you in school and their interest in your academic career, too. Parents who went to the Hauptschule may think that this is the best way for their child, too.

2. For many jobs you don't need a degree or better you cannot even get a college degree. Nurses, craftsmen and many more professions are trained in vocational schools (which are counted as secondary education in OECD studies). While a US nurse attends a college (as far as I know) and therefore is counted as tertiary educated.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#500

Post by PeterisP »

eqdw wrote: post #112
samuli wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC Finland has never had university tuition fees and it is the 3rd most equal country in the world. http://www.goodcountry.org/country/FIN Finnish students get allowance from the government for the duration of their studies (max ~60 months) and get government backed cheap loans which they start paying back after their studies. My own experience is that there are people from very varying backgrounds in the Finnish u…

> Finnish students get allowance from the government for the duration of their studies (max ~60 months) and get government backed cheap loans which they start paying back after their studies. Thought experiment: American students also get government backed cheap loans. Further, since these government-backed cheap loans are often used to cover cost of living as well as tuition, they are a de-facto allowance from the g…

There's some misunderstanding - the student loans in Finland and a few other places are only for student living expenses (food/rent/beer/whatever) during the studies so that they don't have to work to support themselves during studies; they do not affect the budget of universities in any way.

If the university finances are decoupled from student ability to pay, then loan availability doesn't distort the education institutions, but instead mainly affects the lifestyle of students and their families.

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