How US students get a university degree for free in Germany

US students who study in Europe are free to drink without breaking the law.

Also, some would argue that Germany beer is better.

Until a few years ago there were no tuition fees in public universities in Germany. In fact there still aren't any non-public universities, though there are private academies.

University education is also not as common in Germany as it is in the US: although more jobs require formal education and certification in Germany (e.g. if you professionally paint cars in Germany, you need a specific formal qualification to do so), there are long-standing trade-specific education systems that provide these, rather than universities. These are typically three to five year trainings consisting of an internship as well as formal schooling. Historically university has been more academic in nature, being considered to be more about higher education than a job qualification for the industry. In other words, someone with a university degree effectively has no job experience but may understand the higher-level concepts of the business domain (i.e. the "why") whereas someone with a non-university trade education has less high-level knowledge but a lot of hands-on experience (i.e. the "how").

Public universities only charge a comparatively low fee (typically around EUR 200-400), which mostly covers services provided by the university's student union who also often negotiate deals like public transit tickets (which are then paid from the student union's cut). The student unions are thus able to adjust the fee to provide additional services but generally puts decisions which would result in higher fees up to a direct vote by all enrolled students. The decision-making council is also directly elected by the students (which has resulted in a political microcosm that is quite similar to the government-level political parties).

A few years ago, Germany officially adopted the Bachelor/Master system because various European nations decided to standardize higher education degrees across Europe. The general argument for doing so was that it made degrees from different countries more comparable and thus reduced the HR headaches for internationally hiring companies.

Shortly after the BA/MA switch, Germany changed a law that previously prohibited tuition fees in public universities so it only specified a cap of EUR 500 per semester (on top of the existing baseline fee). This was officially part of an initiative to raise the quality of education, along with funding for universities that were trying to create "elite" faculties (i.e. specialising). Officially this would not result in reducing the government spending on universities but it was an open secret that the cap would be raised over the next years as tuition fees gain more acceptance and thus allow the government to slowly pull out their funding to make universities more independent. Officially it was also predicted that most universities wouldn't set their tuition fees to the legal maximum.

Predictably, the vast majority of universities introduced tuition fees at exactly the legal maximum (EUR 500 on top of the existing fees). While EUR 700-800 is still "low" by American standards, it effectively meant an up to 3x increase many students couldn't easily afford. To add insult to injury, the universities' invoices would often contain ads by state banks offering student loans at "reasonable" terms (i.e. lower-than-average interest and they'd pay the tuition fee for you so you continue to only have to pay the baseline fee yourself, giving you the illusion that nothing has changed until you graduate or drop out and suddenly have accrued quite a bit of debt).

It should also be noted that culturally, Germany is a nation of savers, not loaners. While most students were previously able to graduate with no debt at all (except for a public grant known as BAFöG which covers up to 100% of the baseline fee with only the difference accumulating as debt) the tuition fees threatened to change that entirely.

Also predictably, the students reacted quite vocally. There were lots of protests all over Germany and the way most universities handled was a bit upsetting because it violated the silent historical agreement (established by precedent after the famous 1968 student protests) that university disputes are handled non-violently by the university and its students, not by riot police.

After spending a few months explaining to students that tuition was here to stay and that EUR 500 per semester is entirely negligible (to quote the head of the University of Cologne: "just drink one less beer a day" -- I should probably add that binge drinking frat parties are less of a thing in Germany), some universities finally dropped the tuition fees, resulting in a slow cascade as the growth of applicant numbers shrank for those universities that still maintained non-zero tuition fees.

Nowadays, I don't think any university still charges tuition fees. I'm not sure whether the government intervened at some point and repealed the act that allowed them in the first place or whether it was entirely "voluntary" but they're effectively gone now.

It's important to recognize that the outrage was less about the specific sum -- while a 2x-3x increase in cost can be world-changing for low-income students, it's still manageable, especially if you can stomach taking a loan (or are poor enough you don't have to pay the fees at all). The more important thing was that it created a slippery slope. The only reason the tuition fee was that low was that it was the legal maximum. Adjusting that maximum would have been politically much easier than passing the act that allowed the fees in the first place, especially if the increase is gradual.

A change from zero to a low value is much more intrusive than a change from a non-zero value to a higher value. Introducing tuition fees set a precedent that created a potential path to US-level costs while also turning student debt from an exception to the norm. The UK is a good parallel (tuition fees were introduced in 1998 with a legal maximum that has been increased several times since).

Yes, dear Americans, the US is considered the negative example by German students -- although German politics and industry of course fawn over the quality of elite universities in the US (while ignoring that the quality of German universities compares favourably with non-elite universities in the US).

There are fraternities ("Burschenschaften"), but they're very different and far less popular. They tend to keep to themselves more and are less visible to non-member students.

It has less to do with being a bad driver and more with your learning progress. If you're a bad driver, you shouldn't pass the practical exam no matter how often you take it -- and your driving school shouldn't send you to it in the first place.

Case in point: I paid for a ridiculous number of lessons because I switched instructors halfway through and was full-time self-employed. If I had been able to keep a tighter schedule I could have done it in a fraction of the time. I passed the written and practical exams on the first attempt but what bloated the costs was having up to two week gaps in between driving lessons.

To expand on your summary: it's 12 classes (only two classes that are mandatory, for the rest you just have to show up to ten of them in total, you can go to the same class multiple times) but going to those classes is rarely enough to pass the written exam, so you normally also get a book. As the written exam is a (mostly) multiple-choice test with questions from a well-known pool, there's also software that lets you train the exact pool of questions which your exam will be based on. Many driving schools have you take a simulated exam before they give you the paperwork you need to sign up for the real thing. How long it takes you before you can pass the exam mostly depends on how good you are at rote learning.

The 12h driving consists of various lessons. These include various scenario-based lessons (i.e. driving on the Autobahn, driving at night-time and driving on rural roads). You have to take a specified number of lessons for each scenario. You also have to take a minimum number of regular driving lessons but most people I know have done more than the bare minimum for various reasons. Most driving instructors do these lessons in batches of two per session (as, depending on traffic, you can easily spend half a lesson just getting to the training area and back).

I think this part is different from the US: driving lessons (even the very first one) are generally done in real traffic. Although you often do a few of the early exercises in safe environments, many instructors make you drive there and back. Driving instructors are trained to operate cars from the front passenger seat (which, btw, is called Beifahreritz -- literally "co-driver seat" -- in German) using a second set of pedals and mirrors the training cars are equipped with; so they can always take over and simply grab the steering wheel if necessary.