American students head to Germany for free college • Hacker News Board

Re: American students head to Germany for free college

#161

Post by schrijver » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 3:30 PM UTC

kleiba wrote: post #137

The CS department at the German university I work for started offering their lectures in English a number of years back. While a very good command of English is not uncommon in other parts of Europe, such as e.g. Scandinavia, this move is remarkable in my opinion because English is (more or less) ubiquitous only in the younger generation in Germany. A lot of middle-aged people do not speak English, or only at a very…

In the Netherlands I see something similar, in that Dutch people are actually too enthousiastic to speak English—many of my expat friends tell me that when they try to speak Dutch, people will respond in English.

Not speaking Dutch is all fine while you’re on your student visum in an English speaking environment, but it breaks down when you have to pay taxes or get a letter from the immigration office—all that is in Dutch.

Personally, I think it is great to learn a new language, and you’ll gain a lot from it as a person, but there is also a real necessity to it once you start to live somewhere for a longer time—a fact that one might not immediately recognise because of European enthousiasm to speak and interact in English.

Re: American students head to Germany for free college

#162

Post by Kephael » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 3:30 PM UTC

FanaHOVA wrote: post #141

yodsanklai wrote: post #40

I wonder if American students fleeing their country to save on education tax is more than anecdotical. BTW, the article mentions Germany, but isn't education cheap in most European countries?

Here in Italy (Rome exactly) we pay around 1000-2000€ a year of tuition, but that's really what it's worth it. The education is good, but the structures are awful, from labs to classes and lecture halls. I've visited Caltech, Stanford, NYU and Columbia while travelling and they're light years ahead. If I was born in the US I'd never move to Europe to study anything tech related, being in a major university like Stanf…

The issue with this analogy is that schools like Stanford and MIT aren't very large at the undergraduate level and have admissions rates lower than any school in Europe let alone Italy when looking at undergraduate admissions rates. The undergraduate admission process at these schools is much less academic focused than a European university as well.

Re: American students head to Germany for free college

#163

Post by michaelt » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 3:30 PM UTC

steveridout wrote: post #153

grkvlt wrote: post #146

> [The] German admissions process [...] is vastly different than it is in the United States [...] It's much more transparent, and it is entirely academic based [...] There are no recommendations or extensive resumes. This is exactly the way University admission should be handled. It's much the same throughout Europe and the UK. I would hate to have had to go through the hoop jumping exercise of the US college admissi…

Unless things have changed recently, before getting accepted to one of the top universities in the UK you'll be expected to do an in-person interview. (I remember having to choose one lecture to study beforehand and I chose Feynman's introduction to Special Relativity. I didn't even know who Feynman was at the time but really enjoyed his book of lectures, and a couple of years later he became one of my heroes after r…

For Oxford and Cambridge there is an in-person interview.

But for any other university, A-level subjects and grades are the only important factor. To take an example, LSE is often the third-ranked university in the country, and they literally have web pages listing grade requirements [1].

Naturally, not everyone has recent UK A-Levels so there's a little flexibility, but the results of standard tests are what drive admissions.

[1] http://www.lse.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/howToApply/departme...

Re: American students head to Germany for free college

#164

Post by htns » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 3:32 PM UTC

clarry wrote: post #155

htns wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it is also sort of the opposite in Finland. The student grants are smaller than unemployment benefits etc. If you just stay at home doing nothing you are eligible for more money than if you enroll as a student.

And I'm thinking of dropping out because of this. I'm just accumulating debt because the student's benefits are not enough for me to live on. The quality of teaching in my uni is really quite shit and they've seriously "compacted" important courses (e.g. in math) and it looks like most students in my group are not leaning anything at all, nor are they expected to. It's quite demotivating, even depressing.

Don't forget that starting next year, you will no longer be able to reapply to any Finnish universities if you have been accepted to one before. I would at least get a bachelor's degree so it will be easier to apply to universities abroad if you ever want to continue your education.

Re: American students head to Germany for free college

#165

Post by netrus » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 3:34 PM UTC

pwenzel wrote: post #154

khabaal wrote: post #111

As a german who works for a german university, i would like to point out that studying is actually not totally free. Here at the University of applied sciences in Münster, you would have to pay a total 235€ every six month, consisting of a social contribution of 85.44€ and a student body contribution of 145.75€, for which you will get a ticket for free travel by bus or by train inside North Rhine-Westphalia for the w…

That's pretty fair, considering many schools in the US now cost $25,000 USD a year. How much is health insurance?

For Germans it's free until the 25th birthday (that is, you are in your parent's insurance at no extra cost), afterwards about 70 Euro/month (until you start to earn ~10k $/a).

Re: American students head to Germany for free college

#166

Post by nebody » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 3:40 PM UTC

pwenzel wrote: post #154

khabaal wrote: post #111

As a german who works for a german university, i would like to point out that studying is actually not totally free. Here at the University of applied sciences in Münster, you would have to pay a total 235€ every six month, consisting of a social contribution of 85.44€ and a student body contribution of 145.75€, for which you will get a ticket for free travel by bus or by train inside North Rhine-Westphalia for the w…

That's pretty fair, considering many schools in the US now cost $25,000 USD a year. How much is health insurance?

For most students it's free (included in their parent's insurance who pay ~8% of their income). The other's pay 80€ (or 160€ for students over 30 or studying longer than seven years).

Re: American students head to Germany for free college

#167

Post by nebody » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 3:43 PM UTC

josephmx wrote: post #160

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it handle things like schools that can afford dedicated SAT (or German equivalent) prep classes compared to those that can't?

Better or richer schools will always have an advantage over schools with worse teachers or less funding, particularly with the way we currently do exams.

In Germany funding doesn't vary much for schools in the same region and is basically based on size of the student body.

The last two years of school are generally a prep course for the German SAT equivalent (and grades in those two years account for around two thirds of the final score).

Re: American students head to Germany for free college

#168

Post by clarry » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 3:43 PM UTC

htns wrote: post #164

clarry wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm thinking of dropping out because of this. I'm just accumulating debt because the student's benefits are not enough for me to live on. The quality of teaching in my uni is really quite shit and they've seriously "compacted" important courses (e.g. in math) and it looks like most students in my group are not leaning anything at all, nor are they expected to. It's quite demotivating, even depressing.

Don't forget that starting next year, you will no longer be able to reapply to any Finnish universities if you have been accepted to one before. I would at least get a bachelor's degree so it will be easier to apply to universities abroad if you ever want to continue your education.

Technically speaking I haven't been accepted into one, because I cannot apply without secondary education. So I'm paying to study in one. That ought to change, come next semester. But I don't know if I want to waste two or three more years on this crap.

Re: American students head to Germany for free college

#169

Post by xtrumanx » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 3:45 PM UTC

personlurking wrote: post #60

Here's a Reddit /Bestof on the German university application process. It's not exactly free. http://reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/comments/2itsz2/germany_of...

Well that post took the wind out of my sails. I was browsing the Cologne University website until I saw this comment.

Re: American students head to Germany for free college

#170

Post by pluma » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 3:51 PM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #87

[deleted] wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Sources? Because I'm pretty sure that's wrong: http://www.studyineurope.eu/tuition-fees

That site's information about Germany is outdated. There was a €500 fee (the legal maximum) for a while after a law was passed that allowed universities to charge it. That was followed by protests and a few years later all universities have completely dropped it.

There is a marginal fee (The €500 tuition fee was paid on top of that and directly went to the university itself. The >50% of the regular fees that goes to the student council is also set by the council (e.g. it went up by a few euros in Cologne when the student ticket was extended to all of North-Rhine Westphalia instead of just the local public transit union -- which was decided by a direct vote of the students themselves).

Also, the public scholarship (BAföG) AFAIK didn't cover the €500 tuition fee, so some universities advertised student loans offered by publicly owned banks (which would only cover the €500 tuition fee, not the regular base fee).

Anyway, the tuition fees were rather short-lived. Except for the distance learning university of Hagen (the only distance learning university in Germany, and the only non-private distance learning higher-education institution in Germany) which charges an even lower base fee but then additionally charges for the course materials (making it slightly more expensive for full-time study), the fees are generally much lower than €500 these days.