American students head to Germany for free college

Post by MaximillianII » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 3:54 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #127

bpires wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not about it being completely free. The whole point is how 235€ or even 1000€ per semester is nothing compared to tens of thousands americans pay in tuiton. Top universities in the US like MIT and Stanford charge over $40000 per year. With half of that you could comfortably live as a student in Germany for a year with all expenses paid. I live as a student in Germany on 650€/mo. That's less than $10000 a year.

The professors always told us, that the US is much more expensive with their education, but the people know this and have many options to save this money till the children are old enough to study, so it shouldn't be so bad...

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 3:54 PM UTC

Kephael wrote: post #162

FanaHOVA wrote: post #141

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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.

Post by pluma » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 4:00 PM UTC

th0br0 wrote: post #50

wongarsu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article there are about 100 American Students at the University of Cologne. That should be about 1% of the students. Having 1% more students more who pay exactly as much as domestic students isn't something that concerns me as German taxpayer, even if there would be no benefit for us. If I would have a problem with our budget there would be much bigger fish to fry.

The University of Cologne has a rather high number of students that are only enrolled there for the Semesterticket (public transportation ticket valid in most of North-Rhine Westfalia) and as such, the official number is slightly below 50000 students if I recall correctly. Compared to that, the 100 students are just 0,2%. The number of "active" students is around 20k I think - so the ratio is still significantly belo…

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 4:04 PM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #58

randunel wrote: post #49

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I work in London. The natives here consider the UK as a separate entity from Europe. They talk about the mainland as Europe, and compare themselves to "Europeans", not to "other Europeans". This is the British culture of "us vs them", or "we are too good to be associated with you" that I live in now :P

You weren't shocked by the low status of Engineers in the UK.

Post by cylinder » Thu, Apr 02, 2015, 4:09 PM UTC

Amezarak wrote: post #89

iamjdg wrote: post #28

I am on a temporary work assignment in Germany (2 years). I would come back in a minute if I wanted to further my education. Its a great country, safe, modern, and residents (permanent or not) get a lot of support from the government. Free university is for the German people, but they extend it to foreigners because Germany needs people and they hope they stay. I've learned a lot in Germany I will take back with me a…

It's impossible for everyone to be a net exporter. At the same time, being a net importer is not in itself a bad thing. The reason the US doesn't have free college for everyone is not because it is a net importer. The US could afford Germany-style benefits; that's not the problem. Canada probably could too.