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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

#291

Post by acadien »

saool wrote: post #287

I wish the debate focused less on cost-benefit analysis and on ways to engineer a just "chargeback" using loans or taxes and more about the idea that maybe people should be encouraged to pursue education just for the sake of it, to become free men and free thinkers, regardless of whether they'd be economically better off by taking electricity at trade school just to quickly join the assembly line at Volkswagen so tha…

I agree with everything said above, but what about the fact that society will always need plumbers, garbage collectors, fast food employees etc.? I'm not even sure that this is a counter point to what is mentioned above, just more thinking out loud. Is it possible to have a high functioning/efficient society in which there are no economic pressures to motivate people?

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#292

Post by GolfyMcG »

Kesty wrote: post #75
GolfyMcG wrote: post #57

Why has no one brought up how the top German university is "ranked" 55th on this list: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-ranki... I'm not saying this list is definitive or that the US tuition prices are reasonable, but it stands to reason that the best of the best of anything is going to be exponentially more expensive than it's next closest competitors.

Not really. 14 place ETHZ (Switzerland) https://www.ethz.ch/en/studies/financial/tuition-fees.html $600 at semester = $1,200 (1 school year) 15 place John Hopkins(USA) http://www.collegecalc.org/colleges/maryland/johns-hopkins-u... $45,470 (1 school year) Obviously it's US against Switzerland, it's completely different and very hard to compare. But bigger fees doesn't really means better university.

It's funny you mention Johns Hopkins because that's where I graduated from. I won't pretend it's cheap but we certainly didn't pay $45,000/yr. As some others have pointed out, there are fairly generous aid packages at a lot of these universities. I do still have student loans but they are entirely manageable.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#293

Post by gnarbarian »

cmdkeen wrote: post #18

There's a big difference between no tuition fees and "free" education. All this means is that the cost of education is passed on to all tax payers. Now this can be justified, there is utility in having an educated workforce and society. However when everyone is paying there is a need to have a decision about how many people need that education to provide the benefits everyone gets. The UK is seeing these problems wit…

Almost totally agree with you. WHICH degrees are also a factor. How many degrees in underwater basket weaving should the government be subsidizing?

I bet that making education 'free' will increase the unit cost per student per semester (total cost per year / number of students) and dramatically increase it per degree.

University costs in the US have been increasing rapidly at a rate far higher than inflation already. Some people argue that this is due to the high availability of student loans decreasing the pressure on universities to keep costs and tuition low.

This comes from the camp that believes that sticking kids with six digit debts right out of school is bad, unnecessary, AND that universities are needlessly wasteful. Eliminating the cost to the student entirely doesn't seem like the answer to me either due to decreased incentive for students to pass their classes and decreased pressure to drive down costs at the university. I believe 'free' university education will ultimately lead to even larger unit cost per student per semester and far greater cost per degree.

I tend to prefer solutions that leverage market forces. What do you think?

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#294

Post by rthomas6 »

saool wrote: post #287

I wish the debate focused less on cost-benefit analysis and on ways to engineer a just "chargeback" using loans or taxes and more about the idea that maybe people should be encouraged to pursue education just for the sake of it, to become free men and free thinkers, regardless of whether they'd be economically better off by taking electricity at trade school just to quickly join the assembly line at Volkswagen so tha…

But then they wouldn't buy the bigger TV because they'd realize it wouldn't make them happier, and the TV makers would suffer. /s

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#295

Post by ajmurmann »

chenelson wrote: post #248
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #171

Earlier 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.

Why should the king dictate what Who does with their time?

Well, it's not the king but the government representing the people who are paying the bills.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#296

Post by rthomas6 »

bane wrote: post #246
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…

American here, after age 10, I grew up fairly poor and very rural. Within a half hour drive (on highways) from the home I grew up in, all the jobs were either in farming/agriculture, similar industrial (quarries or steel factory), grocery stores or gas stations. The notion of going to college was virtually inconceivable to me and I was pretty sure I'd end up out in a field or a factory someplace. For a while I did od…

What does your family think about all this?

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#297

Post by rthomas6 »

acadien wrote: post #291
saool wrote: post #287

I wish the debate focused less on cost-benefit analysis and on ways to engineer a just "chargeback" using loans or taxes and more about the idea that maybe people should be encouraged to pursue education just for the sake of it, to become free men and free thinkers, regardless of whether they'd be economically better off by taking electricity at trade school just to quickly join the assembly line at Volkswagen so tha…

I agree with everything said above, but what about the fact that society will always need plumbers, garbage collectors, fast food employees etc.? I'm not even sure that this is a counter point to what is mentioned above, just more thinking out loud. Is it possible to have a high functioning/efficient society in which there are no economic pressures to motivate people?

If you believe some people, one day all those jobs will be automated away.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#298

Post by ajmurmann »

Roboprog wrote: post #201
thro1237 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. I had to clear an 'entrance examination' to prove my aptitude in engineering. But the problem is the people who would benefit the most from free education (at the lower social/income strata) will most likely have poor aptitude for high-income potential professions as well, because of poor primary and secondary schools they would have had access to. I know that some institutes take such students and prov…

Do they have the problem of vastly differential funding between local schools in 21st century Germany?

Not when I grew up ~10 years ago

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#299

Post by pizza234 »

tomp wrote: post #238
xixixao wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much anecdotal as circumstantial. If everyone was taking the loan, you probably would too. It is the same in England, were students took loans for 3,5k pounds a year and now even 9k a year. Now I am not saying that the British system is the ideal (pros and cons) but I can certainly provide some more anecdotal evidence of many people who study for free (in the Czech Republic) and are basically wasting the…

> but I can certainly provide some more anecdotal evidence of many people who study for free (in the Czech Republic) and are basically wasting the system resources (both in terms of taking up spaces in classes and having the tax status of a student). That's more of an anecdotal evidence of a shitty public university system. I don't know how it works in the Czech Republic other than from your comment, but in Slovenia,…

> To reduce the cost even more, the government could automatically give you a "nominal loan" that was automatically canceled when you finish your study, so only people who study and don't finish would have to pay, and you'd also have to pay for any additional years you need

Watch out; independently of being an effective idea or not, this would create a strong incentive for extensive corruption.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#300

Post by mhaymo »

jahewson wrote: post #206
lucio wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter example: There are 8000 poor persons paying 1p and 10 well-of paying 100 for his kids to go to university. None of the 8000 poor people has kids in univ.

Sorry, but no. We know that there is 40% attendance at university, so 3,194 of the less well-off people would have kids who attend.

That's assuming that poor people attend university at the same rate as wealthy people, which is not and will never be true, even if fees are abolished, as poor people can't afford to postpone full-time work for 4 years.
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