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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

#531

Post by rbehrends »

adsfasdf23f23f wrote: post #524
rbehrends wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To go into more detail, here's the typical lecture format at a German university (note that this is "typical", not universal, and professors have a lot of leeway in how they can structure their courses). There'll be a lecture twice a week (four "semester hours", 2 times 2 * 45 minutes) and a two semester hour exercise session. The lecture will be held by a professor [1]; the exercise session for undergraduate courses…

This sounds like my experience studying ME at Michigan State

I took computer science and math courses at Michigan State myself for my Ph.D., and taught computer science there.

While the basic structure (lecture + exercises) is what you'll get in most countries (part of the point of my post was to dispute the OP's claim that there was little graded homework in Germany and no tutoring), I'd be surprised if your typical experience included, e.g., that homework didn't contribute to your final grade, was routinely done in groups (I've seen it happen at MSU, but it wasn't typical), or that your grade depended only on a single exam. In fact, looking at the syllabus for ME 201 [1], it's pretty obviously not the case in general.

To illustrate one of the major differences, consider that there really is no such think as cheating on homework at German universities. If you outright copy another student's work, the TA will generally just ask you to form a group to avoid grading the same solutions twice. Copying is considered stupid, because doing the homework yourself (ideally in a group) is important in order to be prepared for the exam, but it's generally allowed (again, exceptions exist). There are no complicated rules on when and how it's allowed to collaborate on homework [2] because the norm is that students are supposed to collaborate on homework (which has multiple reasons: working in groups is to be encouraged, it requires fewer TA hours and is thus cheaper, doesn't require anti-cheating technology, etc.) [3].

[1] http://www.egr.msu.edu/classes/me201/somerton/syllabus.pdf

[2] https://www.msu.edu/unit/ombud/academic-integrity/Collaborat...

[3] Obviously, cheating on exams or plagiarizing work for a thesis is a totally different story and will get you penalized or expelled.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#532

Post by awendt »

sveme wrote: post #486
awendt wrote: post #484

I'm surprised no one brought up the bigger picture of which types of education Germans pay for and which they don't. While going to university has been free for a long time in Germany (and will be again according to this article), German parents pay for kindergarten and day care. In most countries, it's the other way around and I'd gladly pay for my kids to go to university than pay for the much more basic education…

You are obviously right - kindergarten should be free for all. But you establish a false dichotomy: why exchange free university with free kindergarten? Why not have both? You could certainly argue with limited budget availability, but in the end it's a societal/political decision.

I'm not saying I don't want both :)

All I'm saying: If budget is the issue, I'm all for kindergarten. If it's not an issue, make everything free.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#533

Post by yaeger »

pluma wrote: post #475
yaeger wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still seemed petty when that "biggest gap of all" has a monetary value of about 20 bucks a week. For a higher education, mind you. I am willing to bet that the average student tends to spend more over the weekend in various nightclubs. And that just made me wonder if they really value their weekly nightly outing more than their own education. I came to the conclusion that it just came down to something like "But t…

It could have been a single Euro and it would still be outrageous. I'm not aware of any country that did not raise the fees after introducing them. In fact, universities in Germany were generally free to set the fees as low as they want and nearly every single one of them set them to the maximum allowed by the bill. It's a matter of principles. Introducing tuition fees at all means you're abandoning the idea of unive…

Congrats on downvoting a legitimate reply. If this is what people around here do once they get this ability I shouldn't even bother writing anything. And it is still people behaving as a child when they should pay for education that will further their careers. I hope they have fun using overhead projectors that are already 40 years old for the next couple of decades!

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#534

Post by pluma »

yaeger wrote: post #533
pluma wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could have been a single Euro and it would still be outrageous. I'm not aware of any country that did not raise the fees after introducing them. In fact, universities in Germany were generally free to set the fees as low as they want and nearly every single one of them set them to the maximum allowed by the bill. It's a matter of principles. Introducing tuition fees at all means you're abandoning the idea of unive…

Congrats on downvoting a legitimate reply. If this is what people around here do once they get this ability I shouldn't even bother writing anything. And it is still people behaving as a child when they should pay for education that will further their careers. I hope they have fun using overhead projectors that are already 40 years old for the next couple of decades!

Did you imply I'm downvoting? I don't even have enough karma (or whatever else the limitation is based on) to downvote you -- not that I would see any reason to do so in the first place.

> And it is still people behaving as a child when they should pay for education that will further their careers.

See? That's the problem right there. University in Germany (originally) isn't about career advancement. It's about education and lifelong learning. This is what I tried to explain. You can say this ideal is silly, but that doesn't change the fact that this ideal exists and a lot of students protesting the fees (and BA/MA, and so on) were genuinely subscribing to it.

That aside, in Germany most job education (Berufsausbildung, as in, an internship at a company coupled with classroom education) is government-subsidized and you're paid for it. So it's not like tuition fees were about making people pay for learning a trade -- it was exclusively about universities (under the assumption that university degrees mean higher income -- which is ridiculous if you consider the job market for nearly all of the degrees that aren't in high demand or relevant to any career, e.g. linguistics, cultural studies, philosophy etc).

> I hope they have fun using overhead projectors that are already 40 years old for the next couple of decades!

The government reducing their spending on public education is irrelevant to the debate of tuition fees. If the universities need more money to do their job, the government can increase the spending. This already exists, tuition fees were the new thing, not public funding. And the reduction of public funding was decidedly not brought up as an argument when the fees were introduced -- in fact it was claimed this would not have any effect on it.

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#535

Post by [deleted] »

chenelson wrote: post #346
ajmurmann wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I see, thanks for clarifying. Perhaps you can use your superior education to explain when and where the terms "right" and "left" were defined; and then help me understand how liberalization of education and training over time has been counterproductive to society.

[deleted]

Re: Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn

#536

Post by rb2k_ »

zwieback wrote: post #366
rb2k_ wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greetings from another Stuttgart expat! :)

Hope you have a good source of Laugenbroetchen, one of the specialties that are hard to find or recreate here.

I'm happy having found Gerolsteiner Mineralwasser here in the US. (Trader Joes <3)
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