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 an apply to my work and everyday life (focus, directness, efficiency, attention to detail, basing decisions on first principles). I imagine getting an education here would reflect these principles and be of very high quality. Most German engineers I interact with our exceptional. Germany has an export to import ratio of ~1.2 meaning for every euro they spend, they earn 1.20 euros. They can afford this. The US is less than 1 (perhaps 0.8 or something) and Canada (my home) is about 1 mostly because we have so many natural resources. The benefits one gets in the US and Canada pale in comparison to Germany, it is embarrassing. The US and Canada need to push their export to import ratios higher through innovation and efficiency improvements (real economic growth, not like artificial economic growth based on low interests, real estate speculation, and the financial/banking worlds investment/money magic tricks) in order to be able to afford the benefits a German resident gets.
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.
i think of countries export to import ratios like personal finance income vs expenditures. if you spend more than you make, where we you get the money to reinvest in yourself. you'll borrow it until you can't make the minimum payments and then default.
There are many reasons why the US does not have free college (taxes too low, universities are run like business now, etc.) but running huge deficits and not having any savings to invest in society is one of the reasons.
No. If everyone strives to be a net exporter, you quickly end up with a race to the bottom.
> i think of countries export to import ratios like personal finance income vs expenditures. if you spend more than you make, where we you get the money to reinvest in yourself. you'll borrow it until you can't make the minimum payments and then default.
This is the wrong way to think about it. The trade deficit is nothing like personal finances/expenditures; this is a common meme in Germany, though, so I understand where you might have gotten the idea from. (Germany is presently dragging down the entire Eurozone with these beliefs.) You are not "borrowing" by having a trade deficit (nor do you have to borrow to have one.) It's just an outflow of currency, which is not particularly harmful to countries printing their own currency.
> There are many reasons why the US does not have free college (taxes too low, universities are run like business now, etc.) but running huge deficits and not having any savings to invest in society is one of the reasons.
This is not a reason at all. The trade deficit has nothing to do with US budget deficits, and the US still has plenty of money to invest back into society. It's a matter of political will and the way the government and education is organized. A lot has changed over the past decade for the worse and the better. Before the recession, there were actually enormous state subsidies to public universities that reduced their cost. During the recession, states began cutting back, which has been a contributor to rising college costs. At the same time, the government has modified the student loan program to be much better: indeed under the program as it now exists it's not really so much a loan as it is a tax on your post-college earnings. At the same time, universities are plagued with large, overpaid bureaucratic administrations, an increasing focus on new amenities, and perhaps even worse, a sense that the more money it costs to attend, the better the college must be. Students are in part rewarding colleges for raising prices - conservatives blame this on the ease of finding loans to pay for school, but I think the situation is more complex. If you had a dramatic restructuring of the US system, say, for example, you slashed public university administration budgets and froze spending on anything non-academic, instituted price controls, and consolidated all the various local, state, and federal programs to fund schools or scholarships, you could probably make college a lot cheaper or even free right now with minimal tax increases. The wealth and resources are already there. There was actually an Obama proposal to make community college free (a small step toward this), which the media estimated would cost 15 billion - chump change in the US budget.
As an aside, college costs are more complicated than people think. In many (most?) states, sufficient academic performance (as measured by an ACT or SAT score) automatically guarantees a full scholarship (or less, depending on your score.)
You also have community colleges, which are much cheaper and allow you to obtain a two year degree and transfer to a four-year university.
Once you get outside of private colleges and the big-name schools (usually on the coasts), public university costs are much reduced. And you can get in even if you're academically terrible, a situation you don't necessarily have in the European systems.
For example: I attended community college for free because of my ACT score. I could have gone directly to university for free, but I chose not to because of my age. I transferred to a four year school, paid for 3 (2.5 undergrad, .5 grad) years with money I earned at a minimum wage job, and then finished out grad school with an assistantship that paid my tuition plus a stipend. I graduated four years ago. This is still easily doable in most of the country. In fact it's still exactly doable if you just go directly to university and don't have to pay anything.
There may still be too much emphasis on 4-year college requirements for most vocations in the US. Mediocre students are being pushed towards college, where they may or may not graduate, and end up with debt even with federal and state subsidies. Worst case is not finishing and having tons of debt with nothing to show for it. These same people would be much better off with a 2-year vocational degree, and a job market in greater need of those skills than your community college IT or business degree will find.
I've heard the German educational system steers students in these directions early in high school. When I was in high school, we used to have vocational and college prep paths, but they've since ditched that in an effort to "leave no child behind." Now we have a glut of students graduating from community college in a market with low demand for their degrees.
Let's admit that except for being able to transfer those credits to a college of higher prestige, and being granted the same degree from there, community college is of little value. In my area, I can tell you for a fact that the same science and math courses vary greatly in difficulty between the private engineering school I attended, and the local state school. Full-time students knew of this loophole, and took some of these harder classes down the road at the state school.
US educators are well aware of the German model. Like you said, we've opted not to go with serious tracking for students. The minimal tracking we already do is controversial as is. It would be a huge ruckus for us to do what the Germans do and start segregating students by ability soon after elementary school. We just value different things differently, and in this particular case we accept less optimal social outcomes in the name of greater quality.
Thought experiment: I wonder if one reason the US doesn't do formalized tracking of this sort is that it would be distasteful to formalize the inequalities in our system, but yet we don't have the stomach to actually provide equal opportunities.
We have de facto tracking by parental income and social capital. Look at the other thread about high school kids taking AP computer science: AP CS is basically a class that is only offered if the parents agitate for it and the district has the money. Somehow in Mississippi this just doesn't happen, and we are fine with that as a nation. Keeps us wringing our hands about who says what words in the workplace instead of having to make a substantive change in what we offer students.
There are swaths of the US (with power) that benefit from this socioeconomic/cultural capital tracking of students. Keep the poor relatively poor with shitty schools for all, keep the rich rich with private tutoring so their SAT scores get 'em into a decent college, get the immigrant parents to put out good workers by running their kids through prescribed hoops so they can rise a little and be good middle managers and developers. Then we don't have to deal with poor kids with ability or rich kids who are dumb as dirt -- we can say everyone has equal opportunity with clean hands and conscience!
* The US is obsessed with race, and tracking makes it too obvious black kids aren't doing as well as white kids.
* Parents all believe their own child is above average regardless of the mathematical implications, and they get very upset if you hint the possibility little Johnny might not be the most intelligent child in his class. Clearly he just doesn't do well on tests.
* Children tend to live up or down to expectations. Obviously you can't make a dumb kid smart by expecting him to be smart, but you can influence the amount of effort he puts into school.
* People have looked at income statistics and decided if we send every child to college they can all be doctors and lawyers, and the toilets will magically clean themselves.
> Look at the other thread about high school kids taking AP computer science: AP CS is basically a class that is only offered if the parents agitate for it and the district has the money. Somehow in Mississippi this just doesn't happen, and we are fine with that as a nation. Keeps us wringing our hands about who says what words in the workplace instead of having to make a substantive change in what we offer students.
I think you'll find that the people "wringing hands about who says what words in the workplace" (at least, if by that, you are referring to public concern with things like race, gender, and sexual orientation-based harassment) are, in no small part, the same group of people actively concerned about and things like math and science education. They just aren't particularly influential in Mississippi.
Overall, I agree, but as someone who's been in the fight for good treatment for all for a long time, I've started to worry that we're being misdirected to the wrong fights -- distracted by the obvious rather than looking deeper. Among other things, I teach at a university. I just don't get a lot of students from certain backgrounds, and it's not because of the problems at tech companies. It's because of the economic concerns of parents and the culture that we've passed to children. By college or the master's level half the community I grew up with are just not even on the same track. Maybe part of it is that we drag kids who would be great electricians through some inferior faux-college-prep charade instead of giving them an actual good education. Having taught precalc at the college level those students would have been better prepared for college by taking a shop class that involved using fractions and trig than by taking all four years of what math they actually took.
The parent comment to my previous one implied that we in the US have equality of opportunity, unlike Germany with its tracking. I am experimenting with the argument that we in the US say all the right things and yet insidiously do worse. Our rhetoric and our reality in the United States don't really line up. My high school had International Baccalaureate classes open to all, but only some kids signed up. How have we built this self-perpetuating organism of inequality that plods along even though we say all sorts of "correct" things? Even in Mississippi people are publicly concerned with race, gender, and sexual-orientation-based harassment. And yet.
> what the Germans do and start segregating students by ability soon after elementary school
It's not that fascist.
For one, the parents decide which schools their kids go to, the states can only give recommendations (which are regularly ignored by Special Snowflake Parents).
Additionally, the decision is not final. Students can (and do) switch to a higher school form if their grades are good enough, and work their way from the lowest school form to university.
And after a recent reform, they don't even need to, as vocational schools (for which all students are eligible to after 9 years) are now able to grant bachelor degree equivalents.
Ah, very interesting then. I lived in Germany for three years, but there are still obviously many aspects of German culture I'm still not 100% on. Thanks for that correction. My understanding from the time (mid 2000s) was that the school tracking happened relatively early and that moves between tracks were infrequent.
> My understanding from the time (mid 2000s) was that the school tracking happened relatively early
It happens after the four-year primary school, yes. But as said, the school merely gives recommendations, and the parents can put their children in every (public or private) school they want, only home schooling is heavily restricted (and basically only possible if it's medically necessary).
> and that moves between tracks were infrequent.
From my (limited) personal experience, yes. But there's little bureaucratic obstacles to such a move, as far as I can tell, most don't move because there's little need – even the lowest secondary degree allows you to attain a bachelor of arts (although it's a rather long route and you're looking at a total of 20 or more years via vocational school time versus 15/16 years via university).
i think striving for net exporter is only a race to the bottom if you use one tool to get there. but if a country innovates their way there, is it not a race to the top?
germany finally bent a bit letting the eurozone printing money. i like to see it as germany trying to steer the eurozone into real economic growth rather than fake growth (unleashing new money at a low interest rate(. everyone is applauding the us econmic recovery, but it is not real growth, and they will have to pay the debt piper some day.
i generally agree universities are bloated and to expensive, gravy trains for some, huge financial burdens to most.
i was a community college kid who transferred to a 4 year.
> germany finally bent a bit letting the eurozone printing money
This money is needed to sustain Germany's export as much as it is needed to sustain Greece's and Spain's and Italy's import… because guess where Germany's exports go?
The Eurozone can only function if there's (internally) a trade equilibrium.
Taxes in the US are not too low. In absolute numbers, the US takes in as many USD per resident per year as rich European countries. (They just have a lower GDP, so the ratio is higher.)
In comparison, Singapore does really well on a much lower tax base per capita. Excellent public infrastructure.
the ideal export to import ratio is 1, BTW. Anything else is an imbalance and a ticking bomb. The internal trade imbalances in the EU have already blown up once.
Even if it is 1 at the national level, at some level of granularity it will not be 1. This seems to be a system that cannot be in a consistent stable state. I would rather aim for controlled periodic fluctuations, but even then I don't think it is possible to avoid areas of economic bloom and economic blight.
1? really? i guess you mean reinvesting your net positive export income into efficiency improvements and innovation and maintaining infrastructure? ok, i can agree with that. but one still needs save for a rainy day (emergencies, downturns) so maybe the ideal is slightly greater than 1.
Flip the import/export and mercantilist attitude around and see what happens. Imports simply mean that you are getting what you want from external producers. There is nothing inherently bad or good about this. You could also just as easily say that the US has now offshored a lot of our (dirty/unpleasant/etc) manufacturing requirements to other countries and gets to reap the fruits of their labor.
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 whole six month. Some people in here just register because of that ticket. :D
To study in germany, you normally just need to prove that you have a specific amount of money to survive, pay for a flat, food and health insurance. And thats it.
As the website stated, we need skilled immigrants, because with a birth rate of just 1.3 childs per woman, the germans are slowly dying out, not to mention that our society is getting older and older like the one in japan. Attracting foreign students with a nearly free college is a great and very cheap way of getting highly skilled workers, its makes perfect sense.
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...
Is that supposed to make Americans feel better about going into crushing educational debt? Articles like this make me think I should be packing up and heading to Germany ;-)
Until recently we paid 500€ in Bavaria per semester additionally to the around 50€ we still have to pay and abolishing it made quite the difference, especially to people whose parents don't earn that much.
To clarify: the 400-600 Euro is per month, not per semester. Bavaria is one of the more expensive ('cause rich) states. If you are willing to live in the East (hey, Berlin!), you can get by on less.
> As the website stated, we need skilled immigrants, because with a birth rate of just 1.3 childs per woman, the germans are slowly dying out
I had wondered why the German taxpayers would be so generous to American students. Perhaps this will last longer than I expected, especially if some of the students hang around after graduation. I can't imagine it being official policy, but the obvious way to hook people into staying would be to get them married to Germans before graduation.
I wish I would have known these things on graduation from high school. Limiting one's options to US schools can be hazardous to your financial health. Our system is terrible.
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).
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).
> [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 admission process with all of the emphasis on extracurricular activities and proving that I'm the 'right kind of person' for them.
To apply in the UK, I sent a form with my exam results, and that was it. I could have added a 'personal essay' but didn't even bother. Not sure if this has changed much, but I hope it hasn't...
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 reading "Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman")
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.
Absolutely not in my opinion. What about students that have to work while going to school? I had to do this and I can assure you that it really hurt my GPA. Other more well off students will of course have higher GPAs because they can afford not to work and can pay tutors. These students who have worked full time or have faced other difficulties will not be able to explain why their academics are lacking if it's entirely academics based.
I also think essays and interviews are great ways to assess the candidate's true interest and compatibility with programs.
But it's not just interest, it's ability to complete the course. Sure I might be interested in Mathematics, but terrible at it. What's the point of admitting me to an Honours Maths cousre? Also, there are usually strict legal limits on the hours you can work if you're under 16, which is when you'd be studying for the exams required for University admission, so I don't think it'd be much of an issue. Note that I'm thinking of the UK, where University admission is usually at 17 or 18.
Fun fact: Mathematics is not restricted in most German universities. If you are allowed to go to university in general, you are allowed to study maths – no matter your grades pre-university.
The entry criteria aren't based on something like the SAT, although International Baccelaureate perhaps comes close in Europe? Not sure, maybe someone else can explain?
So there are no prep classes or anything like that in the UK. Everyone sits the same set of exams (modulo being Scottish or English/Welsh/NI, which have different types of qualification) and those results dictate whether you can go to University or not. I suppose you could study more if you wanted?
Grades only really matter for medicine, psychology, and perhaps law. If you want to be an engineer or physicist or mathematician etc, they take everyone.
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).
>In Germany funding doesn't vary much for schools in the same region and is basically based on size of the student body.
In which case schools located in areas with a higher cost of living are effectively receiving less because any teacher working their, while on an absolute scale making the same, is making less on the more realistic scale that adjusts for cost of living.
Education in Europe is not free. You pay with your qualifications. If your university grades are not good enough, you go out fast.
I studied engineering in Europe. When I went to Boston or London to work it was like I was the boss or something because I was much better prepared than Americans or British.
But Americans have much better job opportunities that make them better than Europeans after working some time in any field.
The world is controlled by the petrodollar and Americans enjoy lots of benefits as a result.
Europe is old and taking risks is so hard here. In Asia it is even harder.
> Education in Europe is not free. You pay with your qualifications. If your university grades are not good enough, you go out fast.
While Universities in the UK (and probably the US as well?) boast with their retention rates that seem to approach SLA levels of nine nines, it is the exact opposite in Germany. Some of our universities are proud of their drop-out rates >50%, partly because only good students will get a degree at a good university. But you also have to keep in mind that quite a few courses don't have any entry requirements in many universities (others require a minimum score that consists of your GPA, optional test scores, and other metrics). You just fill out a form, attach a copy of your Abiturzeugnis (A-levels / high-school diploma), and voilà, you're now a student of computer science at one of Germany's top universities. It should not come as a surprise that not everyone finishes their course. In fact, tough exams after a year of study serve to weed out the weaker students. This gives everyone the chance to prove themselves in the subject, not some random test. It is also perfectly normal to change studies in Germany, so being kicked out isn't a disaster by any means (although you should reflect back and see where you went wrong ;))
I went to undergrad in the US, and there's a similar, but disguised, phenomenon. The difficult majors (ie: faculties/degree paths) would have very high "drop-out rates", in terms of people changing tracks after the first year or two. So indeed, less than half the people who entered with a declared intention of completing a degree in Physics, Engineering, Computer Science, or Mathematics would actually do so.
Quite a few could be found in the social-sciences and humanities departments after they were "weeded out" of the hard sciences. Personally, I think this is a crappy way to run things, since it means social-science and humanities professors have to deal with lots of students who are only there for a generic degree they can manage to obtain rather than for the specific degree path.
On the other hand, I put scare-quotes on the "weeded out", because often the precise method of weeding out weaker students is to simply not even try to teach well in the first year or two of math, science, programming, and engineering courses. So for instance, my fiancee actually cleared all her differential and integral calculus requirements via Advanced Placement (exams high-schoolers can take that grant university credits), with perfect scores, but when she tried to take Linear Algebra in our undergrad math department, she found the teaching so bad that she struggled to understand anything at all. Despite this, she pulled an A- in the course and was one of the top three students in her class/section -- but insists she barely understood anything at all.
It really makes me wonder what kind of pedagogical wonders we'd see if university professors were actually trying to teach well in courses below the third year.
Or, you know, if professors were taught how to teach introductory courses. As far as I am aware there is no pedagogical training for professors in Germany. There certainly isn't any for TAs (who are simplay the professor's PhD students).
It's a lot easier for professor to teach a subject they are enthusiastic about to advanced students than it is to get students interested in an introductory course.
I was much better prepared than Americans or British.
But Americans have much better job opportunities that make them better than Europeans after working some time in any field.
Great comment. Anyway I will never leave Europe for US/Canada/Australia[1]. I've visited some family in the latter and I feel that the advantages of these countries are not enough to make me live there. Exchanging peace of mind and a huge decrease of life quality for some extra probabilities of being rich and extra consumption doen't worth IMO.
Also have in mind that Germany != Europe
Edit: [1] I'm sure these 3 countries are very different between themselves (I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings), but they are still "new world" countries, where the main goal of voluntary "colonizers" was/is getting rich and be able to consume more than in their native countries. This common goal leads to a lot of similarities between them as, for example, the urbanism: suburbs is a "new world" invention and this will always imply a common lifestyle (car dependency, malls, ..).
I think you have been misinformed about the main goal of many early American colonizers.
Also, that's a rather tenuous connection to suburbs. US suburbs mostly developed 200 years after colonization. And 100 years after London (that's "old world", right?) invented suburbs.
I agree with you, suburbs were not invented in the "new world" but these countries made them popular, probably with the individual dream of a better life and particular conditions as land availability or cheap oil that leaded to the development of single housing to almost everybody.
I'm sure you agree also that suburbs in "old world" (Europe) don't have such a massive presence that they completely imply a certain lifestyle.
Suburbs in America are a byproduct of racism. They were invented when sharecroppers (freed African-American slaves and their children who then became indentured servants/laborers) from the south migrated en masse to the cities of the north and started moving into urban neighborhoods, and the white people fled to the outskirts rather than let black people live among them.
And in the next sentence, you remind us that Germany is not Europe.
Before the Canadians lynch you, you should amend your comment to point out that you are very cognizant of the differences between the US and Canada! Australia's different from the others in its own ways, not least of which is that it's on the other side of the planet.
Ok, fair enough: "send them into a rough hockey game" or something like that.
If there's one thing that sets a lot of Canadians off though, it's being considered like some large, deep-frozen 51st state of the US. For one obvious example of the differences, Canada has universal health care.
>Great comment. Anyway I will never leave Europe for US/Canada/Australia[1]. I've visited some family in the latter and I feel that the advantages of these countries are not enough to make me live there. Exchanging peace of mind and a huge decrease of life quality for some extra probabilities of being rich and extra consumption doen't worth IMO.
I'm a European currently living in Canada, who has also traveled the US pretty extensively. The US and Canada aren't really interchangeable. Canada can at times feel like America-lite but in most real ways it's thankfully very different to the US.
I didn't move here because I saw "advantages" regarding personal prosperity, mainly just for the experience. The quality of life here in Toronto isn't a huge difference from what I've experienced in Europe. Comparatively low crime when compared with other major cities on this side of the pond, low poverty, reasonable cost of living relative to IT salaries, etc.
Apart from that, the people are great and really live up to the stereotype and are overall comparatively laid back like in Europe.
What it is lacking though is cultural substance and identity. It's pretty bland. Nothing has any real character. In that way it can feel a bit like a major US city and will be the main reason I move back to Europe in the coming years.
Living and working in the USA is something I'd never consider personally. I'm also approaching 30 and in a few years kids will be along the way, and I would never consider bringing a child up in the US. I don't mean to offend American posters here with this, but what you offer is just not for me, and I could never be a part of something that actively supports the US government and its policies.
But if you were looking for a change I'd suggest giving Canada a shot for a while. It's very different to the other two you've lumped it in with and in great ways and if nothing else it would give you an experience to learn from.
> What it is lacking though is cultural substance and identity. It's pretty bland. Nothing has any real character. In that way it can feel a bit like a major US city and will be the main reason I move back to Europe in the coming years.
You nailed it. 'Lack of detail', it seems silly but that's what I really miss in the 'new world'.
>Exchanging peace of mind and a huge decrease of life quality for some extra probabilities of being rich and extra consumption doen't worth IMO.
I don't think you understand what it's like to live in the US and Canada as an educated worker.
>* but they are still "new world" countries, where the main goal of voluntary "colonizers" was/is getting rich and be able to consume more than in their native countries.*
Whoa, how are you using the internet back there in 1912? I don't think you understand the reason that English colonists came to America or how America even works today.
Your whole comment reeks of arrogance, ignorance and condescension but hey what do I know? I'm just an new world American, not a cosmopolitan, wise European who is recently celebrating twenty consecutive years without an episode of ethnic cleansing happening on his continent.
I didn't say that European people are better than the others - they aren't, I just said I prefer Europe system/way of life comparing with Australia (the only one where I've had a long stay). I even said that "new world"[1] countries have some advantages.
[1] I couldn't find a better term to refer to western world outside Europe, I don't have the intention of hurting anybody's feelings.
[2] With "voluntary colonists" I don't mean only English colonists, I mean emmigrants in general.
> Education in Europe is not free. You pay with your qualifications. If your university grades are not good enough, you go out fast.
Could you be a little more specific? The size of Europe, America and Asia is too huge for statements like that.
There are definitely universities in Europe that are more similar to some in the US than other universities in Europe.
I'm a student in Sweden and I have not experienced anything that supports the quote above.
I know how engineering courses look like in Poland. Universities are 100% free, but they have absolutely no qualms about kicking out weaker students. Electrical engineering course at any of the largest universities in Poland will enroll 300-400 people,but 200 of them will fail the first year. The last year is usually finished by <10 people on time, there is plenty of people taking resits for years, and it's not uncommon for exams to be so hard that they have 100% failure rate. I have several friends studying engineering in Poland and well, first of all you need to pass all of your assignments to be able to take the exam(if you failed any of your practicals or assignments you are not even allowed to take the exam), and then like I've said it's not uncommon that out of 20 people taking the exam all 20 fail.
In contrast, I studied in UK and getting through university at an Engineering course was very easy if you didn't care about grades too much. You could even fail an exam completely and still be allowed to continue, which is unthinkable in Poland.
The main difference is, that in Poland all that matters is the diploma,not the grades you got, while in UK a diploma with a third or 2-2 grade is nearly worthless. So I think that Universities in Poland are much more careful about actually letting people graduate, while in UK pretty much anyone can graduate,but poor grades make their education worthless.
"So I think that Universities in Poland are much more careful about actually letting people graduate, while in UK pretty much anyone can graduate,but poor grades make their education worthless."
It's about the philosophy behind it. In Poland (and Romania too, BTW), an institution defends its reputation first and foremost. Somewhere else, it's more business-oriented and the reputation is kept more by marketing than by other means. That is also how "top universities" classification is made - by counting only the highest results, not all of it. It's a nice hack on human mind, as both the students' and the average employers' bells ring when they think of those "top" universities, abstracting away a lot of "uninteresting" information.
As an anecdote, some years ago, I heard about people in Poland that enroll in college (where education is nearly free) just to have access to student discounts!
Student discounts used to be massive in public transportation, accommodation and almost everywhere, even in some restaurants and bars in academic cities. Nowadays these discounts are not as they used to be, so I don't think it is still a common practice.
Some discounts are still significant (33% for railway and mass transit). But I don't think that it would be enough to go through trouble of applying to university. You would be kicked out for not passing first semester anyway. What destroyed recruitment strategies for less popular faculties was army. When army abandoned mandatory conscription many less popular faculties where quite surprised by dramatic drop in number of candidates. People used to apply to escape military service and some of them actually finished degrees despite silly motivation to apply in the beginning.
That ratio is the same as any EE program in the USA. 66% of the class will flunk out within 2 years. From my experience, only about 20% remained at the end of 4 years.
I did a CS course at AGH too. I had well over 100 people on my first year (couldn't physically fit them into some lecture halls), after first semester this halved. Second year there were fewer than 40 of us even after transfers. I think it's the most fair way to run courses.
It's the same in Finland, at least in universities. If you don't pass your courses, the state stops paying the student benefits[1], but you can stay at the university. There is another, very low number of courses you need to pass every year in order to stay in, but that is very low indeed, it's only meant to keep registers clean of people not studying at all.
1: That's right, Finns are paid to study. I think students in most of the Nordic countries are.
"Finns are paid to study. I think students in most of the Nordic countries are."
There are scholarships (all over Europe) that depend on acquiring a minimal number of Bologna-credits, and those (at least in some countries) existed since the foundation of the higher education itself.
In most (all? not sure) of the Nordic countries it's not scholarships (well, you have scholarships too), but at least used to be blanket grants to everyone that qualifies for a university place, combined with cheap loans.
The grants when I studied in Norway were not huge, but they were unconditional for some number of years as long as you could document that you were still studying (basically it was sufficient to sign up to a couple of courses and attending the exams, whether or not you passed). This was 20 years ago - details may have changed.
I lived on my grants + student loan for the first year of my first startup, by continuing to sign up for a couple of courses which I didn't actually study for (attended may be two lectures...)
Yes, this is indeed the case. For a typical university student, you get a grant of 335,32€ a month and a up to 201,60€ for residence (up to 80% of the your rent). And up to 400€ a month of government-guaranteed cheap student loan. If you are skimpy, it's just about enough to get along.
In Denmark I get around €750 per month from the government as a student, and I can take another €400 euro or so as a very low interest loan if I want. I can also apply for assistance with rent as needed.
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.
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.
"I studied engineering in Europe. When I went to Boston or London to work it was like I was the boss or something because I was much better prepared than Americans or British."
What do you mean by "I studied engineering in Europe"? London is in Europe.
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
I understand that in the campaigns for upcoming elections, some parties pledge to arrange a referendum about whether UK should stay in Europe, or float across the Atlantic.
That's a bit different though. It's typical in Ireland and the UK to refer to mainland Europe as 'the continent', whether they consider themselves European or not. The likes of the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Cyprus, Malta, the Channel Islands, &c. wouldn't be considered part of 'the continent', though some might consider the Mediterranean islands to be 'continental'. 'Continental Europe' is not the same thing as 'the continent of Europe', but a subset of it that excludes its island parts.
This is not unlike the way that the 48 contiguous states of the US are considered 'the continental US'.
Frankly, I find the attitude of some English people towards the continent and Europe as a whole to be somewhat silly.
"What do you mean by «I studied engineering in Europe»? London is in Europe."
I understand your objection, but on the other hand there is also a reason of compacting the message sent across that may work for other European countries too. Instead of saying "somewhere outside my country, but here in Europe nevertheless", it goes just "in Europe" taking the speaker's location as a relying context (opposed to "in here", as "in this country").
The state pays for your education.
Germany has a very good engineering education. Where do you think comes the brand "made in germany" from? We germans still build the best cars and machines.
Slight correction: the brand "made in Germany" was initially invented to warn against low quality products from Germany (19th century used to be a lot of copycat). Quality got better and the meaning changed.
[pretty sure it was also used as a "business propaganda" instrument after WW2 and only tipped to "good stuff" after that]
I would have killed to get the chance to study in the US.
American students are far more complex and broad in their knowledge. And that's a very good thing you shouldn't underestimate. It helps a lot in your career.
Germany loves hierarchy and "conservative" thinking. And that is reflected in every aspect of society, even academic education. The main focus is to produce people that Germany needs. We have a shitload of "Fachidioten" here. That's a good thing, and also a bad thing.
tl;dr
If you want to reach for the stars in your career, study somewhere else.
Having grown up and studied in Germany and having lived and worked in the US too I know the differences quite a bit.
Yes, thinking is more narrow here in Germany and the "Fachidioten" that you are referring to are real. However, the depth and thoroughness of domain specific knowledge that you acquire with a German university degree are hard to beat, specifically in Engineering / STEM.
I would even go as far as to say that the top German Engineering Universities (Munich, Darmstadt, Aachen) are comparable to the top US universities in that area (Stanford, MIT, ...).
Now with regards to broadness of thinking and knowledge, it's true that the US values this much higher than Germany and the situation hasn't especially improved with the Bologna process in Germany.
However the big argument is that German universities are free and cost of living is low. Then why not study in Germany and get some of the US mentality later in your professional life by working in the US?
I'd argue that valuing choice of college/university too high is a mistake that many people make. Instead figure out first what you want, focus on getting your skills and how to discover new opportunities in life. No college university can really help you with this.
Can you maybe explain a little more how the "US values broadness of thinking and knowledge ... much higher than Germany"? Do you have some concrete examples in mind?
Based on experience in both the U.S. and Danish university systems (not the German one, but I believe it shares some similarities), the U.S. university education has a bigger focus on interdisciplinarity, where you focus on a major but also are required to take courses in other disciplines. The Danish system focuses specifically on the major.
If you major in CS in Denmark, you will take CS courses and only CS courses, to a fairy close approximation (due to staffing this might include 1 or 2 courses taught in the math department, but that's about as far outside the CS department as you're likely to get). Whereas if you major in CS in the U.S., it's frequently the case that there is a "common core" everyone has to take that includes other courses. For example, I did my CS degree in the U.S., and I had to take about 4 semesters of natural sciences (w/labs), 1 of engineering, 6 of mathematics, several humanities courses, etc., in addition to my CS courses. In Denmark a CS student is very unlikely to ever find themselves in the natural-sciences, humanities, or engineering departments (in Copenhagen they aren't even in physical proximity).
Not the same, CS majors in Germany have to choose one "Anwendungsfach" that consist of a subset of classes of natural-sciences, humanities or engineering majors. You have to choose one and stick with it. Also there is the "Nichttechisches Wahlpflichtfach" (probably the most german words I know) which can be a language class or mentoring first-semesters or something similar. So I feel like we get a lot of interdisciplinarity.
As you can see, about a fifth of the of the credits have to come from "support electives (soft skills)" and applied subject courses. I suppose this is quite representative for a German bachelor program.
You also have to keep in mind that the curricula at a US high school and a German Gymnasium are not equivalent. German students at the beginning of their university career on average have the equivalent of at least one year more of school education compared to the US students -- at least that used to be case.
Keep in mind that Germans go to highschool for longer. The Abitur covers a lot of the interdisciplinary ground that you have to take in an American undergraduate degree.
Well, that sounds as if you want to turn around the invitation for foreign students?
As the (currently) first post states, americans love the safety of germany and the free education - and the beer. I encourage everybody to come here, then take home what you appreciated and make american universities a better place too (I write this under the impression of suicide reports at MIT and poisoning of competing lab colleagues at stanford, the murder of a visiting german student in Missoula last year). Ignore the german hierarchies. I wouldn't put it as drastic as DrinkWater, but german universities have their little kings at the tops indeed. But this doesn't concern students, only scientists.
The atmosphere is much less competitive here, more a friendly competition that supports teamwork and good science - as it should be.
These broad statements seem ridiculous to me. If you're speaking from personal experience, you should at least add which subject you studied and at which Uni/FH you studied.
But the German education system isn't like Anglo (e.g., US) systems. 27% of this generation of Germans have post-secondary education, compared to 43% of their American counterparts.
Someone explained to me that this is due to Germany's focus on trades and apprenticeship.
> Someone explained to me that this is due to Germany's focus on trades and apprenticeship.
Yeah, the Berufsschulen (vocational schools) mirror the university system with 5+ year trainings that net apprentice/master certifications; and a master is in many trades necessary to be allowed to work as freelancer/found your own company – even for blue collar jobs like plumber, painter or car mechanic.
This has started to erode in the past two decades, though, because all those jobs are being automated and/or outsourced and people try to rush to the universities.
Edit: Apparently, (partially in reaction to this) a Meisterbrief now is considered to be equivalent to a Bachelor of Arts degree.
It's funny, because some Americans grumble about the lack of focus on vocational training and trades, while OP was grumbling about the lack of breadth and liberal education in Germany.
> while OP was grumbling about the lack of breadth and liberal education in Germany.
Yeah, I've no idea where that's supposed to come from. The only area where I'd consider the education to be narrow is at universities – and there it's by design, because after 13 years of breadth-first education in the Gymnasium (mandatory three languages, music, sports, arts, chemistry, philosophy/theology, physics, maths, political education, history, computer science, …) you should be able to pick a specialization without turning into a drooling retard.
Well, I don't know anything about Gymnasium, but it doesn't sound very different from K-12 compulsory education in California. Except the many languages and computer science-- children learn to program in Germany? That's amazing.
I don't think the average high school-educated American is a drooling retard (contrary to popular belief...), but the onerous General Education requirements of bachelor's degrees provide additional breadth of knowledge.
Learning multiple languages is a necessity in Europe, it's handled similarly in the surrounding countries.
> and computer science-- children learn to program in Germany?
The basic courses don't get further than Excel macros, but in the extended courses it's fairly solid (data structures, algorithms, multithreading even back before multi core CPUs were a thing, …).
> but the onerous General Education requirements of bachelor's degrees provide additional breadth of knowledge.
That seems to be the difference, then. Our bachelor degrees are already limited to domain-specific knowledge; you're supposed to do several degrees if you want to further broaden your horizon (arguably not entirely unreasonable if it's free).
Computer science education seems to vary a lot between high schools. It basically depends on how good your teacher is. (Each state also has an official curriculum.)
Having an university degree will soon be worthless ( not in our lifetimes ) but the revolution has already started. Online courses offer much better results for less money. In fact I think the best place you could be right now is : having a degree ( in which you didn't put all that much of an effort ) + work experience while you are studying + online courses from top universities.
Yes, there is a massive flow of incoming students, especially here in Berlin and in other large cities (Hamburg, Munich, Cologne). But after graduation, exactly those cities do not offer great job opportunities. What makes our economic system strong are the many small to medium entreprises, often family businesses. And those are seldomly in the nice urban areas but mostly in the southern countryside.
So you will see many highly qualified graduates working as waiters or in startups who pay little to nothing - so they can stay in posh Berlin.
At the same time companies in the countryside have a very, very hard time to get employees.
Apart from that spatial problem, there is one huge drawback: the language. Most of the study programs are still solely taught in German. And the requirements are tough!
I had some classes in English and it was totally weird, as there were never more than 2 students who were not German natives. Quality dropped as well, when you're discussing German philosophy in English, obviously.
This is an interesting contrast to the US. Germany educates foreigners for free because they want them to stay. In the US it is very hard for someone to stay after going through a publicly funded PhD program. Other than exporting our culture I am not sure what the goal could be.
You can study at METU / Turkey. It is one of the best 100 universities in the world. Very cheap compared to the USA. And it is a state university, founded with the help of the USA during the cold war. http://www.metu.edu.tr/announcement/odtu-among-top-100-unive...
Less than €550 per semester for foreign students (if you are Turkic it is cheaper (might be free), or if you are Turkic country citizen, or if you have graduated from a Turkish high-school in a foreign country etc). http://oidb.metu.edu.tr/en/tuition-fee-amounts
I've been at METU for Erasmus. It was fun and I recommend it!
But do not go for the academic quality. The best courses were just on par with the average course I had at a no-name German university. I don't know how they came up with the top 100 ranking---perhaps it's based on research?
For the academic quality, I don't know foreign universities thus I cannot compare them. But at least I can say that almost all teachers are professors and most of them are idealist. And in order to be an academic member at METU you must get at least one degree (B.S or masters etc) abroad. My teachers were not best teachers but at least they were very knowledgeable at their fields. It is not the best of course, however other Turkish universities are worse than METU. For the teaching quality, I have wished it to be better. May be METU is good for forcing you to study very much in detail, but it is not providing easy to study material and easy to understand teachers.
The best teacher I had at METU was an older professor teaching (mathematical) combinatorics. Contrary to regulations at the university, he lectured in Turkish---but appointed a translator for me.
I am doing a PhD here in Germany and I absolutely love it. It's completely free (except for the 300 euro fee per semester, but that includes the UBahn ticket which is like 200 of the 300 fee and is worth it) and I actually get paid really, really well. Plus PhDs are only 3 years and I don't have to deal with TAing and can just research. And because I am a student, I don't have pay taxes because my salary is considered a "stipendium" or whatever. It's quite nice. And where I am living, Frankfurt, which is apparently very expensive, is still cheap to me.
But, as others have said in this thread, there are drawbacks, which have been addressed. But that's true of anything anywhere.
So overall I highly recommend Germany for studies. Plus German is just a cool language to know as well.
As far as I know this has been mostly about boosting "diversity" quotas at German Universities in order to perform better in international rankings. Previously this had been done by rising the amount of students coming from low-income regions (e.g. ex-Russian territory, Asia), so it is certainly a welcome change to see US students making use of that system.
In regards to the ranking - one of the most important rankings for international Universities is the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Methodology section:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-ranki...this factor is measured by the ratio of international to domestic students and is worth 2.5 per cent of the overall score.
German Universities have a big issue about ranking performances, case and point giving certain Universities a Government issued "elite" title.
Other European countries are similiar, e.g., Austria
€ 726,72 per semester for students outside the EU, for EU citizen its free, as long as they are in minimum time
...and Germany gets the better side of this deal. Unless you overinflate fees and run your education system like a business educating people is a net benefit.
The four years I took for my bachelor were the only four years with study-fees in Germany. So I paid more for my degree than the Americans who study here now.
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 Stanford or MiT just gives you so many connections and makes you able to experiment beyond your regular coursework. Just like someone said on a post here a while ago, the difference between you and your friend who studied at Duke is that Tim Cook is just a phone call away because they walked to class together every morning.
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.
Here in Italy there's not even an admission process. You just sign up basically. This leads to a definite decrease in the quality level of teaching, around 80% of my class failed discrete mathematics and calculus and that's with a very short curriculum and fairly easy exams. Professors then have to slow down because no one is following and it just gets worse.
You can't compare a random Italian university with Stanford and MIT. There are extremely selective schools in Europe too. In Italy, if I'm not mistaken, the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa is quite reputable.
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 (<€300 for most universities) that is mostly used to fund the student council (e.g. services like cafés and various co-operations, like student tickets for regional public transit), but that already existed before.
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.
I based this on the rules in the countries that I investigated some time ago (among them Sweden and Denmark), according to your link they seem to be the only ones to charge such high fees for non-residents. Thanks for the correction.
If the Germans have any sense, they will lift a fee from U.S. students. Taxpayers won't appreciate having their money thrown away just so that aliens can have a free ride.
Calling someone xenophobic because they would be unwilling to give away for free what is worth money everywhere else to people who didn't contribute to what they're taking, comes across as quite self-serving.
Germans are not so obsessed about not paying taxes like e.g. Americans or Swiss. Nobody likes to pay taxes and everybody complains about the high taxes. But I think (actually hope!) that Germans understand (if only unconsciously) that happiness is much more depending on getting old without fear of poverty, knowing to be treated if ill, being able to go safely outside anytime anywhere, not dropping out of society if bad luck happens and getting proper education than on the single only monetary principle "I don't pay taxes!".
I'm German and I'm happy to pay taxes. You do get something for everyone in return (infrastructure, education, some social security (which has been eroded, unfortunately), health care, etc).
Also, I studied in the UK and my tuition fees have been payed by the UK government. So it seems only fair to invite others to study in Germany.
I think that this is the crux of it. In my experience in the U.S., my taxes are funding things that I not only get no benefit from, but actively oppose on a moral level. That makes it a much harder thing to accept.
Also, you could argue that it is a good investment to have high educated foreigners receive their education in your country: it's like extending your business network on a nation-wide level.
Yes, it is like that if you only charge for your model of business expansion is to charge for your product in your own town and give it away for free everywhere else.
If Germany is like other European countries, it also helps that your taxes are "automatically paid" to the government, usually by having the employer take them out of your salary and paying them. It's not like in US where Americans feel every dollar going to the government when they do their taxes. Since they are paid automatically, the income taxes aren't even on people's minds, usually.
However, if Europeans had to do their own taxes for their salaries, I'm sure many more would be upset about high taxes.
Even if your tax is paid automatically you can still recover taxes but it is hard and the laws are confusing. In Germany a special profession with a state exam (Steuerberater) as well as special associations (Lohnsteuerhilfeverein) exist or have been created to help individuals. For self-employed or people interested in recovering part of their taxes using those services is almost unavoidable.
In the US they take money out of your paycheck too. The only difference is once a year we "settle up" for the previous calendar year. You pay more if you're short and get some back if you overpaid.
There must be a similar process in Germany for people who aren't 9-5 types.
Anyone on a W-2 does have their taxes taken out automatically. That's what the whole purpose of filling out a W-4 prior to starting employment. Many people overpay in taxes and end up getting a substantial refund at the beginning of each year. How do Americans feel every dollar going to the government in this case?
Federal and state taxes are automatically withheld in the USA. Filing a return is usually an attempt to get some refunded, or in my case, getting screwed even more and writing a check. You can even be lucky enough to pay estimated taxes every quarter.
Germans are not so obsessed about not paying taxes like e.g. Americans or Swiss.
How do the Swiss fit in to this? Actually the tax honesty is considered a lot higher than in Germany (let alone South European countries).
The reason for this being that the tax declaration is fairly straight forward and simple. Fairness of the (progressive) tax code is quite widely recognized, which makes for good - if not happy - tax payers.
If you're implying that evading taxes is something like a Swiss hobby and legal (bullshit I see quite often spouted by even reputable American papers) this is absolute rubbish. Tax evasion is not legal in any way, shape or form.
So my question stands: Where do the Swiss come into your equation?
Where did you get the idea that Swiss are obsessed with not paying taxes ? In fact Switzerland and Germany are very similar in all the aspects you mention.
I agrree. Being German, it's my impression that the Swiss are even more honest with taxes than the Germans. The general impression in many countries rather is: The Swiss are very honest with their taxes, but don't care about tax honesty about foreigners in their own countries (getting people to be honest about their taxes is a problem that each country has to solve by itself). This is different from the German mentality - also rather honest, but very missionary about tax honesty in other countries (especially the Greek seem to have a serious problem with this ;-) ). As one says humorously in German "Am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen." (freely translated with "The world shall recover by the German quiddity.").
Amazingly enough in most places with sharply progressive tax codes the people who actually have to pay the taxes are a lot less thrilled with the status quo than everyone else. Though they are certainly willing to pay lip service to its benefits.
Well, okay, you've made the standard argument for a social democracy. It's sort of irrelevant to the question of whether or not you should provide services to citizens of other countries.
If your argument is Germans pay their taxes and don't care how the money gets spent I have to say I'm a bit skeptical.
I don't think it is free for foreigners. It is just that those fees you have to pay (maybe a few hundred Euros per term[0]) are nothing compared to what it costs to attend an US university.
However, since more and more Germans want to go to uni some fields of study are jammed with students in recent years. This in turn means that the quality of education goes down (for example: not enough capacities for tutors and not enough actual seats for students) So from that perspective it doesn't make sense for German taxpayers. If capacities are already stressed getting more students doesn't help.
On a more human level it is probably beneficial when Germans and Americans form more friendships and thus learn to understand eachothers views of the world.
---
[0]"Although you can study in Germany for free at public institutions as an undergraduate, there is a charge per semester for enrolment, confirmation and administration – usually between €150 and €250 (US$170-280) depending on the university. There may be an additional charge of around €100 for a “Semesterticket”, which covers public transport expenses for six months. If you exceed the standard period of study by more than four semesters, you may also face a long-term fee charge, which could be as much as €800 (US$920) per semester." www.topuniversities.com/.../how-much-does-it-cost-study-germany
All of these fees combined are peanuts compared to the cost of attending any U.S. public university (I'm most familiar with UMaine and UNH, which is $10-15k, and around $30k for non-state residents, in tuition). Private colleges are often on the order of $35-50k for tuition.
It's really outrageous. 35 years ago when my parents were in college, they could make enough money doing typical college-kid jobs (waiting tables, working summers, the same sort of things college students do now), to support themselves AND pay their tuition. I'm a software developer, working full-time, and I don't clear enough money after taxes in a year to pay for a year of tuition at the college I graduated from, unless I were going to be living in a van down by the river and surviving on free pizza provided by student groups.
The question is how could that expensive US education could possibly make sense for americans?
In Europe,in most countries, education is virtually free, just look at the cost of law school or med school in France or Belgium for instance. It's what $500 dollars a year at most?
Of course there are plenty of private schools in Europe, but even these are usually half the cost of American ones.
I graduated in computer science, in France. 4 years of college education cost me, what, 1000$ at most?
Now sure, I pay a LOT of taxes. But I know at least some of it goes into education and allow other student like I was to afford a good education. Having stayed in US for a while, while salaries seemed higher I don't think the cost of life is cheaper than in western Europe.
In the 1960's, tuition & fees at a UC school was less than $2000 (2015 dollars) per year. In the 1950's, it was less than $750 per year.[1][2]
Today, tuition & fees at a UC will cost you $15,000 per year.
In order to completely pay for tuition and fees, the state of California would have to increase revenue $3 billion per year. Or increase tax revenues by just 3%.[1][3]
I, as a citizen, feel like our government's priorities have been absolutely abysmal since the 1980's. To me, this level of insanity transcends political ideology. It's just plain dumb not to fix this.
> Now sure, I pay a LOT of taxes. But I know at least some of it goes into education and allow other student like I was to afford a good education. Having stayed in US for a while, while salaries seemed higher I don't think the cost of life is cheaper than in western Europe.
Cost of living is lower in the US (as a whole) than Western European countries, and median household income adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) is quite a bit higher in the US.[4][5]
That doesn't make any of this sensible, though. Sure, I'd take lower taxes if Californian kids had to pay just a couple thousand more to college than French kids. But $14k more? Insanity. Raise my taxes please.
The thing is, PPP is only for things you have to actually buy. Where I live, salaries and PPP is lower than in the US where I lived before. But it's not that simple. Does PPP take into account that I got my 5 year education for free? Actually I received roughly $400/month to go to university. Which also means I don't need a college fund for my kids. Does it reflect that health care is free and I don't have to even think about it anymore? Does it reflect that I now have an actual pension, with 25% on top of my regular pay is paid into my future pension? Does it reflect that I now have 6 weeks vacation instead of 3? Does it reflect that if I have a child, I (as a father) can stay home with the baby for a year if I'd like? Does it reflect that daycare is heavily subsidised to the point I don't have to care about that either? Does it reflect that I don't have "at will" employment anymore, and can't just be let go in a day? Etc etc etc.
My point is, it's very difficult to compare the economic realities in different countries. There are whole categories of expenses that just do not exist in many western European countries. That said, I'm sure if you add everything up, Silicon Valley is the place to be for single, healthy, smart engineers. But that's a pretty narrow set of the population.
You'll actually find it's pretty complicated to measure earnings in Europe. In London you could happily be earning $200,000 - $300,000 with IT skills, avoid tax, keep 90% of that, and have the state benefits.
Simply stated, because of the high levels of tax and rife avoidance, it's probably quite difficult to quantify earnings in London, for example.
> In London you could happily be earning $200,000 - $300,000 with IT skills, avoid tax, keep 90% of that, and have the state benefits.
How? Which particular state benefits are you talking about?
(And it seems like you're talking about evasion - which is illegal, rather than avoidance which is a mix of normal tax planning (a contractor registering for VAT and claiming some of that back) and loophole-manipulation).
Contract for GOV.UK or finance, high end will see you those rates with 2 weeks holiday + the 8 bank holidays. Look for the word devops for example.
Health care is the obvious one. University has kinda jumped the shark though.
Trust schemes or defer forever, depending on your attitude to risk. I'm not saying said schemes should be used, just that it's popular and skews what people really earn.
You can opt out of the work hours regulations, but even if you don't as a contractor you will be running your own Ltd, so unless you're liable to sue yourself, you'll be fine with 2 weeks holiday which is comparable to the US. Of course you can take more, but as a contractor you get paid per day, so it'll affect your earnings.
Avoiding tax once you're not PAYE is pretty easy, there are loads of loopholes but the government sanctioned method is to take £40k per year at under 20% and leave the rest in the company. If you have a non-working spouce, this becomes £80000. You can also contrib, I believe, £40k to a pension, double again for your spouce and set yourself up for a super early retirement.
If you're open to more risk, there are loan based trust systems that'll get you access to your money a lot quicker. They're currently totally legal but the government does make a lot of noise about shutting them down.
Point being, earnings aren't reflective of wealth in the UK and you can do well here too as sadly, the well off have a lot more opportunities to legally avoid tax.
I completely agree. Any time you try to turn complex social systems into a simple number, things are necessarily lost in translation. The numbers represent simply what they represent, and nothing more.
> Sure, I'd take lower taxes if Californian kids had to pay just a couple thousand more to college than French kids. But $14k more? Insanity. Raise my taxes please.
Do the numbers really come out in favor of raising taxes? Another commenter gave the 3% required rate for the tax increase. Would a student actually be better off paying 3% extra taxes for the rest of his/her life, as opposed to paying 15k/year for only 4 years (I'm asking from a numbers perspective)?
The answer to this question depends on how these taxes are raised.
Currently, this tax is raised in the form of fees, due quarterly (or per semester) for the four (or more, or less) years of UC education consumed. Paid for by students and/or their families. Payment plans, subsidies, and loans may be available to pay this tax...
(I know I'm being a bit colorful, but I hope you catch my drift)
Those don't sound like "taxes" in the sense that they're paid by the entire population, they're just direct payments to the school and only paid by students and parents (those who directly benefit from the service of education).
What I am trying to say is that, from an individual perspective, it makes more sense to pay the $15k. If you're making $50k/year in income, 3% of that for the rest of your life (assuming you work for about 50 years) comes to about $60k, which is what 4x$15k is anyway. However, if your income is above that, you pay significantly more. The US median income in 2014 was $51939 (got this number from a quick Google search, might not be 100% accurate), so half the population would indeed pay a total sum larger than $60k with a 3% tax.
> According to the DAAD, half of foreign students getting a degree in Germany will stay. That's not just in the short term either — 40 percent of students plan on remaining for at least 10 years. In the U.S., only 12 percent of international students opt to stay for even one year
That probably makes financial sense. Of course, it doesn't scale, but for the number of people studying right now it's probably a net benefit.
Yeah. Right now the US offers its educational infrastructure to foreigners to study in, and then destroys most of the good will that this generates in the student by basically kicking them out after graduation. Not sure how this makes sense from either a business or a PR standpoint.
I'm wondering if creating per-state Visas would help this. States that want to be more open to foreigners could potentially fast-track such visas, but getting a full USA citizenship would require jumping through more hoops.
1. We have a 20% sales tax, income tax that is usually somewhere between 35%-45%... car taxes, highest energy costs in the world... just taxes everywhere.
2. The overall mindset here is much less libertarian and much more "let the Goverment handle it".
3. Smart brains are needed for the local economy to stay competitive.
4. Another thing to keep in mind: the actual cost for a student isn't really that much money. There are no million dollar sports teams, luxury gyms, technical equipment usually just isn't on the same level...
They'll make it back with the increased business. You're having a large number of people come to Germany, make friendships, and learn the language. Some will stay. Some will do business with German companies even when they move back to the US.
Also, the program is selective, which means that you're hopefully only grabbing decent people and not riffraff. This further maximizes your return.
Beside what was already said, one needs to consider that German universities have a much lower expense per student. This is because the universities have a chronic lack of money. This means that little is invested into 'feel good' facilities e.g. university run Gyms / extensive libraries. From my experience they offer little that is not essential to studying, but this doesn't keep them from providing a great education.
Thats a funny distinction. Competitive sports are not centralized at universities, but of course they exist all the same.
What you are saying is that if you want to do competitive sports, you won't get a degree in history of business or other feign courses pros take in the US university sports system.
>Germany wants these international students here, even though their taxpayers foot the bill.
>“Germany is not a country that's growing,” Malone says. “Its population is not growing. They need people, they need immigrants. They want to be a migration country.”
>Think about it this way: it’s a global game of collecting talent. All of these students are the trading cards, and the collectors are countries. If a country collects more talent, they'll have an influx of new ideas, new businesses and a better economy.
I completely get the premise of drawing talent. I don't agree with the concerns over population numbers itself. You see this fear from Japan, Germany, and much of Europe.
Entering into an age that will be dominated by robotics, greater general automation, artificial intelligence, etc., having more people across the board will not be a net benefit. Germany is worrying about this at exactly the wrong time.
Germany has vastly expanded their economy since 1970, while adding zero additional people. They'll be able to do exactly the same thing over the next 40 years by leveraging the incredible productivity gains that are inbound right now. No population growth is necessary or desirable; if Germany holds its population steady, and increases economic output through greater productivity, they'll greatly improve the odds that the median standard of living will increase in line.
The intention in germany is much more to try to keep the population stable (it is currently decreasing). The current development is somewhat frightening regard the german pension insurance system.
True. There is big discussion on how to pay benefits in the future and how to stay competitive in global markets. To me the only way to solve this two problems is to attract smart people from foreign countries.
It doesn't require the same level of commitment from them - giving people money to become citizens would likely result in a lot of new German citizens that live outside Germany and have your money. If you want to require them to stay in Germany, now you have to set up a new area of regulations and enforcement and so on and people will be less interested because you are 'trapping' them. If you give them an education instead, you are de facto requiring them to commit several years to living in Germany, and hopefully building ties to the country that make them want to stay after they get the free education - and you didn't have to set up any kind of new rules to handle them.
Or even just drastically lower visa requirements. But, you have to do what's politically feasible. Students are amongst the most accepted foreigners in German society.
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.
When I started at Imperial College London in 2004, about 30% of the students in my class were from China, Taiwan or similar. Many wanted to work in the US, some had applied to US universities. By the time we graduated, after having lived here and with the US tightening its immigration policies, most took jobs in the UK.
That was with £17,000+/year fees (for non-EU students), so they were super-rich and also clever. If studying at Cologne is free for them, and in English, that will attract potential students away from Britain.
I paid about £1000 year, like all British students, but I'd definitely consider Germany if I was 17 now. Fees for British students have increased to ~£9000/year! My workplace has a very international staff, all bilingual staff's teenage children are pretty much guaranteed to study elsewhere in the EU, with others considering it.
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 below 1%
To be fair, it's impossible to get anything close to resembling the NRW Ticket (flat fee for unlimited use of regional public transit in all of North-Rhine Westphalia) as a non-student.
The closest equivalents are either offered by the local public transit unions (which are limited to the region covered by that public transit union, of which there are a ton in NRW) or the BahnCard 100 (which covers all of Germany -- but not necessarily all local public transit -- and is ridiculously expensive).
I would gladly pay more taxes if it meant attracting intellectual and ambitious (and you have to be both to explore this kind of opportunity — also, I suspect that you have to pass some exams, right?) people from other countries.
Well consider the alternative: only rich people could get a higher education otherwise. IIRC this is what happens in the US too (parents having to save for their kids' college education, assuming they actually have money left after paying the bills), which leads to reduced mobility (the poor stay poor)
>Well consider the alternative: only rich people could get a higher education otherwise.
No, that's not the alternative at all. The alternative would be to have people from other countries pay their own way and provide free education to your own citizens.
But you want your country doing it for your countrymen? If yes, why do you care about helping some people who were born inside some invisible line more than others? (If not, that's at least not nationalistic..)
I thought it was obvious that there are still going to be fees, but that in comparison to the tens of thousands americans pay in tuition, it's basically free.
To be fair, to a German the tens of thousands Americans pay sound preposterous. The only way we (Germans) rationalize the higher costs in the US is that the quality of education is better -- which doesn't seem to be the case for the majority of universities.
Quite frankly, Germany is eating the US' lunch when it comes to advanced Computer Vision research and applications. My guess is that it's because of things like this.
So, that is a tough thing for us when recruiting because they have so many easier options over there instead of working, even remote, for people in the US.
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 rudimentary level. Of course you won't have any problems getting around just on English in places like Berlin or Heidelberg, but this effect does not generalize across the board.
So the biggest problem I see with moving to English within the German higher education system is that it creates the illusion that you don't really need to speak German to live in that country. But at the university, you live inside a bubble: some of my coworkers have come here from other countries five or more years ago, and still speak hardly any German. And that's fine because the working language in our department is de facto English. There are even German classes that the university offers and that some of my coworkers took, but since they never really needed it inside the bubble, their success at learning German has remained rather humble.
Now, one of my coworker wants to move on from academia and has been looking for jobs -- IT-related, that is. He's (over?)-specialized (with his PhD almost finished) in a specific area (speech signal analysis), but basically speaks no German. He's having a really hard time getting any reactions at all to his job applications. Most of the time, the companies do not even send rejection notes. I've been helping him a little bit with this, and given his credentials, I really find it difficult to understand why he cannot even get to the interview stage -- except for his lack of German.
The big problem is: if he cannot find something very soon, his visa will expire and he will be forced to leave the country. He's got a wife and two young daughters, the younger one of which was 2 years old when the family came to Germany. She's now 7 -- Germany is the country she grew up in, and she might be forced to leave it soon and move to the country of her father. Ironically, she doesn't even speak her parents' language perfectly.
So, there is a caveat when studying in Germany if your goal is to start a life here afterwards. Language matters.
What I cannot understand at all in this matter, though, is that by offering university courses in English and not requiring students to acquire very good German skills as well, Germany is basically investing a lot of (tax) money in the education of people who are more or less guaranteed to leave again when they're done with their studies.
The return of investment is thus pretty low... you could say, almost non-existent.
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.
> 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.
Denmark has gone to the next level and even this is largely in English now too, which makes it even harder / less motivating for foreigners to learn Danish. Most government websites are dual-language, and every civil-service employee speaks English. Many state agencies (and banks, pension funds, unions, etc.) now also give recipients an option of Danish or English for receiving official communications, and some actually default to English if you're registered as a non-Danish national, so you'd have to specifically request Danish if you wanted it.
