Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Achtung!

Ach. I don't even know where to start.
Possibly, this works as an opinion piece highlighting all the things that are wrong (and getting worse) about higher education in the US. I have followed the Ivy League thread with fascination and even downloaded an older version of the insiders guide to my kindle because I wanted to find out more about the current developments. I have a number of friends in the US, visited them at their colleges when I was a student and even then was struck with the (for a European) insane amount of resources that appeared to flow into dorms, landscaping, historical buildings, all you can eat dining halls and rec centers.
However, switching to a continental Europe model would exchange one set of problems for a completely different set of problems. But it's not true that one system isn't " better, just different". For a gifted kid, I'd say that a Yale or a Pomona or Caltech education, according to fit, is paradise. PARADISE, compared to what a continental European uni can offer you. I'd like to send off my little guy to Caltech right now, he'd be in seventh heaven! (Me, personally, in my next life, I'd try for Yale. My stomach muscles are clenching in jealousy even as I think it.)

But for an above average kid, maybe with a tech bent, or for a humanities kid who'd like to be a teacher, with parents who can't afford fees or a nice apartment in a place like Munich or Heidelberg, getting a free education at any state school they can commute to or find a cheap dorm room at, while getting a grant for living expenses, maybe a few hours in an off campus job per week? You need independence and stamina, there will be no advising, hand holding or even recognition from a lot of your professors (some smaller universities and some smaller subjects are a bit better) but you will gain a degree without a smidgen of debt, and have excellent job prospects.
Why would this be of interest to any American student? Getting a degree from a German anyU no one's ever heard of in the US, having had to learn a foreign language so you can actually take part in higher education, find a place to live, having the hassle of visas, not being allowed to work legally, not having the support system of a family which in many cases their German counterparts still live with, or at least travel home to every or every other weekend to see their old friends and drop off the laundry? Not that their German counterparts are in any way less independent for doing so, having been out and about on the town since they were preteens, traveling around town, including urban centers, by bike, bus or train, being allowed to drink, hang out in bars and cafés, enter clubs and stay out till midnight from age 16 onwards... Most of them don't mind the lack of advise, of intellectual challenge, of engagement by professors, of attendance requirements, of name recognition by professors, preferring to just skip or drop their classes whenever they feel like it. Universities are there for certification. As long as there are dining halls, cafés and libraries for them to use (and those are plentiful and mostly well run or stocked) they would not want universities to concern themselves in any way with their academic progress, their housing, their meal plans, their health, their extracurriculars or their welfare. There are places where you can go for help with all of this, but you have to seek them out.

For a kid like me? I found the lack of intellectual or even human curiosity from both sides in the classroom and from admins, the open disdain many of the professors and administrative staff showed towards the masses of students, the lack of commitment and intellectual engagement nothing but depressing. I had plenty of friends, hung at out cafés, dorm parties, uni parties, even worked at the library and took exams, but still felt alienated, stifled, never challenged intellectually, but overwhelmed with all the organization you had to take care of yourself. I started seeking advise about either adding a humanities major to my preprofessional major, or pursuing my dream of going abroad to Oxford or Cambridge, and also needed to organize special oral exams (yes I had to organize them myself too) with my professors in order to comply with the requirements for my merit scholarship and was even more depressed by how I was blown off by academic and administrative staff alike. It took an incredible amount of energy and stamina to plow ahead and try to get answers to my questions from people who wanted nothing more than getting me out their offices, letting me know that what I wanted was an imposition, ridiculous, or delusional, but I was tenacious. And then this odd thing happened. Worn down, some of these people happened to ask me for my stats. Or what kind of scholarship exactly I was talking about. Then: "Ah." Pause. "Hmmm. Well...I see." After which I actually got a proper consultation. One staff member went so far as to tell me that she could understand that I was completely bored, but that I would not find the level of challenge I wanted even with a double major, nor any recognition of it, just more hassle. She advised me to focus on getting the kind of transcript to get me off to England. Which is what I did, and finally found my peeps.
The thing that I have taken away from my decades long research into education (not any kind of structured or institutional research - all private reading, because I crave the understanding) is that it is the people surrounding you that count, the teachers and the students both, from preschool all the way up to grad school. And that there is no way you can find an intellectual community like the one highly selective institutions offer in the UK or the US at a continental European state school (French grandes Ecoles being one remarkable exception I know of). These universities in Germany used to have zones. Catchment areas, like elementary schools. In order to get into Munich or Heidelberg you did not need to have impressive stats let alone extracurriculars, you needed to live there! And as long as you had a leaving certificate from a selective high school (still less than 50 % of the age cohort, and only 25% with full choice of institution or subject) and as long as there was space, they had to admit you. Now there are quotas for people with the best GPAs, for people who interview, for people who take subject tests, and mark this, for people you have waited long enough. There is a place at med school guaranteed for people who are prepared to do something out of university for 5 years, even if they have a D average. For these are public institutions and they cannot keep people with D averages out forever, by law. And while you need perfect stats these days to enter med school right away, and certainly to enter other competitive subjects at popular places like Munich or Heidelberg, it's all about capacity. In many stem subjects, in many places, they have to take anyone they can get in order to fill their departments.

I do think the price tag on private institutions in the US below the second or maybe even the first tier is extortionate. But there are flagship state schools that still serve the kids who would go there much better than any public university in Germany would, even a free one.