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Tuition fees verboten

Excuse the comic book German...

While on the surface this article is about tuition-free colleges in Germany, when read in depth it highlights differences from the stereotypical U.S.A. college experience such as:
- applying to a specific program within the college,
- studies which are career-focused,
- few amenities on campus,
- serving a large population of commuter students.

The described German approach to higher education is similar to technical colleges in the U.S.A.

The article basically describes the way that universities function in most other places around the world.

Speaking as a graduate of two European universities (an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. cost me a total of something like $600), I'll take the European model over the American one any day. You may disparage the universities there as being like "technical colleges," but the education is outstanding. Students come from all over Europe, and live in flats near college. I lived that way for many years and was a lot better off without the frat parties.

To be honest, American students would learn a lot more if their universities focused more on academics and less on water parks and fancy dormitories.

In Australia we have both University and "technical college" style further education establishments. Neither involve living on campus, both involve applying directly for the course you wish to attend (whether that be a general degree such as a BA or BSc or something more specific such as engineering, law or nursing). Some university courses are not available for direct entry straight from high school at some institutions (for example some schools offer direct entry to a 6 year medical degree and others do it differently, I think I last heard of some places doing it as a 3-4 year degree after another degree). For most courses entry is based purely on your yr12 results, some courses require specific extra tests be completed (medicine for example has a specific entry test as well as year 12 results), some have portfolios and/or interviews... I am not aware of any courses requiring things like a list of extracurricular activities (my lack of awareness doesn't mean there aren't any but it's definitely not standard for the majority of courses), I find that idea completely bizarre.

The concept of extracurricular a is being mooted more and more for inclusion criteria as selection to NSW universities which I think is unfortunate but I am sure many in America might disagree. In NSW there are additional ways to get into Uni including points for rural and regional disadvantage or if you are an elite sportsman.

Increasingly Unis are moving away from the entry score calculated from your HSC marks at the end of year 12 either by offering early entry or other means of calculating entry You can actually use SATs or the Uni given STAT exam.

We had free education for a while but there was an article this morning positing that a medical degree will cost $250 000. I don't know if that was calculated on the undergraduate 5 or 6 year degree or the four year post graduate degree that requires at least an Initial three year degree for entry, so 7 years in total.

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.

Omg, sorry for the novel!
I guess there is some trauma left there. I wish I'd realized sooner what the problem actually was - not that I was inadequate for the institution, but that the institution was inadequate for me.

Tigerle, thank you so much for your post. Both of my children speak German and we pay to keep up their German, with the hope that they will be able to pass the IB in German (it is offered here, at minimal extra cost--they get the IB and then can pass the German exams privately).

Your personal experience is enlightening and helpful.

When I think of German schools for my children, I think of this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/u...olleges-we-dont.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

Note: With Norway, the US has one of the highest percentages of college-educated adults in the world. So we can't just say people don't go to college... they do.

But I also want a good experience full of intellectual curiosity for them. On the one hand, your experience is what it was and it's totally valid, for you. On the other hand, some of the best colleagues I've ever worked with were German and Swiss. I just can't get around their critical thinking, their curiosity, and their creativity. I don't care if they didn't paint themselves in kindergarten, really. They still somehow managed to become creating, inspiring individuals... who also happened to kick my butt at math.

My children may or may not go to college in the US or abroad.

But Germany was definitely one area we were looking at, particularly as we have family there.

As for the grandes ecoles, I knew some people who'd attended, but most of them were so full of themselves it was hard to tell what they actually knew--very aristocratic, ironically, but also appropriately. I never considered France for my children because of that attitude. (Please note these people comprised a tiny percentage of the number of French people with whom I've worked in my life. I actually like France. But the grandes ecoles, ugh.)

Anyway it will all be very interesting to see. Perhaps a highly motivated American who speaks fluent German will shine in Germany. Perhaps not.

Thank you for the link, that was very interesting and incidentally proves my point - the US having some excellent options for the top and extortion for the "masses", continental Europe offering solid options for the "masses" but lacking good options for the top. Note that the on-average better results for adults reflect solid preparation for the average to above average in secondary school - in Europe, people who are not in stem subjects never see a math class after high school, and vice versa for the humanities.

In Germany, so much depends on the subject and the level or self selection or over subscription creating the selectivity that higher education, as opposed to secondary education, does not provide. Many stem subjects, in many schools, provide an excellent education for the highly motivated and independent learner, and those are the only subjects I'd recommend for anyone from abroad. Preprofessional subjects such as business or law are industrial mass production, with rigour and challenge not created in the classroom but through final exams. (40 % fail rates after 4 to 5 years of law school). Humanities, with the mild exceptions of teacher certification in the south, are a moon bounce. I went to some classes when I thought of double majoring and was mortified to find that the level was lower than my high school classes.

For a highly gifted kid with a bent for the humanities and social sciences, there simply aren't any good places. A highly motivated and talented American student may shine, but it will be a lonely shining and no one will care.

"Preprofessional subjects such as business or law are industrial mass production, with rigour and challenge not created in the classroom but through final exams. (40 % fail rates after 4 to 5 years of law school)."

We have no business exam for the MBA--industrial mass production is the right word. As for the bar, the rates you cite are about twice those in the US for many states (I think it's 80 - 90% pass rate for first-timers).

"Note that the on-average better results for adults reflect solid preparation for the average to above average in secondary school - in Europe, people who are not in stem subjects never see a math class after high school, and vice versa for the humanities."

Well they only need one quant course in many colleges here to finish college--just up through calculus and that's it, if you're in the humanities, so that sounds familiar.

There are certainly pros and cons and you've highlighted many from a first-person perspective and I do appreciate that. Thank you!