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How American Students Can Get a University Degree For Free In Germany
HughPickens.com writes: BBC reports that Germany has abandoned tuition fees altogether for German and international students alike and more than 4,600 US students are fully enrolled at Germany universities, an increase of 20% over three years. "When I found out that just like Germans I'm studying for free, it was sort of mind blowing," says Katherine Burlingame who decided to get her Master's degree at a university in the East German town of Cottbus. "I realized how easy the admission process was and how there was no tuition fee. This was a wow moment for me." When Katherine came to Germany in 2012 she spoke two words of German: 'hallo' and 'danke'. She arrived in an East German town which had, since the 1950s, taught the majority of its residents Russian rather than English. "At first I was just doing hand gestures and a lot of people had compassion because they saw that I was trying and that I cared." She did not need German, however, in her Master's program, which was filled with students from 50 different countries but taught entirely in English. In fact, German universities have drastically increased all-English classes to more than 1,150 programs across many fields.
So how can Germany afford to educate foreign students for free? 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. For a society with a demographic problem — a growing retired population and fewer young people entering college and the workforce — qualified immigration is seen as a resolution to the problem as research shows that 50% of foreign students stay in Germany. "Keeping international students who have studied in the country is the ideal way of immigration," says Sebastian Fohrbeck."They have the needed certificates, they don't have a language problem at the end of their stay and they know the culture."
So how can Germany afford to educate foreign students for free? 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. For a society with a demographic problem — a growing retired population and fewer young people entering college and the workforce — qualified immigration is seen as a resolution to the problem as research shows that 50% of foreign students stay in Germany. "Keeping international students who have studied in the country is the ideal way of immigration," says Sebastian Fohrbeck."They have the needed certificates, they don't have a language problem at the end of their stay and they know the culture."
University is pretty cheap in almost all Europe. Most countries have tuitions of about 1000$ per year, which include administrative costs. More than a few countries offer completely free university to EU citizens and Finland offers free university to non-EU citizens too.
US: Go to school and get buried in student loans only to have your job offshored and you're stuck with the loans until you die. Cannot get a job or underemployed where you have no chance of paying them off? Fuck you pay me - you entitled peon! You owe corporate America because of ... something!
Germany: Go for free because business and government understand that they are all in it with you and what's good for you is good for them.
Huh. How about that?
And yet, Germany has the biggest economy in Europe, a massive trade surplus, and has a heavy focus on technology and manufacturing.
Maybe the Germans have collectively decided that the cost of the education is trivial compared to the long term gains of keeping some highly educated people around, or having its own citizens be educated.
Maybe, gasp, it's possible to both make profits and take care of your people -- and that it isn't an either/or proposition.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Getting an education in the US is waay different to Germany.
Firstly, education in the US is one of the most expensive in the world. So foreigners that study in the US generally are relatively rich (or from rich families) to start with, and paying A LOT more than it would cost them to live in their own country to be there.
>> not Everyone moves out of the US after studying here...but they're not forced to.
They pretty much are. To study in the US you need a student visa which expires after you graduate or flunk out. If you stay outside of that, without having an something like an H1B or a green card you're illegal. simple. And those are not so easy/quick to get.
Also except for some very specific cases to do with training related to study, a student visa does not entitle you to work either.
Your terrible argument assumes a simple "dollars out, dollars in" model.
In theory, it's possible that educating everyone increases the wealth of everyone involved by an amount greater than the taxes paid out to cover education over the course of their working lifetime.
Wow, articles about nonsense, because americans can not believe that "not being 100% capitalistic" is not the same as being socialistic or communistic.
Look at this, an extract from the german constitution:
(1) Alle Menschen sind vor dem Gesetz gleich.
(2) MÃnner und Frauen sind gleichberechtigt. Der Staat fÃrdert die tatsÃchliche Durchsetzung der Gleichberechtigung von Frauen und MÃnnern und wirkt auf die Beseitigung bestehender Nachteile hin.
(3) Niemand darf wegen seines Geschlechtes, seiner Abstammung, seiner Rasse, seiner Sprache, seiner Heimat und Herkunft, seines Glaubens, seiner religiÃsen oder politischen Anschauungen benachteiligt oder bevorzugt werden. Niemand darf wegen seiner Behinderung benachteiligt werden.
Relevant is (3) so I translate:
No one may be disadvantaged or favoured because of his gender, ancestry, race, language, motherland, land of origin, faith/religion, religious or political "ideology". [...]
There is simply no way for a university to charge a foreign student for a service a german student is not charged for. The only way would be to introduce some complex legislation e.g. requiring that a student had done a social service or military service and balancing that for foreign students with payments.
That said, ofc it was possible - and likely still is - to charge everyone after the tenth semester a fee for not finishing his studies in time. Here now you could invent "laws" how to get exempt from that obligation and make the way of getting that exempt so complicated that foreigners have difficulties to get approved.
Anyway. We also have private universities, that charge fees. Regardless if you are german or a foreigner.
We had cost free universities till roughly 2000, then they suddenly changed a lot, now they are changing back.
The treatment for foreigners was always the same as for germans. Not surprising: 90% of the foreigners are foreigners from other EU countries.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Drinking beer and wine (unsupervised) is legal in most of Europe for kids aged 16 and above.
Supervised by parents AFAIK it is 14 (in germany). However no one really cares if the kids are younger in the presence of their parents.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"Free". You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. They pay out the ass in taxes for that "free" education and over the course of their career, they'll pay more money than if they just took out loans and paid for it themselves. But sure, keep using the word "free" for things paid for via taxes.
Yes, it is free.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...
Research shows that the system is working, says Sebastian Fohrbeck of DAAD, and that 50% of foreign students stay in Germany.
"Even if people don't pay tuition fees, if only 40% stay for five years and pay taxes we recover the cost for the tuition and for the study places so that works out well."
It's free to the student because he didn't pay anything.
It's free to the government because they got paid back from it more than they put in.
It's free because when you invest money, and get more out of it than you put in, it's free.
City College in New York City used to be free. CCNY turned out Nobel laureates and creators of industry like Andy Grove, founder of Intel. You can read the biographies on the Nobel prize web site of people who say that they never could have afforded to go to college if CCNY weren't free.
CCNY was a meritocracy. You got in because you made the grade. That's different from a free market, where you get in because your father is rich (like George W. Bush).
I don't think you know what the word "free" means. Most native speakers of English know what the word "free" means, because they are familiar with "free" education and "free" libraries, which is where a lot of them spent their childhood.
I think there must be a script going around to search message boards for the text "free", and post a reply, "It's not free! They pay for it in taxes!"
People in functioning democracies realize that there are some services that the government can provide more cheaply than the "free" market. Education is one of them. The market is always more expensive. You can pay $10,000 in taxes or $20,000 in the marketplace for a year of school. There is no developed country in the world that doesn't provide free education for its population.
In the presidential election, Bernie Sanders is the one candidate who says that college should be free (as it is in Europe), and that students should be able to discharge their current loans. Sanders went to Brooklyn College, which was free at that time (and graduated a few Nobel laureates too).
So if you want free college for yourself and your children, and you want to get rid of your college debts, vote for Bernie. If like Mitch Romney your father's rich, then vote for Hillary or the Repugnicans.
It's also possible that your father is rich, but you want to see free college education for everyone because it's right, or because it's good for the country.
Maybe you might want to add that the 45% income tax only applies to you if you already make more money than a sensible person can spend in a lifetime. But it's superficial little tidbits like these that you so conveniently forget to mention...
The main difference is maybe that anyone can start studying at a university, rich or poor, with your brains, not your pockets, dictating whether you get an education. But hey, why should those peons get that right? Down with competition from below!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Having experienced both systems, I would say that the academics were comparable. I think the choice of where to study depends on whom you want to meet and what kind of career you would like having afterwards. The U.S. is closer to a lot of the innovation in computer science, so if striking it rich at the next big thing in Silicon Valley is your ambition, you could probably get better contacts at an American University. Germany has a more traditional industrial economy, a lot like the U.S. was before about 1970. Germany designs, develops and makes a lot of their own stuff. Studying in Germany helped me gain a lot of invaluable contacts in the German "Mittelstand" or mid-sized industry. Germany is one of the few places that still combine product development and manufacturing under one roof and there are a lot of advantages to the 'old-school' way of doing business. It might not be as sleek as "designed in California, made in China" but it's the best way to ensure consistant quality, especially in more complex, safety-critical industries.