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Comment by jakobegger | Hacker News Reader

A bit of background: in Austria, many people do an "Apprenticeship" ("Lehre") instead of going to high school. You work at a company and visit a vocational school (about 20% of time).

This is great for practical people -- less theory, more real world experience. But there is a major downside: If you didn't go to high school, you are not allowed to go to university without first completing preparatory courses that can take years.

There is also an upside: If you've worked for at least 4 years, and are under 30 years old, you automatically qualify for "Selbsterhalterstipendium", which is around 700€ per month to cover your cost of living while studying at university (you don't have to pay this back, and there also is no tuition)

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Thank you jakobegger to add those additional information. May I should also mention that the study fee was only about EUR 360 per semester, so no student debt.

Same in the Netherlands. It's changing, but when I went to "high school" (age of ~12) you could go to a vocational school to become e.g. carpenter, electrician, etc. When you are 16 you are set to get into that profession. You will still attend school until 18, 1 day a week. You can also level up and go to a higher level vocational school all the way up to university.

Changing how? And why?

The German style vocational track that effectively locked you out of going to university later was ruled illegal by the EU so those systems had to change.

I did an apprenticeship in high school, Georgia has an official program.

I got to leave school early, work the internship I had already found, develop professional skills, and get paid. The only requirements for the program (for school credit) were to log hours and write a few essays.

My high school in Massachusetts had a school to work program too. I left school early to go bag groceries at my local supermarket...

> (you don't have to pay this back, and there also is no tuition)

You likely pay taxes....

No qualitative judgment here, except against a view that conflates "no explicit costs" with "no costs".

Of course, maybe the economy as a whole does better if workers can easily retrain, which would be a net gain for the tax base, so it's not really as clear as that. Explicit tax costs aren't the same as actual costs. ;)

For instance, if a worker loses their job and wants to retrain, one policy (that of the united states) forces them at the worst possible time to take on additional debt, and one (that of austria) socializes the cost so they can more easily find work in the future. I'm not an economist, so I don't know the actual effects, but I wouldn't be surprised if the austrian approach would help US rural manufacturing communities a lot to our collective benefit.

Again, I made no qualitative statement about whether the system is good or bad. I merely pointed out that there are costs.

You are arguing that the costs are worth it. Great. I don't want to have that conversation online again. You have acknowledged that there are costs. We are in agreement.

I understand, but I don't think anyone would deny that, there are costs everywhere. The more useful discussion is to understand the balance of costs and benefits, but I accept that you're tired of having the same conversation over and over again.

Did you see the quote from the parent to my original comment?

I'll pull it out again: "you don't have to pay this back, and also there is no tuition"

That's all I'm responding to.

Sounds like along with Germans, Austrians have the right idea of pushing alternatives to four-year colleges.

When I went to "high school" in Sweden in the 90's, you could choose between a few theoretical, three-year, "college-prep" programmes, or a multitude of vocational programmes that would pretty much land you a job straight out.

But in the 2000's sometime, our glorious politicians decided that it was "unfair" that students who chose the vocational programmes couldn't go straight to university, so they were all changed, a lot more theoretical subjects were added, such that everyone would be eligible for college.

Naturally, a complete disaster, because the kids who previously chose vocational programmes because they were really tired of school and wanted to do something else, didn't do well in the new programmes and started flunking out en-masse instead.

I hear there's talk of going back to the old model again, but that's a decade or two "lost", because of political short-sightedness.

Yes, it's better to get your population college-educated than not, but you can't force people to do it. If people want to quit studying after elementary or high-school, let them! And if they want to go back to school after a few years, take them in again!

I see the same across the pond in Finland. I was myself fitting very well to a theoretical elementary school but I could see how other people were totally frustrated by being fed with theoretical subjects (including that mandatory Swedish :) and not having practical training for things wehere they were really good at.

Not everyone can go to college, and not everyone needs to. Having a well-educated population is different from having a lot of college degrees. Alas, many politicians see it as "equality" that everyone's pushed with college-type qualifications. The only possible result is that it just lowers the bar and gives us more drop-outs and frustrated people.

But are these craft "Apprenticeships" is there an associate professional track which is what developers are

At least in germany there is " Fachinformatiker Anwendungsentwicklung (software development)" where you geht taught programming.

> (you don't have to pay this back, and there also is no tuition)

You have to pay it back, if you fail in your courses.

That's only true for the first year, and only if you fail badly (ie. stop doing any work at all) -- unless they changed it very recently.

> Daraus ergeben sich auch die zwei wesentlichen Anspruchsvoraussetzungen, die „soziale Förderungswürdigkeit“ und das Vorliegen eines „günstigen Studienerfolges“.

That's from their page, for me this looks like you have to pay it back if you, for example got bad grades, in fact I can ensure you, that the limit is 50%, if you screw up in more than 50% of your courses, you are done.

As far as I can remember I had to finish my studies in a certain time frame, I think plus max 1-2 semesters (günstiger Studienerfolg). Not finishing on time would have ended the scholarship. And in terms of "soziale Förderungswürdigkeit" I think a was only allowed to earn a certain amount of money on top of that scholarship. If I had earned too much I think I would have had to pay it back (or parts of out) for the current year. But long time ago, I had an appointment with the "Studienberatung" in Klagenfurt who answered all my questions, fantastic service!

There is a difference between paying back and continue receiving the stipend.

In general, you need to complete around 50% of your courses to continue receiving the stipend next year, but you only need to pay it back if you drop out in the first year and have completed less than 25% of the courses. (Exact numbers depend on the type of program you attend)

Details are here: https://www.stipendium.at/studienfoerderung/studienbeihilfe/... https://www.stipendium.at/studienfoerderung/studienbeihilfe/...

Oh alright thanks for the info !

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