Why Germany Educates International Students for Free | Hacker News Reader

Why Germany Educates International Students for Free

insidehighered.com

213 pointsimartin2k247 comments

My personal experience says, that it is not working out. I cannot tell for the whole country, but I do have some insights, since I am hiring and interviewing students and studied in one of the universities mentioned elsewhere in the thread. There is an English speaking Master program, consisting almost entirely of Pakistani and Indian students. Some facts about them:

- They are not required to learn German, so they speak very little to sometimes none at all. - They can only pick companies where speaking only English is tolerated. - Since they speak English, they tend to stick to themselves and cannot integrate. Some of them have a hard time even ordering food. - Indian Bachelor degrees are not comparable to German degrees. I have the feeling that there are some good universities, but others are nowhere near the German standard. Their skill levels are usually lower than these of their German counterparts. It makes sense: I have talked to people, who came from a small village and used a computer in their undergraduate course for the first time. - When you talk about their plans, it becomes clear, that they aimed for the US or the UK and took Germany only for the price and are often not planning to stay, but to take the next opportunity to board a plane to the US.

At the moment I do not think it makes any economical sense for Germany. I would do the following:

- mandatory German language courses - mandatory German language knowledge, even for English speaking courses - much stricter admission standards, individual tests instead of trusting non-EU standards - better integration with the labor market - maximum to the number of months you can stay in a dorm (already the case for German students) - initiatives to form German + foreign flat shares (primary way of living for students in Germany)

At the moment we are just sending the bad students back home and the good students to the US, after they got a free education here.

The local university close by reacted and increased the required GRE test scores to Ivy League level. The admissions dropped by an order of magnitude.

Germany is very social-democratic when it comes to education, so politicians avoid the word "elite", but when it comes to picking talent, you really should not. I think Germany should capitalize on the political climate in other countries and pick quality over quantity. A tax paid university should not be a third-world aid program.

This comment is so German on so many levels.

The reason those people aim for jobs in the UK or US is because there aren't good tech jobs in Germany. Arguing for mandatory German classes to 'lock in' talent somehow is simiarly uninspired as tech companies here. What about creating jobs that good people are willing to work at?

If you'd double my salary I still wouldn't move to Germany. Learning a new language is too big investment.

Not even talking about attracting talent but retaining it. That being said, in Berlin startups you don't need to speak german. You just need to be down with working for a shitty salary at a meaningless e-commerce project or copycat that is never intended to succeed.

I think you are essentially confusing "tech" with "web" (granted SV mostly does the same). Go to Southern Germany, if you want tech jobs, not Berlin.

You can live and work in Berlin without speaking single word of German.

You can, but Berlin is not (yet) where most of the interesting high-tech jobs are. Moreover, if you want an interesting social life, eventually you'll have to learn the local language, there's no way around it.

I can't speak for Germany, but e.g. in Norway and the Netherlands which I know best, there are a lot of nice tech jobs and you don't have to speak a word of the native language. I know because I've had colleagues over a decade who don't speak the native language and who are still just fine.

Most tech companies today use english as work language anyway. Not necessarily social talk among people, but usually in meetings, emails, documentation etc.

Still I recommend learning the local language. It has advantages but it is not something you are completely dependent on.

You can survive sure, but I'd be really hard and expensive to start a company. How am I suppose to read german law and fill government forms? Have a lawyer to everything for me? Thanks no thanks.

You'll have a hard time starting a company or anything without consulting a lawyer or legal service in Germany. And you won't be taken seriously e.g. by banks etc. Fortunately, cost for legal advice on this matter is significantly less than in the US, AFAIK. Plus, you have the bonus of being able to do business in 27+ countries with marginal or no extra effort.

In that case I'd prefer to start a company in Poland. Much lower taxes, cost of infrastructure, legal, labour, capital requirement for LTD (25000 EUR vs 1200 EUR).

What makes this post German? It sounds convincing to me and I'm not German.

Also, how would creating the jobs reduce the risk mentioned by anon_7523? Do you believe it's a bad idea to integrate the people you already provide with education, for free?

I guess, he is talking about the mindest, that you can fix everything with rules, without fixing the underlying problem (that I don't see in this case).

I would add calling something "typical German" is also typical German :)

> The reason those people aim for jobs in the UK or US is because there aren't good tech jobs in Germany.

The reason those people aim for jobs in the UK or US is because there aren't well paid tech jobs in Germany.

I've fixed it for you.

> The reason those people aim for jobs in the UK or US is because there aren't well paid tech jobs in Germany.

This is also wrong. I would rather say "there aren't well paid tech jobs in Germany if you don't know German on a decent level".

Where are those highly paid tech jobs in the UK?

Apart form a bit of fin-tech in London, most programming jobs in the UK are quite badly paid and not comparable with US/SV salary levels.

I see what my UK-based students are earning, and it's typically not really above German levels.

I think you are confusing "tech companies" with "web start-ups". Germany has a different focus than Silicon Valley and thus a different type of "tech" jobs as well. There are a lot of challenging engineering and IT jobs where you will work together with top-notch colleagues in industrial automation, mechanical engineering, etc.

Note that Elon Musk is still dreaming about building tunnel boring machinery, while at Herrenknecht you can already innovate in this field today.

There are good tech jobs in Germany. They are not SV-level paying, but rents are also not San Francisco level and you get healthcare, pension funds and unemployment benefits. Of course it can always be better.

What better than German tech jobs are there in the UK? It is not about the jobs. They are aiming for a language they already know, but want to get a free education on the way.

My point is, that taxpayers should benefit from their investments. There is nothing wrong with creating a lock-in, which is silly btw.: There is a German speaking market of > 100 Mio speakers, you can benefit from. Nobody in the Philippines or India speaks German. See what kind of job opportunities Turkish-German people have in Turkey.

If your point is true and there are no tech-jobs, we can benefit from it, then stop the program and work on that first. The foreign students also would, because except for 3 neighborhoods in Berlin and Frankfurt, you cannot integrate into German society without some German language knowledge and without a proper skillset.

The German economy is heavily based on the Mittelstand with so called "hidden champions", one does not know about, but who are the global market leader in smaller, obscure markets. They often sit in a village somewhere in rural (but rich) Southern Germany. No way, you can make it there without German language knowledge.

Give them some time. The big U.S. and U.K. universities have decades of experience in selecting the best and the brightest from around the world. They have huge admission teams that know the local education markets and can tell you which Chinese university's degrees are first-class and which are not.

For German universities, having to select foreign students is a new development and it will take time and a bit of trial & error to get it right. It's the same in Switzerland: every Swiss high school graduate can attend university, so an "admissions process" just didn't exist there. And now that many international students want to attend Swiss university, you get a lot of students in master's courses who don't have the required pre-requisities. But I'm confident the universities will learn and build up these capabilities.

I can confirm most of this, also talking from personal experience during my Bachelor and Masters studies. The majority of Non-EU students that come here seem to have a very hard time. I have no idea how they passed the German language test, most of them speak very little german, definitely not enough to fully understand a lecture held in German. Their prior education is not comparable to the required standard that native students must meet, so most of them are doing rather badly grade-wise.

When i talk to them, most of them state they wish to return to their home country once they finish their degree here. Needless to say, there are exceptions to the rule that hustle hard, excel and plan to stay in Germany once they finish.

In summary: Germany seems to get the B or C level bunch of students, while the A level students go to the US or the UK.

My experience in Germany is the exact opposite, foreign students are usually the most communicative and the most dedicated at the same time.

And it is not like getting a degree is an automatism. If you are bad, you will fail and drop out. There has been an inflation in grades in the recent years, but most degrees are still hard to obtain and require that you really learn what you are doing.

Maybe it is different in different fields, but at least this is my impression in physics and the natural sciences.

I would have to agree with you being an Indian student in Germany right now. I have seen a lot of Indian/Pakistani/Middle-Eastern students at my University with lower skills than what is usually desired of them at a Master's level. Of course, I can't generalize and there definitely are a lot of talented students in the mix as well. One interesting fact is, that my University recently reduced the number of admissions given to International students with probably some changes to the admission criteria, the standard of new students has now increased.

Also, you are right about some Universities being closer to German standards than others in India (I guess every country has good and bad Universities, the onus here is on the German Universities to identify the right ones and improve the admission criteria). I personally do not see a lot of difference between my University back home in India and the one I am enrolled at in Germany.

I did my master in Germany and I work in German company now. Yes, I speak little German, but I am improving it. My friends also came to study in German universities. At least half of them stayed here and all of them speak at least some German. I think companies also benefit a lot from this. It is much easier to hire somebody who already lived and studied in Germany than who never been here. Me and my friends are here, because German universities are free. Otherwise, we would not neither here nor U.S. and U.K. Because they are very expensive, there is no way to come from third world country and afford all expenses.

"A tax paid university should not be a third-world aid program."

What about having high standards on tests and some kind of practical evaluation, but not requiring third-party credentials to enroll, particularly at the graduate/professional level? i.e. not going for the 18 year old undergraduate market, which is very competitive, but something more unique.

(My German is 1- to 1 right now, but I could probably get to 2- to 2 without too much work over a year, but I have no undergraduate degree. If I wanted a professional degree without completing undergraduate, I'm mostly stuck with UK schools (LBS, LSE, ICL being the top options) in MBA or Econ, or a back-door "special student" PhD route somewhere. If there were a German institution which made this straightforward, it would be worthwhile for a lot of people in the mid-career stage in technical fields who don't have formal credentials. Those people would be far more likely to remain in Germany, or at least to maintain some connection to Germany.)

The article is wrong on so many ways.

The author states that foreign students _plan_ on staying in Germany, however that is not what is actually happening. 41% of students abandon their studies before they have a degree. Out of the students that finish their degree, only 36% remain in Germany. Out of those remaining, more than half of them need more than 1 year(!) to land a job, indicating that they may not have the best grades or skills.

Furthermore, many seem to assume that Germany somehow needs to offer this tax payer subsidized "free" university program to attract foreign students to fill shortages in the workforce. This is not the case. First, despite constant media reports saying otherwise, there is no major talent shortage expect in very few niches. Second, any EU-citizen (thats 600+ million people outside of Germany) can work in Germany without any permission required. Third, for non-EU citizens there already is a visa program (the "blue card") that allows them to work in the EU if they are qualified, e.g. have a Masters degree from their home country.

In summary: German tax payers are asked to fund the education of foreigners at little to no return. Given the "free" nature of the program, it attracts rather unqualified students (or, lets say at least not the top notch).

All this may sound harsh but it is simply not the job of German tax payers to provide some sort of indirect third-world aid to middle/upper-class students from foreign countries.

Wonder if they should have entrance exams to fix the issue? That might weed out the unqualified candidates.

In many many cases, there are processes to assess a student's qualification. In general, if you don't have a German degree or did not reach a certain level, you will have to go through a vetting process – except for those studies were there are too little candidates to warrant a selection process.

> All this may sound harsh but it is simply not the job of German tax payers to provide some sort of indirect third world aid to middle/upper-class students from foreign countries.

I'm not sure the marginal cost of an extra student is very high. They take a seat in a classroom and a few hours of teacher time to grade their work. Besides, they contribute to the German economy by living there. And even if they leave, they'll keep a fond memory for Germany and I'm sure that will somehow have a positive impact.

> I'm not sure the marginal cost of an extra student is very high. They take a seat in a classroom and a few hours of teacher time to grade their work

Maybe, but there's also opportunity cost. That's one seat that someone isn't taking, teacher time that isn't going to someone else.

> contribute to the German economy by living there

Yes, but they cost the German economy by being there too. Have you done the math on the tradeoff?

> they'll keep a fond memory for Germany and I'm sure that will somehow have a positive impact

How? I have a fond memory for Germany after being a tourist there. Didn't need to cost the state tens of thousands in tuition dollars to do it.

What about students back in their home country that would preferably buy German whether as an individual or as a person in charge of a business?

See the example of French-educated people/elite in Africa.

I think if German citizens don't like this they could just push their politicians to make the appropriate changes.

There is no need to point the finger to these foreign students: just talk to your politicians.

>First, despite constant media reports saying otherwise, there is no major talent shortage expect in very few niches.

"Shortage" is not the right frame of refrence here, because it implies a fixed-size pie. Having an educated population tends to grow the pie for everyone (on average over a longer observation period).

It's not like there is a fixed number of jobs mined from the soil of each country. This sort of flawed thinking is at the core of most "immigrants are taking our jobs" sort of fears.

>It's not like there is a fixed number of jobs mined from the soil of each country.

This is so true. It applies to any system with competition. People tend to treat things like jobs and startups like natural resources, and tend to assume that competition is necessarily bad. In reality, feedback processes and strong interactions between players turn economies into highly unpredictable emergent phenomena. It's more like a flock of geese than an elementary chemical reaction.

For such large systems, it's hard to tell what the Nash equilibrium is, and whether it matches with the optimum global outcome. Animals (especially humans) have evolved to cooperate well in small groups (e.g. tribes, families). Over larger scales (e.g. countries, between language families), we have a strange balance between distrust, competition, and compassion.

I agree. I've had 10 jobs in my life, and only 2 were regular employment. There rest? I invented them. They didn't exist until I approached someone and said "This is what I can do for you".

I'm concerned that comments like this are rising up in Hacker News lately. I'm not going to downvote it because it got me to write this post so has some intrinsic merit. But it strikes me as, to be blunt, unenlightened. Lots of facts but no deeper sentiment.

I would argue that the last sentence, the "may sound harsh" one, is most important - that as countries and populations reach certain levels of affluence and influence in the world, that it is very much their responsibility to be examples for others and provide a beacon towards what is still possible. The United States used to do this but I'm afraid we've turned inward due to seemingly prudent arguments that ignore the spiritual nature of our existence.

I agree with you about education and immigration - I would love to see more OECD countries adopt Germany's position on university fees and foreign admission.

But I would not say it's worrying to find the opposite view as the majority opinion on HN. I want to see a diverse range of opinions expressed frankly but respectfully - and that is the tone of sparkling's comment.

When I disagree with the top comment on an HN story, below it will often be a great rebuttal.

Having seen many of my more affluent friends going abroad for Uni and just spending their time and parents money on booze and girls, there is a huge element of truth in what OP says. It is a subsidy for the rich and affluent.

assume life is a zero-sum game. no it's not!!

If you are a young person living in a poor country, the two best investments you can make to improve your standard of living are (a) get a university education; and (b) immigrate to a rich country.

Germany offers both:

1. A free undergraduate university degree

2. For every graduate: 18 month work visa after graduation

3. For every STEM graduate who earns more than EUR 40,000 per year: approval to work in Germany forever (ie. a 'blue card')

Yes, you must first learn German, have good high school grades and be able to borrow EUR 9,000 to apply for the student visa. But for millions of people living in third-world countries that is achievable and a great investment given the enormous returns on offer.

So why isn't Germany flooded with foreign university students?

> Yes, you must first learn German,

Maybe because of this?

> be able to borrow EUR 9,000 to apply for the student visa

Also, this. 9,000 euros does not seem like too much for people from first-world countries, but for people coming from relatively speaking much poorer countries that sum is quite high.

Even if the requirements make it impossible for 95% of people, that still leaves millions for whom it is possible.

Yes, exactly. Learning a foreign language not widely spoken outside of Europe, while also taking college-level math and science courses is a high barrier to entry. This is the primary reason Germany is able to pull this off. If a high-quality college education were free in an English-speaking country, say Australia, there would be a lot more international students willing and able to enroll there. After graduating, you could take the degree and move anywhere in the English-speaking world (work visa permitting). In Germany at least, they assume because you achieved a high proficiency in German there's high likelihood you'll stay and work there for at least a few years after graduation. In a way, this is also true of the job market -- if you're able to get a job in Germany, or Italy, Sweden etc, anywhere where the language is not used widely outside of that country, then you have proved your qualifications and dedication to the country enough to warrant a work visa.

Also many Ivy Plus schools offer free tuition to international students who qualify for need-based aid. US taxpayers subsidize these schools indirectly through the tax-exempt endowments, corporate income and federal grant money.

>Yes, exactly. Learning a foreign language not widely spoken outside of Europe, while also taking college-level math and science courses is a high barrier to entry

Obligatory "anecdote isn't data" but as someone in a third world country who seriously considered studying in Germany, the language learning aspect was the least of my worries. I got to a B2 proficiency level in around a year and to C1/C2 within a year of that (for context: you need B1 to apply for citizenship and C1 to apply to higher education programs in German).

Getting the 9k, plus flight expenses, all the paperwork expenses was what proved to be impossible; in reality you need around 12k. It was all too much. I had no way of getting that amount of money.

In the end I decided to stay and get my degree here. Learning German was a great experience so it wasn't all a waste. Met some great people along the way and discovered my love for linguistics.

I also personally agree that this policy isn't necessarily helping Germany overall. I think the Blue Card program is a lot more valuable and should probably be more heavily "advertised".

Just curious: Where is 'here'?

And did you consider trying to get a German Blue Card after graduating in your home country?

> I got to a B2 proficiency level in around a year and to C1/C2 within a year of that

Congrats! This is no small achievement for a language not widely spoken outside of Europe. I went on a summer language immersion to Germany (living with a host family) and began picking up the language that way, in addition to listening to DW, radio, sports matches, etc. to get to that level. While I've only lived a small time in German-speaking countries, it's served me well with the some great conversations and connections at cultural and engineering-related events around the world, making life that much richer.

Anyways, sounds like linguistics might be your thing -- I'm sure you'll be successful at whatever route you go down.

9000 euros is a large sum for countries where an average monthly salary can be around 500 euro or less. Only wealthy families (whose kids don't really need German education) would afford that.

The ability to study in Germany is not a welfare program.

I can buy a house in my country with 9000 EUR.

Out of personal interest: Which country is that?

Detroit

According to his keybase.io profile, the country is Colombia.

Why learning German is a big issue? These are young people who can learn a language easily and in the beginning nobody expects you so high proficiency and people will always help and encourage you to learn the language. In Europe many educated folks know min 2 languages more and very open to learn more, you just need to leave your comfort zone. Learning languages also develops intellectually.

There was a guy from Brasil in my first year CS studies (in Poland). His Polish was passable I guess, but it was just no match during say intense Linear Algebra lecture, where Polish native speakers were barely keeping up (because the subject itself was enough and required tons of concentration). Sure enough, he dropped out after the first semester.

> In Europe many educated folks know min 2 languages more and very open to learn more

Am Eastern-European, my mother tongue is a Romance language, I speak and read English, read and understand Italian, French and Spanish. German has proved too much of a hurdle for me.

> Am Eastern-European, my mother tongue is a Romance language, I speak and read English, read and understand Italian, French and Spanish. German has proved too much of a hurdle for me.

Of course if you speak some Romance language natively, other Romance languages will be a lot easier than a Germanic language as German. Here you should rather compare German with a language from a different language family, such as some Slavic language.

I (native German speaker) think that at least for English speakers French and German are about equally hard. The main difference is that French has a "smoother" learning curve, while German's grammar is really grueling at the beginning (but this is also said of the Russian grammar).

What in my opinion many people don't get is learning German means learning the unpleasant grammar (IMHO best by rote drill) inside out. Concentrating on the vocabulary and getting the grammar later might work for other languages that are less grammar-centric than German, but I can imagine German is very confusing for non-native speakers, if they are not rather certain in the grammar.

As soon as one is sufficiently certain in German's grammar (i.e. you don't have to think about conjugation and declination anymore), the learning experience will become much more pleasant, since in my opinion how words are "built up from parts" (in German in particular prominently by juxtaposition) is "in some sense much more logical and memorable" than how words are built in English or Romance language. A rather funny take on this for German animal names can be found under https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/funny-animal-names-in-ger...

It is not the same to have level C1 (completely fluent) in German and having the vocabulary and level to study at a German university. Exams in Germany are never multiple-choice and require you to write with a scientific vocabulary and idioms. This means an additional year of intensive German alone to have the vocabulary to pass exams at university.

I think it's because for 9000 euros the students can study medicine in their home countries at a good university and not have to learn German, then move many places in the world with a skilled employment visa.

That's a good point, but the German approach still seems more attractive to me:

- To learn German and pass the preparatory program for foreign students (Studienkolleg) would take 18 months. With skilled immigration you generally need 3 or 4 years work experience in addition to a degree.

- When applying for a job in a rich country, a degree from a local university counts much more than a degree from a third-world country so graduate salaries would likely be more.

- A foreign student at a German university can work and earn enough to pay living costs. Therefore the initial EUR 9000 is more like a loan than an expense.

Other than 9000 EUR an amazing high amount how can you afford to live there?

You can't work can you?

As an international student in Germany, you get an automatic work visa for so called student jobs, up to 19,5 hours a week, no limits on wage earned, no extra social security costs. Income tax starts at 8000 a year. As a student, you can get around with 500/mo in Germany, 750 may be the comfortable lower bound

To be clear: 500 € may be sufficient in smaller cities but not in Munich and other cities with high rents.

As the diplomas in Germany count more or less as the same, you are free to choose a university at a place with lower renting costs like Leipzip, Koblenz or Greifswald. Your relatives may have to look on the map, but in everyday professional life (especially IT) it does not matter much. There are some preferred places for every field (KIT for IT in Karlsruhe, Business, Management in Mannheim, Engineering in Darmstadt...), but if you don't have or earn a lot of money, you have tons of good possibilities.

A student visa allows the student to work 120 days per year. At minimum wage this is about EUR 720 per month. If the student allocates 40% to rent, that means 6 students could afford to pay EUR 1,228. Let's say 2 students per bedroom.

Isn't it possible to rent a 3-bedroom home in Munich for EUR 1,228 per month?

> Isn't it possible to rent a 3-bedroom home in Munich for EUR 1,228 per month?

Good luck getting a flatshare these days. Landlords don't like it very much, because they associate flatshares ("Wohngemeinschaften"/"WGs") with noise complaints due to partying and trouble when one of the renters can't make rent.

Also, 3-bedroom homes are already in scarce supply these days in Munich - any type of home is in scarce supply, and landlords will abuse this situation to pick only the most profitable (i.e. they pay their rent on time and don't generate complaints) kinds of renters: either DINKs (Double income, no kids - kids cause noise and thus complaints of neighors), or welfare clients where the Arbeitsamt pays the rent. Everyone else - low-income persons, families with kids, persons with their own company, persons on time-limited employment, persons with dogs (again, noise complaints), refugees, persons of non-German origin - is left to fight for the scraps. That there has been no build of "welfare housing" the last decades and many of the "welfare housing" projects exited the programmes only amplifies the need doesn't help much either.

Oh, and if you got a family name that doesn't sound German... well, good luck. Many landlords and brokers won't even bother to return calls.

Source: live in Munich, only got my apartment due to a friendly relationship with a broker.

> and be able to borrow EUR 9,000 to apply for the student visa As far as I know there is not need of EUR 9,000 to apply for a student Visa, I studied in a german university as an international student, hence I know you do not need such amount of money to apply for Visa. In the other hand in many cases you can get scholarships which compensate for these expenses.

I was going off this page [0] which says, "At least the living expenses for your first year in Germany must be fully financed. In general, about 8,640 euros of income or assets are required for the first year, or 720 euros per month".

[0] https://www.daad.de/deutschland/nach-deutschland/bewerbung/e...

Because 40k€ a year is not a lot of money after the high taxes. For example, for a non-married 25 year old 40k€ p.a. results in about ~2k€ net per month after taxes. When you further deduct the costs of a apartment rent, utility bills, car, food, insurances, phone bills, various little "fees" that are actually taxes (e.g. Rundfunkbeitrag), you are very lucky if you have 1k€ left left. That is not a lot of money to send home.

It is not so easy. It takes a lot of time to get a good level of German: At least 1 year of intensive courses, eventually 2. After this, you have to take Studienkolleg, if you want to have a chance at graduating. German universities are really challenging. In addition, as a foreign student, you will take longer than your German peers to graduate. In total to get a bachelor, you need to invest somewhere between 6-7 years. It is a lot of time (and money) for most people.

The worst part is that you do not have a guarantee that you will graduate. I knew many cases of foreign students, who invested 3-4 years of their life and were expelled from the university for failing their final exams. They returned home with nothing on their hands.

For a point of comparison, the annual tuition prices for colleges in Massachusetts:

http://www.collegecalc.org/lists/massachusetts/most-affordab...

Tufts, BC, BU, Olin, MIT, Northeastern, Brandeis all between 45k and 50k. Harvard 41k. When room, board, and books are factored in it's a quarter million dollars over four years.

Public colleges (Umass) are a lot cheaper but I've heard "fees" can run up to 10K a semester.

Lucrative for U.S. schools, ludicrous for students and families.

Some of those schools are unlike the others. It makes absolute sense to go $250k in debt for an MIT or Harvard degree, makes less but still some sense for Tufts and Olin, and makes no sense at all for the rest. And the average college that Americans experience is a 2 year community college; very, very few attend schools of the caliber you're mentioning. It makes no sense to lump all these different schools together when arguing for your position on tuition prices and their effects on students and families.

> It makes absolute sense to go $250k in debt for an MIT or Harvard degree

No it doesn't? I think we should stop putting schools on a pedestal because of their name. I admire some of the research and work that comes out of those schools, but in the end their degrees are no better or worse than other schools' (regarding undergraduate, I can't speak for graduate).

The only differences come down to network and academic history. If you're justifying that level of debt purely on those two criteria, then I understand that's the value those things mean to you -- and that's okay. Personally, that's not worth it to me. I'm not sure there's "absolute sense" here.

There can be an "absolute sense" from a financial perspective. For better or worse, having a degree from Harvard/Stanford/MIT can open a number of doors that may be otherwise shut. Doors which can be very financially lucrative.

For example, suppose you want to work in finance/law. Most prestigious firms place a very high premium on having a degree from a top university, and pay extremely generously if you get your foot in the door. In these contexts, the $250k investment on your college will easily pay for itself within 10 years.

Conversely, suppose you're trying to break into a field that's extremely hard to crack (writing?). In such situations, you'll need every edge you can get, and having a great network or an eye-catching degree in your resume can make the difference between you getting a toe-hold and you calling it quits.

To be sure, it certainly is very context dependent. Getting a cheap Bachelor's degree from a public university, and a Master's degree from a brand name university, might be a good way to get the best of both worlds. In general though, anyone who's smart enough to get admission into Harvard/Stanford is likely going to make multiple millions of dollars over the course of their lifetime. Given this baseline, investing 250k for a top-notch education/network/resume certainly seems well worth it.

Isn't admittance to these schools largely oriented towards wealth/past wealth, and the preference in those "prestigious" schools just to make sure that only wealthy families get those jobs?

In that case, if it's a meaningful amount of money to you, it's probably not worth the investment because those firms will still look at you poorly

Don't all of those schools also have significant scholarship offerings?

I'd add to your comment that from what I've heard some of the traditionally elite universities such as Harvard/Yale/Stanford have very generous financial aid for lower income students. And while I don't have the exact numbers handy, if I remember correctly their definition of lower income extended into the $100k+ household income range.

Again, this is anecdotal, but I have a good friend who was accepted to both Berkeley and Stanford, among a host of other schools but those two were his top choices, as an undergrad transfer from a community college. He grew up extremely poor, not HN's definition of poor as in he can't afford a SFH in Noe, but poor as in relying on food stamps/section 8 with parents who never even graduated high school. He was leaning towards Cal but ultimately the financial aid package that Stanford gave him was too good to turn down. He will graduate with close to zero debt or loans.

Can and will pay off is not exactly the same thing. To break even on an extra 100k within 10 years of graduating, the pre-tax premium on your salary needs to $1.5k -$2k on gross monthly salary. I wouldn't call that a brilliant investment even if it was a lot more certain than it is in reality.

But importantly, there are lot of potential loss scenarios. The student could drop out, get sick at some point in the next 15 years. They could decide they don't want to be a lawyer, get pregnant, go to jail. Anything that gets them off a high earning path becomes a disaster with that kind of debt.

A debt burden like this taken on by young people seems to me to be incompatible with the concept of free society. I can't understand how Americans tolerate it. In most countries, I think the public outcry would be too great.

> "To break even on an extra 100k within 10 years of graduating"

Why are you limiting yourself to a 10 year window? The average career last 30+ years. Over a time period that long, it's much easier to recoup the initial investment costs.

> "The student could drop out... get pregnant, go to jail"

Ironically, many of these dangers are much more likely to occur at non-elite universities, due to peer-influence and peer-pressure. This is actually a great reason to attend elite universities where you'll be ensconced in a ivory-tower-bubble.

> "A debt burden like this taken on by young people seems to me to be incompatible with the concept of free society."

I guess you and I define freedom differently. A society where only the ultra-wealthy attend elite universities, doesn't sound nearly as free to me. Allowing extremely bright middle-class kids to invest $0.25M in their education, so that they can optimize for their millions of dollars of lifetime earnings, as well as get the education they've dreamed of, sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

Would I prefer it if elite schools like Harvard weren't so damn expensive? Of course. But the current situation still sounds far better than getting rid of student loans entirely.

TL,DR; The Universitys work as a bribe-able doorkeeper, and nobody gives anything about the education.

Why not bribe the companys you apply directly? Make a law degree for cheap and bribe a fellow with half a million? Cut out the middle man.

Haha you must be joking =)

Much as we like to decry the high cost of university, there is still a lot of value there for some. Others don't need it and can study law, or computer programming, on their own. Good on them. They prove themselves in other ways, like the bankrobber who later became a Georgetown law professor [1]

More bribes aren't going to make life any easier and definitely are not the solution to the high cost of university ;-)

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/04/2...

Huge disclaimer here, I have never attended any undergraduate university so everything I say here is second hand and anecdotal.

With that out of the way, I was under the impression that there are some rather significant differences in the depth, breadth, and rigor between courses of study even at the undergrad level, at least in certain majors. For example, I've often heard that Harvard's undergrad math course is considered especially challenging. Is it really the case that an undergrad education at a place like MIT in math/physics, or some other STEM field, is without any differentiation from a similar major at Tufts or BU? I find that somewhat hard to believe.

I'm sure there are brilliant students at less prestigious institutions, as I'm sure there are not so brilliant ones even at places like MIT, but I would expect an undergrad math class at MIT would be somewhat different than one at BU. Am I wrong here?

On occasion I work with a rather brilliant engineer from Caltech and in talking with her she has relayed to me that one of the unique aspects of Caltech's undergrad education is that all students, regardless of major, must take a certain number of college level math and physics courses. That alone seems like a pretty big differentiator to me.

This isn't to say that we as a society don't perhaps put too much emphasis on the notoriety of big name schools, but I still find it somewhat unlikely that there really is zero difference in the degrees offered. Of course, I'm very often wrong so there's that.

Firstly, that Caltech requires all students to undertake a certain number of math and physics courses seems to align with, at least, the name of the institution.

Secondly, regarding your comment "I find that somewhat hard to believe", so long as everyone keeps believing that then the cost value of the reputation and network probably justify the fees. It's part of their brand image. Marketing.

The proof is in then numbers though: do reputable university graduates discover more valuable insights more often, do they earn more, and live longer healthier happier lives? Is the net benefit to society worth the cost?

I'd argue it's all very difficult to quantify in the final analysis.

> The only differences come down to network and academic history.

Yes, indeed. With a degree from a top university, you are almost guaranteed an A average and can go straight to Wall Street or into other potentially super-lucrative professions. Not every wants that, and there are other paths to get there, but if that's what you want, this is by far the easiest way.

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21615616-not-wha...

http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septoct-2014/why-are-h...

Meanwhile at wall street...

Candidates are interviewing and 9x% of them will get rejected without mercy. Just like at Google and co.

Well, I hope they didn't think that a degree and 200k of debt would guarantee them a job anywhere.

I'd say one big difference is that in places like MIT you have an option to volunteer on awesome research projects, working under top-notch researchers. This goes a long way towards securing a entry to a top PhD program later, if that's your thing.

What you say is not true.

> It makes absolute sense to go $250k in debt for an MIT or Harvard degree

Can you explain why?

Maybe - but if you are very rich it makes complete sense to just go there and suck up the cost so that you can be even richer in the future.

From talking to people with college age kids in the states it seems that assistance for talent is largely gone, assistance for social position is still available. The issue I can see with this (as an outsider) is that there are very many kids right at the bottom of the social scale - assisting them makes lots of sense. But step one rung up (I'm not sure what the cut offs are but they seem very low) and no matter what talent you have you will get no assistance. This could generate a lot of resentment down the line...

Going $250k in debt makes you extremely fragile. After you graduate, you're limiting your job opportunities to only ones that pay much higher than others, even if one job was a much better fit for yourself. You are also much more sensitive to adverse job conditions. If you happen to graduate during times of recession, you will be much more hurt than your other unemployed friends.

Staying out of debt relieves you from the need to have to get a job within a certain salary range, allowing you to choose jobs based on criteria beyond salary.

> It makes absolute sense to go $250k in debt for an MIT or Harvard degree,

I'm not so familiar with the American system, but aren't there prestigious schools that would accept bright students for free? In France for instance, the most selective engineer schools are free (or sometimes pay their students) and they enjoy the same careers than their American counterparts. Somehow, it sounds counterintuitive that you have to pay anything if you're extremely bright!

> Why Germany Educates International Students for Free

One thing to remember: That university education may not be that expensive does not mean everybody is allowed to study. Universities often set high barriers.

In Germany 27% of young adults get an university degree. OECD average is 40%. It's not because Germans are more stupid, but because there are less students allowed to enter University education. Also there are other means of advanced education outside of traditional Universities. Many jobs base their education on the dual education system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_education_system

No, this is because in Germany "university degree" is used in a more narrow sense (it is a higher standard than, say, US college degrees).

https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-educat...

That's interesting. Are there options for the 73% that don't go to Uni? Trade schools?

What about at lower levels (ages 5-12)... do kids get to progress to the next level regardless of performance in an annual exam (like the US "no child left behind" policy), or do they have to have to repeat a year/level if they fail?

Yes, nearly everyone in Germany either has a university degree or a so called "Berufsausbildung". The Berufsausbildung is a specific training to do a certain kind of occupation (craftsman, computer programmer, carpenter) and is based on approximately 50% of schooling and 50% of hands-on work in a company. It typically takes three years and usually you stay at that company as a worker afterwards

Interesting. Thank you.

In addition to the other comment, 73% is counting all grown up germans. The current generation has an university enrollment rate of about 50%. So while many older germans have basically been trained on the job, many younger once wont which is one of the reasons many younger foreign europeans now learn a job in germany as no inlanders apply.

Tradditionally we have the concept that kids can fail a grade and have to repeat it but more and more educators are not in favor of this anymore, so its more or less changing.

> The current generation has an university enrollment rate of about 50%.

Enrollment does not mean that they get a degree. That's simply a different number.

> do kids get to progress to the next level regardless of performance in an annual exam (like the US "no child left behind" policy), or do they have to have to repeat a year/level if they fail?

Typically in Germany there is/was a three-tiered system after the 4th class: Hauptschule (5th to 9th year), Realschule (5th to 10th year) and Gymnasium (5th to 12th or 13th year). With a degree at a Hauptschule you can only begin an apprenticeship at some jobs, with a degree on a Realschule an apprenticeship in all jobs and with a Gymnasium degree (Abitur) you are allowed to study at a university or Fachhochschule ("Fachhochschule" is often translated with "school of applied science", but I think there is no real translation, since this is a very German concept: You study some applied subject (traditionally engineering) there with little focus on research question, but it is a lot more school-like than universities (few elective subjects, "more like sitting in a classroom").

This basic three-tiered system has now been convoluted (for example often "Hauptschule" and "Realschule" are often combined into a "Sekundarschule" (translating this with "secondary school" is in my opinion a false friend) or there also exist comprehensive schools that encompass all three tiers, but I think you get the basic idea.

To what kind of secondary school you may go is decided on the marks in the 4th class.

Now to your question: If your marks are too bad, you have to repeat a year (which reflects badly in your CV!) or (also not untypical) are "advised" to switch to a "lower tier" school. Details for these rules change all the time, but I would consider it as typical that at most one 5 (second worst mark) is allowed in a primary subject and at most two 5s are allowed in all subjects for passing. Also no 6 (worst mark) is allowed for passing.

Also it is often very typical that at a Gymnasium that you have to have good marks to be allowed to attend the Oberstufe (11th to 12th or 13th year) - otherwise you only get a "Realschulabschluss/erweiterter Sekundarschulabschluss" (two different names for mostly the same concept).

Sounds complicated. I can see the logic in separating kids into groups of equivalent aptitude.

I wonder how they arrived at the 5th class being where the categorisation happens.

I appreciate you explaining it, thank you.

> Sounds complicated.

What mostly makes it very complicated is that education is administered on a federal state level instead of national level - so it is different in each federal state. If I were to describe it for "my" federal state, the description would be simpler.

> I wonder how they arrived at the 5th class being where the categorisation happens.

The most plausible explanation to me is "historical".

But I can assure you that this is/was a hotly disputed political topic. For example in my federal state I think 15 years ago it was decided that this separation should rather be after the 6th year. The result: A giant rush on privately run Gymnasien (German plural of "Gymnasium") that started with the 5th class for the reason that parents feared that their kid doesn't get the educational stimulation "it should deserve" if it has to sit together with "less smart kids" for even two more years.

This state government was unelected in the next election (and this topic played a large role in the election campaigns) and the next state government reintroduced the separation after the 4th year (which I support), but introduced other controversial ideas in the education system (which nevertheless were not of the kind that induces "fears that 'my' kid doesn't get the educational stimulation 'it should deserve'" - so there was no large public outcry).

In short: If a state government wants to replace the two- or three-tiered system by more comprehensive schools or wants to touch the "holy grail" that separation happens after the 4th year, the party will be punished in the next election - these are "very emotional topics", where both sides will fight tooth and nail.

People (myself included) usually have very strong ideas about how they think their children should be raised and educated. I appreciate your informative responses. Thank you.

While I think it is good for both Germany and students, it probably has a bit of geopolitics mixed in. All those young people, if they return to their home countries, will be naturally more oriented toward German products thus indirectly making German economy stronger. I saw a similar theme in Russia, where there is even a specialized university for this [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples%27_Friendship_Universi...

I agree, we were told the same thing, when I was a full-degree foreign student in Bavaria: They do this as part of their foreign policy and they expect us to go back home to help develop our country and ideally do business with German businesses.

Very odd statement to include economical geopolitics here. Do you really believe that German companies lobbied each of the 16 German state-governments to lure in foreign students just so they buy German stuff back at home? Wouldn't it make more sense to influence foreigners directly with this thing called "marketing"?

If you're Adidas, why the hell go through this hassle and conspire with << all the other german companies >> to use the german education system as a proxy for getting a little bit of good PR - not even for your product, just German products in general.

If there's a geopolitical factor involved at all it's inter-cultural relations, which for a country that ruined most of Europe once is a rather good thing.

Speaking of Adidas and geopolitics, they produce all their shoes for Europe in Sanino d.o.o in Derventa, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Cheap labor in war destroyed country... go figure.

Not just common consumer goods, but say, electrical engineer educated in Germany would be inclined to use Siemens software and hardware, and he/she would need to put extra effort to learn about alternatives.

The thing is, the fees discussed in Germany ( ~1000€ / semester) are no where near covering the costs of a seat for one student. It's just a drop in the ocean, so they might as well keep it free. And when tutition is free for Germans, it seems wierd and discriminatory to take fees from foreigners. I grew up in Germany, but don't have a German passport. Should I pay more? Where do you draw the line?

I was studying when they introduced the tutition fees around 2006, and protested against them. We strongly had the impression that it was never about covering costs, but rather an "educating" measure: to teach students that education has a monetary value, and so that they view themselves as customers.

In the US, people view their education usually as an investment on which they expect return (from this thread, "It makes absolute sense to go $250k in debt for an MIT or Harvard degree, makes less but still some sense for Tufts and Olin, and makes no sense at all for the rest."). Some people view it that way in Germany, too, but I think many others, like me, find that very strange. We study mainly whatever we are talented at, and what we enjoy. Financial considerations are made, but not the main driver.

I believe certain people find that mindset threatening or wrong, and work(ed) actively against it. In Germany most notably neoliberal and center/conservative think tanks, like Bertelsmann foundation. These organisations lobbied for tutition fees, but also for the introduction of the Bachelor+Master system, which is much more schoolish and streamlined than the old Diplom/Magister system (which let you more freedom to study at your own pace and according to our interests).

When I look at how the money from tutition fees was used, it didn't improve teaching at all (which was the stated goal), but we got fancy new desks and cashback for books (ridiculously). This reinforces my feeling that it was driven by ideology and not by necessity.

> when tutition is free for Germans, it seems wierd and discriminatory to take fees from foreigners

German citizens subsidize this "free" university with their taxes. This includes low-level workers who have never visited a university. So essentially you are asking poor people in Germany to pay for the education of middle-class or rich people from other countries.

The poor dont pay much taxes in germany either. So its the middle class supporting a open world view. And i found it quite enriching. Sorry, that WYSIWYG doesent work with universitys, because you have by condition of usefullness not yet seen what you get and can only afterward value it apropriatly.

I love the german enducation system. In it great endavours may still be possible.

And another country's tax payers have subsidized that student from preschool through primary and secondary education.

Also, the implication of your argument is that graduate immigrants should get a tax break because tax payers never had to subsidize their degree.

Individually, sure, that's how taxes work. But it's a really skewed way of looking at it.

Poor people who only have a bike and make minimum wage in a way pay with their taxes for freeways (or Autobahns) - even if they are never going to use them. Is the conclusion to stop building streets with tax money?

Collectively, on average, poor people get more out of the state than they pay into it. If I'm rich, I will pay much more taxes than my kids will be able to use up by going to Uni. If I'm poor, it's the other way around (assuming we take advantage of it).

Should I study engineering in Germany?

I'm looking at undergrad programs in California right now and the numbers don't add up for me. Not just tuition, but cost of living as a full time student as well. I also feel like it would be much easier for me (a non-traditional student) to get into a better university over there, as they pretty much just look at your test scores. Not all this GPA/extra-curricular "well rounded" stuff they do here. Do they provide many undergrad programs in English? Are the degrees accredited in the US?

There definitely also are programs exclusively in English. Many however are rather partly in English with more option for a Masters degree. I'd check the programs at TU Munich in particular. Karlsruhe, Aachen, Darmstadt are also worth considering albeit less attractive places to live in. All degrees are accredited. My major/minor B.Sc. degree was recognized as a dual major in the US.

At least Aachen (haven't been to the others recently) I wouldn't count as "less attractive to live in", unless your idea of attractive requires "is a large city" (and some are not that far away, and students get "free" train tickets there)

I prefer Karlsruhe to Munich. Karlsruhe is one of the warmest cities in Germany.

I would have preferred Hamburg.

I guess this makes "enough" evidence that German cities have character and one should visit before deciding where to study.

> Karlsruhe, Aachen, Darmstadt are also worth considering albeit less attractive places to live in.

They are also considerably less expensive places to live in.

Yes.

TU Munich, TU Aachen and others are in no way worse than the US Universities. Degrees are respected internationally.

Learn German, though. For master's courses you will find English classes at every University, but bachelor's not. At least not on TU Munich, as far as I know.

This search tool of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) might help you find a suitable program: https://www.daad.de/deutschland/studienangebote/internationa...

Netherlands might be worth looking at. TU Delft has a very good reputation and links with Shell. Also Dutch is easier to learn than German, so they say, and everyone speaks English in NL anyway! Also I seem to recall hearing that they were considering switching over to teaching completely in English for some courses.

> and everyone speaks English in NL anyway!

I would think that you were exaggerating but when I was in Amsterdam once I truly was amazed that actually everyone could speak English. In Germany, especially in Berlin, it's not like Netherlands but most people also do. The biggest difference is Germans are really shy about speaking a different language so they first try speaking German really slowly with hand gestures even when they speak English much better than I do :)

Yes, nearly everybody speak English, in companies it is however expected, or at least appreciated if you speak Dutch.

Also, the Netherlands changes tuition. The annual tuition fee at TU Delft for the BSc is 10 kEuro, 15 kEuro in the MSc program for non-EU citizens.

In general, getting into a german university is easy with good grades and still possible otherwise. It varies a lot between universities and subjects though.

Bachelor level is usually in german. Master level can be done in english but much is in german, too. Without knowing the german language you will have a hard time. If you know the basics in advance and take a language course here, you should be fine.

Accredited in the US? I don't really know. We have a student exchange program with the CMU and that works well. For job hunting it is probably MIT/Stanford/Harvard XOR the rest.

(I am working in the computer science department at the german university KIT, which is one of the best for computer science along with TUM, Saarland and RWTH)

I did my masters here in Germany and in English. My professor was really not pleased when I told him I would write my thesis also in English as I thought my German level still wasn't adequate.

Greetings from a fellow KIT CS alumnus.

>I also feel like it would be much easier for me (a non-traditional student) to get into a better university over there, as they pretty much just look at your test scores.

Some don't even do that, but I think most (not sure) have some kind of language requirement for both German and English: https://www.daad.de/deutschland/studienangebote/internationa...

This is for Computer Engineering, which is a blend between Computer Science and Engineering at the university of Duisburg-Essen.

B1 shouldn't be that hard, but as a native speaker I can't really comment on the difficulty.

>Do they provide many undergrad programs in English?

At least the program I linked to has 50% of its courses in English and exams are always available in English. I have no idea about other programs.

A former civil (structural) engineer here. I'm not aware of any undergrad engineering programs at public universities in Germany run in English. Assuming you know German, I would definitely opt for a degree in Germany provided that you can cover the living expenses, which are slightly lower in Germany. You won't have access to US financial aid as an independent student in Germany. Not sure about other branches of engineering, but for Civil I wouldn't worry about accreditation, more on that below. Be aware that a diploma from a typical US high school is not sufficient to gain entry directly into a German university/technical school. I think high school + 1 year of college __is__ sufficient. That also lets you brush up on your German. Rules may be different for IB diploma etc.

A degree from Germany will not be ABET-accredited.[1] Licensure requirements for engineers differ by state. For CA, I believe it only affects the number of years of professional experience required before you can take the PE exam (1 year for ABET-accredited vs 4 years for non-accredited, or something like that).[2] I don't think accreditation matters for EIT.[3] In general, unless you intend to open your own practice asap, how quickly you become a licensed engineer is not the top priority. Everyone gets there, a bit sooner with an accredited Master's (typically 1 year degree), or later without one.

[1] http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx [2] http://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/applicants/flowchart_for_pe.pdf [3] http://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/applicants/eit_lsitapp.shtml

I don't think there are any German undergraduate programs that are entirely in English - you will most like need to learn German to CEF level C1 to pass the German university entrance exam (Feststellungsprüfung).

This is a useful website to determine whether your high school qualifications are enough to attend a German university: https://www.uni-assist.de/zulassungsvoraussetzungen/index.ph...

https://www.topuniversities.com/where-to-study/europe/german...

There definitely are. I studied entirely in English at TU Darmstadt for example (that was in 2004). They also offered free German classes in a preparatory program back then.

Can you name an undergraduate program in an Engineering/computer science related field conducted entirely in English? At TU Darmstadt or any other public school? I very much suspect that this is not an option if your intent is to get a degree. This is only an option for US undergrads on a study abroad supported by their home schools or for Master's students.

As someone who's learned (and forgotten) a few foreign languages, including German, the requirement for a C1 level in German would be pretty damn high, especially since Germans are rather strict on grammar (im not going there... ;)

In other words, someone trying to save money on tuition via a German undergrad would be trading a LOT of time and energy to learn German in exchange for the tuition.

I suppose this is part of the reason for allowing foreigners free education.

Pro-tip: consider starting college in the US, taking two semesters of German, and then doing this after your freshman year: http://culturalvistas.org/programs/abroad/congress-bundestag...

CBYX is a full year of free study and free living (replete with an allowance, free public transport, general coddling) in Germany, with the added bonus of being official guests of the German parliament. The only requirement is that you have a high school diploma and be between 18 and 24.

The program has a 'professional' focus, but when I did it most of us were still in college and returned to finish our degrees in the US. Back then that seemed very important, but today much less so and there's absolutely no reason why you couldn't participate in this program and then opt to stay in the German university system. Again, for free.

Plus one for CBYX. The first two months are an intensive German course, so you don't technically need to have prior Germany experience (although it helps in order to be accepted). The last five months are for interning.

If you take parent post's suggestion to do two semesters of college in the US first, consider going to a community college. Much cheaper and comparable education to a state school.

Happy to answer questions if you're interested in hearing more about my experiences in the CBYX program (1999-2000) and/or community college.

Consider studying in Netherlands if you look for programs in English.

Take a look around all of Europe, especially Northern Europe. Denmark and Sweden used to have a wide range of undergraduate degrees 100% in English with minimal fees - this was a few years ago hence suggesting to look around; countries update their policies based on demographic need and political trend. Netherlands too. For international students language classes could be taken for credit or not for credit.

One option to save on tuition is doing two years at community college and then transfer to a cal state or UC for two more years. Doesn't help with cost of living though.

Look at the community colleges near you, and find out which one has better transfer statistics and planning. For example, De Anza College in Cupertino has a prominent page with transfer information[1]; Orange Coast College in Southern California has a nice list of community college ranked by number of students who transferred to UC/CSU[2]. It looks like in the many years since I went to OCC, there are now a number of programs to guarantee admission if you meet the program requirements (course requirements, gpa requirements, procedural requirements), which is nice because it reduces the stress of application processes when you're ready to transfer. Reach out to the transfer center to make sure you start on track, and stay on track to transfer.

[1] https://www.deanza.edu/transfer/ [2] http://www.orangecoastcollege.edu/student_services/counselin...

I went the community college route, from De Anza to a UC, and I don't think I would recommend it to most people.

First of all, community college is a depressing place to be. It's like a cross between high school, juvenile hall, and the DMV.

For example, a lot of the students at community colleges are stoners who are only there because their parents have conditioned their financial support on college attendance, and those are the people who you will have to compete with for enrollment in impacted classes, and who will drag down your grade on group projects. The labs, libraries, and other facilities are pretty much a joke compared to what you get to use at a good UC or CSU, or even a good public high school. You are unlikely to develop personal connections that will help you build your career.

On top of all of that, transferring is not as easy at it might seem. You have to watch the transfer office like a hawk to make sure they don't screw up your paperwork. I had a guaranteed admission agreement, and even so, I caught multiple mistakes and miscommunications between the community college and the UC which would have voided my agreement, or delayed my transfer for a year. De Anza has one of the highest transfer rates in the country, so I can only assume things are even worse at other schools.

While you are trying to push your way through two years (at least) in this depressing and dysfunctional environment, your friends at CSUs and UCs will be enjoying higher quality classmates, instructors, and facilities, living the real college life, getting cool internships and other career opportunities, and making personal connections with people who will be successful in their fields.

In the end, the amount of money I saved by going to community college and transferring to a UC, compared to going to a UC for four years, adds up to the cost of a new Toyota Camry. That's a trivial amount of money, now that I look back on it years later -- a couple hundred dollars a month in student loans over a standard repayment term. Even people who are repaying their student loans don't bat an eye at spending that kind of money on a car, but for some reason people are apprehensive about spending it on two years of quality education and life experiences.

This may seem excessively negative, but I think it is a necessary counterbalance to a lot of the advice I see when this kind of issue comes up.

Despite the fact that the concept of them is to be local to each community, with CCs, as with four year schools, you have to research the specific school and your intended course of study to determine the value. They are different, and the experience can be very different from school to school in the same course of study, or from course of study to course of study in the same school.

CCs tend to have much better faculty:student ratios and a much stronger teaching focus than many four year schools (including UCs) will, especially for lower-division courses. As a result, you can, with the right program, get a better lower-division education at a CC, than at a UC, even one that is strong in your course of study.

Man, I look back with the exact opposite sentiment. I went to a four year school (Cal Poly) which effectively forbade changing majors* - and forced you to pick a major upon entering. As a result, I spent far too many years getting a physics degree I regret every day of my life. AFTER getting the degree, I spent an extensive amount of time taking CS night classes at Santa Monica College, as well as some fun ones (including German, incidentally). I can't recommend it enough. Everyone who was there went because they WANTED to be there. You got to study the things you wanted to study (Assembly Language for the hell of it; why not??), and not whatever some damn curriculum decided was good for you. The professors weren't primarily frustrated would-be researchers who resented their students. You didn't have to take the one class which is offered once every two years to graduate, and oh it's full this time so I guess you'll be in college another two years! And it was so cheap as to be nearly free.

Mostly, it's weird to be in the position to tell young people that university is an enormous scam meant to sucker people who don't know any better into a gigantic mountain of debt that can never get discharged so you can learn a hell of a lot less than you would in the real world. Not only that, this debt is incurred to pay for football coaches, dorms fancier than any apartment you'll ever have, and administrators whose purpose seems to be introducing systems that necessitate more administrators. Exception for medical school, I suppose, since you can't really learn on your own when it comes to surgery.

* You could change to a non-impacted major - one with more spots open than students. If memory serves, this was none of them.

AFAIK only the GPA matters as you have said (it's called Numerus Clausus or NC in Germany). If you look it up in a list, keep in mind that the German scale and the US 4 point GPA scale are reversed. 4.0 is the worst passing grade here and a 4.0 was an A+ at my US high school (I think there are different scales in different states?).

For many degrees there's no GPA requirement at all. Engineering might very well be one of the cases as it tends to be one of the "harder" degrees (natural sciences, math, engineering etc.) and GPA requirements are mostly for the "popular" ones like business, social sciences etc. Always depends how many slots are available at a given university, too.

Also: if your GPA isn't good enough you can get on a list and "wait" a couple of semesters and for each semester your GPA is virtually improved.

Note: that's how it works for German students but I'm pretty sure it's the same for foreign students (but most will have a requirement of C1 or sometimes B2 German skills). All universities have international offices that you can contact though.

I think Germany is still very much considered an "engineering country". Career wise it's probably going to be a very good thing to hold a German engineering degree. The education is good and there's usually great contacts to engineering companies. I'd be shocked if the degrees weren't accredited in the US. If you can pick a university I'd go with a "TU" (Technische Universität). Also note that we have two different kinds of universities. Universität = "proper" university and Fachhochschule aka FH or Hochschule = university of applied sciences...I'd stay away from these mostly because there's subtle differences that will probably make it harder to have the degree accredited in the US (and they are usually considered lower tier by employers as well).

University regulations differ on a state level so it might be wise to check out different German states. If saving money is one of the focus points I'd advise against Munich. RWTH Aachen is probably the best university in that field, TU Dresden and TU Dortmund are relatively cheap from a cost of living point of view and still good universities.

Engineers often get a job offer before they even graduate...

Don't discount FHs, especially for engineering. With the right niche you can out-earn almost every other graduate - say in chemical engineering, in some EE niches or with economics degrees that focus on a particular industry.

Also, rents in Jena, Tübingen or Ilmenau are often on a Munich level, but you can always find a few shortcuts (like living in Weimar and taking the train to Jena).

Lastly, if the bachelor isn't meant to be your final degree it doesn't matter as much where you got it.

The Uni vs FH statement might have some truth to it right after graduating, but in general, even without work experience it is much mire valuable to show what you can do if we are talking about software engineering for example. After a couple of years the type of degree hardly matters at all. Entirely depends on what you want though, i agree that the scientific rigor at a TU is higher while FH places more emphasis on applying science (you will still learn the fundamentals) but if you are not planning on going into research i'd say that difference hardly matters in most of the industry.

Here's my 2 cents. My background is I studied engineering in the UK where I live, but grew up and lived in the Germanic world. I have a brother and several friends and relatives who studied in the US, and friends who are German graduates. So maybe I can Frankenstein some advice for you.

- In the US, you study a broad range of subjects at undergrad. So my bro had to do literature classes and such, even though he really just wanted to mess with computers. My UK and Germanic (Scandinavian/German/Swiss) friends went straight from high school directly into Engineering and only Engineering courses. Advice for doctors: save time this way. You'll be cutting up carcasses your first week of uni. I've met doctors in their early 20s and nurses in their teens.

- "Being a student" is different in Europe, and it's different between the UK and the continent. In the US, there's a 4-year ideal. You go, you study for 4 years, you're done. Not everyone manages this, but the top end at least is very much aimed at you being able to do that with your life. In Germanic countries it's relatively normal to take time out, even have a baby. Plenty of people take 7 years to do a 5 year course. Many friends of mine have done this. You get stressed, you take a semester out. You have a death in the family, you take time out. You generally find that people try to balance studying with life. This also means you'll find older people at university. 27 year olds are common.

- The UK is similar to the US in this respect. Almost everyone I know did their UK courses in one stretch, in the allotted 3 or 4 years.

- Many European universities have no campus as such. They're just spread out around the town. A small town like Cambridge is maybe the closest you get to a campus university, but it's still got town in it. Oxford is also a bit hard to classify, being in a medium sized town but with the colleges all in one section, with independent businesses and shops thrown in. But being out in town might have a big effect on your social life, so think about it.

- Getting into college is more straightforward in Europe than the US. They look at your grades, and only a little at your work/life experience (secondary ways to get in). In many countries there's a GPA you need that's published each year per course. Assuming you did the right mix of high school courses, you can look up what you could have gotten into.

- In the UK it was just a couple of pages when I did it; a list of your predicted grades, and a half page recommendation from a teacher. For Oxbridge it's then a couple of 30 minute interviews, and an offer letter saying what they need you to actually get on the exams. But you're not going to miss the place if they send you an offer. And you can do 6 applications on the same form.

- Very little special treatment in the European systems. Not a lot of stories of rich kids getting into Oxford because their dad built a library. The most you get is the boat race guys who study something odd sounding, but these days a lot of them study a real subject and do the real homework while training like nutters.

- In the US, it's monstrous. First there's legacy and donation people, and sports scholarships. Those are not open to most mortal folk, and I have zero idea how exactly you wrangle a place that way. So then there's filling out a large form, which costs money. There's SATs which you need, more money, more time. Then you gotta find a bunch of teachers who will write that you're a genius. And then you gotta demonstrate that in an amazing essay. And repeat for each university. I ended up not applying in the US when I got my offer letter in mid December.

- Many, many courses are in English despite being in the Germanic world. They don't like to admit it, but their languages are slowly being invaded by English. Also they understand you need English in modern academia. A fair few higher level science courses will be in English entirely. All the young people will speak English, many of them well enough to write academic papers. Anglo culture is everywhere, people will have watched your TV series and they know your music. Even to the point where several of the top acts in those countries are known for songs sung in English.

- Are the degrees accredited? This is an interesting question. In the UK and US I've never heard of anyone being asked to prove they had some degree. The facility does exist to ask your uni of course, it's just I've never heard of anyone being asked to see their diploma. Now it might matter if you're going to use the degree to get a further degree, but from what I've seen plenty of Europeans show up at Oxford to do a masters or DPhil, no problem. Other way round probably mostly works too.

- The only place I've ever been asked to show my diploma was in Switzerland. I had to go collect it at my old uni.

Two minor things:

- I think Cambridge is very much not a campus university, because it's scattered around the city. I think of a campus university as somewhere like Warwick, Nottingham or Reading, with academic buildings within a large park-like area sometimes including residence buildings, where people not studying or working at the university don't often walk.

- I was asked to show my diploma for my first job in the UK. I don't know if they checked it with the university.

If you worry about accreditation and brand recognition, why not do a Bachelor's degree in Europe for free/cheap and then do a Masters in the US?

The Masters programs in top US universities are much easier to get into than their undergraduate degrees, and you'll only pay crazy fees for a short while.

Moreover, undergraduate teaching isn's all that different anyway, they mostly use the same textbooks, and most important: how much you learn is mostly a function of how much effort studying you put in (aka the negative correlation between party and learning). A good Bachelor's degree from a good European university coupled with a good letter of recommendation will get you into masters program in top US schools. (Source: I'm teaching at a European univ here, and I always gets my top students into US masters courses if I want to.)

One thing to consider is the very trade-focused nature of the degree.

My son is a German citizen, educated until high school in the German language, but he enrolled in a US university. Why? The US system offers a broader education at the undergraduate level. In fact there aren't undergraduate medical or law degrees the way there are in Germany (where you graduate and start practicing / start residency).

Honestly I think this distinction is part of a cluster of characteristics that make the US more entrepreneurial than Germany(and why I'd rather drive a German car than an American).

(This isn't an argument that one country is better than the other, just that they've picked different local maxima on various issues. FWIW I'm not a citizen of either).

>Honestly I think this distinction is part of a cluster of characteristics that make the US more entrepreneurial than Germany(and why I'd rather drive a German car than an American).

There's a bit of trade off involved with this though. Not everyone is suited for entrepreneurship, nor would a healthy economy encourage most people to become entrepreneurs. The stable middle class of highly trained, well paid technical workers in Germany is precisely what the US needs right now. It seems that both systems could benefit from each other's strengths. A liberal education founded in general studies is valuable for many, but most people will spend their lives working technical jobs.

But that's my point: people seem generally happy with the respective systems. Americans by and large seem to like their system, but while I love working in Silicon Valley it's pretty hard not to notice every day that it has a pretty low quality of life versus other OECD countries. If people like it who am I to complain?

> in Germany, students -- on the whole -- famously pay no tuition fees, regardless of where they come from. Seen from the U.S. or Britain, this policy may appear either supremely principled or incredibly naïve

“Britain”? Do they perhaps mean England?

The other three nations of the United Kingdom have either free (Scotland) or vastly cheaper (Wales, Northern Ireland) university tuition fees.

I think the key part is "regardless of where they come from". For instance, Scotland has free tuition for the Scottish and other EU citizens, but not for citizens of England/Wales/NI or international students. (The fees for an English person are typically cheaper than other English universities, but still not to be sniffed at).

I am not sure about NI or Wales, but I imagine there's a similar situation.

Scotland and free tuition? I was thinking about a MSc in computer science at the University of Edinburgh, and it's definitely not free, even for EU citizens: http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/fees?programme_cod....

That's a postgraduate course. I guess free tuition applies only to undergraduates.

The article has many points that are not correct. I was a foreign student who did studienkolleg (preparatory university course), bachelor and master degrees in German in Bavaria. In total, I spent 6 years in their educational system.

One thing to highlight is that German universities are very different to the American system of small groups, interaction with students, labs, hand-holding, etc. Traditional German education is one where you are not obliged to go to classes and you only have one final exam at the end of the semester. Some classes had up to 800 students. In other classes, we never got to see the professor and we were taught by a PhD student. Nobody knew your name and you were just another face, if you ever showed up to class. Thus, the marginal cost of having an additional local or foreign student is minimum.

This system is not for everyone and given that my classes were all in German, it was very challenging. University-level German (vocabulary, idioms, etc) is very different from the one you learn at the Sprachkurs. Most foreign students dropped out and went back home. This is also accentuated by the fact that if you fail an exam 3 times, you are expelled from the university and you are banned from studying that study field for life across all German universities.

Moreover, German universities do not have their own sport facilities and luxurious campuses as their American counterparts. Normally, for sports, there is a shared facility for all local universities and you pay an extra semester ticket to have access. The average German university has old facilities and no luxuries. Thus, the cost base is completely different to universities in the US.

Back then, we were told that Germany offers education to foreigners to foster relations with foreign countries. If we foreigners study in Germany and are shaped the German way, once we go home, not only we will be well qualified, but also we will be keen to establish business relations with German companies.

During my study times, around 2006, they introduced at my university fees for everyone. The idea was not popular and it was not covering the cost of education. The idea did not last long. Some years later it went back to be free for everyone. German universities are very left-leaning and in the German society there is a wide consensus that university education should be free for all.

The CDU and FDP, two political parties on the right spectrum, constantly push the idea of charging foreign students to help finance public education, but the idea has never gotten any type of support in the society.

It is the same situation in Norway. International students pay no tuition (and we have the same debate here whether to continue this situation...).

On the other hand, living costs in Norway are quite high.

Are courses in Norwegian?

None of the comp. sci. courses I have been to at least. Norwegian lecturers will usually ask if anyone does not speak Norwegian. This is at masters level at UiO; I am not sure about bachelor courses.

Bachelor's level courses are in Norwegian.

In my mathematics education, the standard has been that first year courses are "almost always" taught in Norwegian, whereas second year and higher are taught in English if there are non-Norwegians present.

One argument, not made, is that it may help German students too. Having various nationalities at home expose them to other ways of thinking. And it increases their abilities to deal with them culturally later in life/business.

I do find a parallel, at a completely different scale, with the strategy of Loh, the coach of the US high-school team for the Math Olympiads. An important part of his strategy is to invite his international opponents to train with his team. It is counter intuitive, but he says it makes his team better, and they're less scared of competition. They won twice in a row since.

NYT article: https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/wordplay/2016/07/18/imo-201...

> starting in fall 2017, the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg will start charging non-E.U. students 1,500 euros ($1,634) per semester

That's still incredibly cheap for a quality university degree.

It's cheap but not quality.

> It's cheap but not quality.

Do you care to elaborate on that? If I look at the Times Higher Education ranking for Teaching, I see e.g. Heidelberg University on world rank 43:

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin...

(Just picked because it's the first university in Baden-Württemberg I found; obviously, for specific subjects the rankings might vary a bit.)

That's not MIT or Harvard, but if that's your standard of "quality" than very few people in the world will have "quality" education.

In Baden-Württemberg, KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) is the "place to go" in computer science.

My country, Argentina, does the same just in case you want to study here. The courses are obviously in Spanish. Postgraduate studies are paid.

Would you have more information? Definitely interested!

Information from the government here: http://elbno.cancilleria.gov.ar/en/node/5176

In my opinion, unless German IT companies accept to work in English because available workforce in neighbor countries already know English, or they're going to have problems attracting world-class talent. I.e. accepting as "acceptable behavior" people not willing to learn German as a requirement.

Many big companies (like SAP) are totally fine with English only. I know a lot of people working in Germany for many years already, almost without speaking a word in German.

> German IT companies accept to work in English because available workforce in neighbor countries already know English

Let's look at the neighbor countries of Germany and my impressions of their German language skills:

Austria: German is spoken there

Belgium: ?

Czechia: Czechs who want to work in Germany often know German (to me) surprisingly well (this can perhaps be explained by German history (keyword: Sudetenland))

Denmark: ?

France: French people IMHO are typically neither good at English nor German

Luxembourg: German is one of the languages spoken there

the Netherlands: They typically know German quite well (though they often don't like using this language)

Poland: Poles who want to work in Germany often know German (to me) surprisingly well (this can perhaps be explained by the German history with the historical expanse of the German Reich)

Switzerland: German is one of the languages spoken there (not that the Swiss would prefer to work in Germany over their own country for obvious reasons)

TLDR: In many Germany's neighboring countries it is common to know German on a decent level - at least if you plan to work in Germany. If there was I second language from a neighboring country in which work should be accepted, this should rather be French (for France and Belgium) instead of English.

> TLDR: In many Germany's neighboring countries it is common to know German on a decent level - at least if you plan to work in Germany. If there was I second language from a neighboring country in which work should be accepted, this should rather be French (for France and Belgium) instead of English.

Sure, e.g. I did myself one year of German courses (I forgot most of it, because it was long time ago). In my opinion the point is to make attractive world-class talent for working in Germany, even for short periods of time. I.e. the "nationalist barrier", that is still very strong in Germany and also e.g. in France, in my opinion hurts badly IT companies (fortunately, now is a much smaller problem versus how it was 15-20 years ago, when it was very difficult to work in Germany or France with just English).

In my opinion, unless European Union countries become more pragmatic, accepting the English as the "IT language", or the handicap for hiring world-class talent will still be a issue, for both the internal EU job market, and also for getting international talent (e.g. a talented Indian would try first to work in the USA or the UK just because he already did English in the school, being ha handicap having to learn French or German for a temporary job).

You explicitly talked of "neighboring countries" of Germany - here I provided evidence that the situation is different.

> being ha handicap having to learn French or German for a temporary job

Here I rather see the problem: The people only want a temporary job in Germany - so they see Germany just as a stepping stone for their career. If I were a staff manager at a company, I would be very cautious to hire such a person, since in Germany it is seen as a desirable trait that a person does not switch jobs every few years. There are "legal period of notice" which hold for both sides: An employer can after some probation period not simply fire an employee without a period of notice, but the other implication does also hold: After the probation period an employee cannot simply quit the job without a period of notice, too.

Well, for neighboring countries I meant EU countries. You can have near unlimited low-qualification worker supply from your strictly speaking neighboring countries, but not necessarily world-class skilled workers, specially, if those workers willing to move from one country to another can pick options with less conditions. Also, you can have potential supply, not willing to move, just because of nationalist stuff (forced "integration") or other elements that could make a country less attractive than another.

Don't get me wrong: I would love Germany, and all EU countries getting as much talent as possible, from the internal EU area, and also from other countries as well. I'm worried about nationalism and the lack of pragmatism ruining job flexibility and business attractiveness, so European companies have such a huge handicap for competing in the international market.

> Well, for neighboring countries I meant EU countries.

There are only three EU countries (UK, Ireland, Malta) where English is an official language - soon there will be only two. For comparison: German is official language in four EU countries (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg) and French in three (France, Belgium, Luxembourg).

Now let's look at data for language knowledge in the EU:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Languages_of_the_...

The most common first language in the EU is German. Other important first languages are English, French and Italian (this table has not yet included the fact that soon for English this number has to be much lower).

Totally (in number of native and non-native speakers) English (51%) looks more important than German (32%) or French (26%).

Now I tell you an observation: When (EU) people are talking that they know English as an additional language, this often means "really bad English" (just try to converse with Italians in English ;-) ). This is clearly not sufficient knowledge for using English in a professional environment. On the other hand when they claim to know German or French as an additional language, this typically promises much better language skills than if such a claim is made for English by some person. So I would argue that "people knowing enough of the language such that in, say, half a year they could use this language in a professional environment" for English the "51%" must be made smaller by a lot, while for German and French a similar correction should be much more minor.

Really: On a wordwide scale English might have a large role, but if you talk about EU, there are other languages (in particular German and French) that are at least of similar importance "for EU purposes" (just as in South America Spanish and Portuguese are the important languages and not English) - and with Brexit their importance will surely even increase.

English is the lingua franca in IT, worldwide. Everyone in IT knows it, to some extent. And even general population get English as second or third language. English teaching is generalized at developed countries, while German it is not.

P.S. My English is also "bad", being a Spaniard myself, but enough for working in English in IT (not for writing novels, obviously).

> English is the lingua franca in IT, worldwide. Everyone in IT knows it, to some extent.

At an internship at a German-French software company there also was a French programming department (alongside the German one, where I interned). I can assure you: They hardly knew English, at best it was a mixture between French and English, where to understand the English (in the source code) you often had to translate it back to French in your mind (because otherwise it made no sense).

Sure, that's precisely what I'm warning about: if you need to adapt to the international market you can not wait 2 or 3 years for someone to adapt to a local "circumstance". Not taking advance that in all EU countries English is at least in primary and secondary education, it is a mistake, in my opinion. More pragmatism in IT through the EU would increase the capability for reaching regional full potential.

E.g. Imagine you're in Germany and you can not hire an expert in some specific specialty because language issues (i.e. because your staff is not able to work in English). Also, when doing collaboration between European companies: imagine having to deal with documentation written in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, etc. Fortunately, most European IT companies do most of the code and documentation in English (that was not the case of 20-30 years ago, e.g. Imagine having to reprogram 6502 assembly stuff commented in French -or a CPU-less logic circuit, for adding more fun-, or understanding the German documentation for a 25 year old ticket issue machine built in Austria).

I live and work in the Berlin startup world: "English is a must, German is a plus" is the status quo.

I'm interested in setting up a small non-profit school for poor, young adults in Indonesia to teach them German and other skills necessary for admission to Studienkolleg (the one-year preparatory course for foreign students wishing to apply to a German university).

The main goal is to get the student a good IT job in Germany within 5 or 6 years. In return, the student must commit to giving a percentage of his or her income back to the school, so the school can grow without requiring external donations.

What does HN think of this plan? Is it achievable? If not, what is the most likely cause of failure?

PS: If anyone knows a good lawyer in Indonesia for setting up a yayasan or obtaining KITAS please contact me - see profile.

Is there a fixed quota for the number of international students studying at German universities?

That is, if the number of international student applications doubled would it make it harder for German students to be accepted into university?

To my knowledge there is no quota either for foreign students or students in general. If we'd get twice as many applications in one year, we have to fit twice as many people in the lecture halls. In Germany, education is actually a right and a lot of people sue their way into universities when they are rejected based on their grades.

I'm a graduating senior in India, interested in studying math as an undergraduate.

Considering that I know some German (~B1), could this work out for me?

I would advice you to learn till C1 level. B1 is not enough and Bachelor in Math is mostly in German and you must take TestDAF, so I think you should spend one year or so clearing upto C1 and TestDAF, which is highly advisable. But you can also do the same in Germany, but you have to spend more money in Germany. Since your German level is good, maybe you can find a part time job, but that's no guaranteed thing.

Math is normally exclusively taught in German and it's not the simple kind of German, either.

I came to Germany in 2001 to work as a scientist knowing no German at all. It worked out pretty very well for me.

Certainly laudable. How does one "stick around" after graduation - do you have to learn German?

While you can "survive" in Germany w/o German and may be able to work in an international IT company when it comes to "living" I have yet to see people sticking around longer who did not learn German.

Depends here you are. I have 20+ British / American friends in Berlin none of whom speak fluent German and get on just fine.

As a native German, I'd say it is essential in most parts of the country, except in a few urban areas such as Berlin or maybe Munich. But generally, for integration purposes (and also for better dealing with the infamous German bureaucracy), staying in Germany without learning German would become pretty painful after a while.

Depends on the area of work I guess. It's not that uncommon to have English as company language in startups or IT companies in general, but even if not you'll get around with English just fine.

Thanks flohofwoe, thats' kind of what I was really curious to know.

Some large international companies, Dräger where I live, for example, have fully English departments (they employ a lot of grad students and post docs). But when those who never planned to stay forever start learning German soon after they arrive.

do you have to learn German?

Why wouldn't you want to? It's a lovely country, with a huge body of literature that you'd deprive yourself of if you refuse to learn the language. And why isolate yourself from the locals? Weird attitude, that.

They didn't say they didn't want to did they? You imagined that. It'd be fantastic to be able to learn the languages of all the countries you visit, but not everyone finds that easy do they.

The OP didn't talk about visiting a country, he asked about settling in Germany. The words were "do you have to", not "I wish I could"; he made learning your adopted country's language sound like a chore instead of a challenge. Full immersion makes the learning process much easier.

Besides, taking citizenship of any country requires a language exam.

Ok. I apologize. I should have been clearer.

By "stick around" I really meant stay/work for a few years (like 5 or 6 years) not settle down permanently in Germany. And yes, I agree if you going to live permanently in a country you should know the local language and also imbibe the local culture to a certain point.

Thanks.

You probably will need to learn german and to find an employer that likes you enough to jump the beurocracy hoops for you (signing that they couldn't find any germans to do the job with some proof of rejected german candidates).

Yes, you have to learn German. You should learn the language of any country you are staying long-term. It's not that hard.

Several places in Europe are like this. E.g. in my home country Norway you also don't have to pay tuition: https://www.studyinnorway.no/study-in-norway/Tuition, and a lot of courses are taught in english. In the Netherlands all master level degrees at all universities are taught in english if there are any non-dutch speakers in class.

Both Norway and the Netherlands are perhaps easier if you don't speak the native language than Germany as pretty much everybody speaks quite good english in both places. I have friends in Norway I've known over decades who still don't speak a word of Norwegian.

For an english speaker dutch is probably easier to learn than German, as dutch is closer to english. E.g. "I sit in the train and drink water", in dutch becomes something like "Ik sit in de trein en drink water". Not sure about Norwegian, but it is probably an easier language than German. Not quite as complicated grammar.

Having studied at very different universities with respect to ranking, I got to say I don't think ranking means very much for the average student. It is overhyped, I can't see a huge difference. Ultimately results are going to depend on you and your efforts.

In fact there has been studies of this. Ivy League universities don't actually improve your grades or earning prospects. It just looks like that due to creaming. But when they compare SAT scores of students who could get into an Ivy League but chose not to with those who did, one doesn't see a difference in salary afterwards: https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/the-college-solution/...

I read in another study that if you are at the lower tier in an ivy league you will actually end up worse, because it will kill your confidence to be around so many people smarter than you. Go to a normal college where you are among the better and it will boost your confidence and ability to excel.

And many might already have read that Google does in fact not favor ivy league students as they are typically to dependent on external drive, grades etc, rather than internal drive to make good products which is what matters at google.

Anyway I think people should focus more on going a place they would enjoy. I think many European universities are very nice to attend because in Europe there are lots of cities which are easy to walk and with great public transport. That makes life a lot nicer for students. You can easily get around town and do all sorts of stuff, either, with bike, walking, tram, bus etc. Also at least in northern Europe societies tend to offer more freedom for youngsters. I've studied in the US for a year and found it too restrictive. There is too much control on young people. You can't drink until 21. Dormitories have a lot of rules and are gender segregated. In e.g. Norway or the Netherlands, student housing means sharing a real apartment with people. You got mixed gender and you cook food together, can invite people over, come and go when you like.

You still need rich parents, because you're not allowed to work much to support yourself.

Hint: This is the same for every student. If you want to work full-time you need to make your studies half-time.

Germans can get state-support ("Bafög") if the parents can't support, they can work self-employed and they can take non-"student-jobs" which opens the possibility to earn significantly more than minimum-wage.

They can also work more than 20h/week, loose their student-status and still study.

You mean a total of 1.5x full-time?

Or 30h and taking a bit longer with the studying. Actually I'm not sure if things changed a bit with the bachlor/master system though.

A German student visa allows you to work 120 days per year [0]. At minimum wage [1] that is about EUR 9,000 per year. I think there would be many international students who could support themselves with that. Standard of living would be low compared to Germans, but it's possible.

You do however need to show you have EUR 8,640 before you get the student visa [2]. Very poor families would not be able to borrow this amount, so it acts as a barrier for them.

[0] https://www.daad.de/deutschland/in-deutschland/arbeit/en/914...

[1] https://www.google.com.au/publicdata/explore?ds=ml9s8a132hlg...

[2] https://www.daad.de/deutschland/nach-deutschland/bewerbung/e...

With a flexible employer that might be achievable indeed. With working 2 days a week you'll end up with 5-6000 eur.

At least minimum wage. You can aern a lot more as a computer science student and probably in other fields.

You grow them, we poach them, they build it, you buy it. What a nice little buisness model. Could be very historic soon.

I wonder if with youtube lectures and automated courseware- open source universitys could be errected in nearly any country. Finance the food, finance the healthcare and roof, and those students could study anywhere.

Another possible reason - they may well have little choice! Lists of top ranked universities are generally dominated by the US/UK. In this list the highest ranked German institution is at number 30: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin...

It's always going to be hard to charge the same as a competitor when your product is inferior.

You can't really think the instruction at these institutions is inferior. US are masters of hype and marketing and UK are masters of prestige.

I'm just going by the rankings. There are several of these lists, and the overall picture is pretty similar - the best universities are judged to be US/UK, with the odd sprinkling of European/Asian in the top ranks.

Most of these rankings do not directly measure quality of instruction (because that would be difficult), and rely on proxies instead.

E.g. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin... shows that 33% of the ranking are determined by reputation, which gives universities in English speaking countries an advantage by way of availability.

ITT: butthurt germans

Most of the top universities in the US are effectively free. The pool of students they get to choose from would enter with a basket of scholarship money to the point they wouldn't have to pay. The other group is so wealthy the price of tuition is the cost of a new luxury car, every year. Effectively a single percentage expense.

Germany doesn't have to make their schools to compete free because the schools they compete against are basically free to the type of students they are pursuing.

I see you contradict the very point you are trying to convey there, or I am misunderstanding you

I seriously doubt the average Ivy League/Oxbridge aspirant would ever consider a Germany university as an alternative. Below these few elite universities you have another upper tier which in the UK would be Imperial/UCL/Durham etc. (although some departments in this supposedly lower tier are superior to the top tier). Below that you have another tier, and looking at this tier in the global rankings you are starting to see some German universities crop up. Basically, and I'm not looking to be offensive, but with these universities your market is by definition the more mediocre students, and it is in this group that I think you would start to find students for whom price is more of a priority than quality. Students at the better than average universities expect their degree to deliver a premium that will easily wipe out the cost.

I think there is a fault in your argument. Not all students, use global rankings to make up their minds. It's a matter of perspective. I am fairly confident that most top 5% European students have not considered applying to an Ivy League school or any American university for that matter. Your claim that German universities mainly attract mediocre students is completely unfounded.

Just because some students don't aspire to go to a German university doesn't mean the quality of education would be any worse. Many of my close friends (and me personally as well) did their undergrad in Germany and then a semester abroad and/or their Master's in top-10 universities in the US. I have yet to hear from anyone that they felt in any way more challenged in the US (typically the opposite). Yes studying in the US is great fun compared to Germany (sports, extracurriculars, nice spirit of community, ...) but in terms of learning I doubt there is much of a difference

Same experience. I think despite the ranking, European universities are actually higher quality. American universities use too much student assistants. Too much of the teaching is hand holding and high school like. When I compare my dutch university experience with my American, it was more research oriented in the Netherlands. You learned to think more scientifically. In the US it felt like it was just about learning lots of stuff. Also the grading system in the US is a weak spot. It is usually far too easy to get an A in the US.

I've also have friends who have gone to top US universities, but who mainly can speak of the advantage being that, because they are big, they can offer more variation of course, but with respect to quality there was little difference.

It's a double edged sword. I didn't attend a European university but I have many friends who have. Their complaints were the subjects were book heavy with very little practical overlap. Professors were unreachable, office hours did not exist.

This was for the normal universities. The technical schools are a different animal. Extrememly competitive to the point of mental breakdown. And if that happened? Tough luck, they don't care.

That’s not really true. The big issue is that these university rankings are based almost exclusively on intra-university research.

Generally said, Germany does NOT do University research.

Universities become members of research organizations, where many universities cooperate on some kinds of research, but basically all the research is done within of these organizations. Which means it’s not counted in university ranking.

- mp3, developed at Fraunhofer Institute, does not count for the university ranking of any of the universities the researchers work at.

- Wendelstein 7-X, a milestone in Fusion research at the university of Greifswald, does not count for the University of Greifswald.

Neither do any papers published about them. That’s the big issue of the university rankings.

Top-ranked universities are outliers by definition. The average American university is probably as good or bad as the average German university and yet their tuitions are similar as for top-ranked universities and certainly higher than for any German university.

Are you going to offer any evidence?

Test your hypothesis then, look up tuition for the top 100 on that list and check if there is a clear gradient.

Hint: there isn't.

Here's a test - ask a Chinese person thats in the market for a foreign degree to name a UK or US university they would like to attend, then ask them to name a German university that's on their list. I suspect they won't even be able to name a single German university, let alone consider studying at one.

I went to a UK university that's in the global top 10. Asians I met after uni would often ask where I studied and had always heard of it.

> I suspect they won't even be able to name a single German university, let alone consider studying at one.

You are wrong. In 2015, 30.000 Chinese students were studying at German higher education institutions [1]. That would obviously not be the case if they would never consider studying at a German university. It is true that the US (about 300.000 students [2]) and the UK (about 90.000 students [3]) are more popular.

[1] https://thepienews.com/news/germany-intl-students-up-7-chine...

[2] http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/16/china-us-colleges-educat...

[3] https://institutions.ukcisa.org.uk/Info-for-universities-col...

The Chinese are obsessed with status though, in all manners of life. They want their Gucci bags and an Ivy league degree. This only matters is a status obsessed society. If instead you care about enjoying your time and getting a good education, you would chose different.

The budget of top US universities is at least an order of magnitude higher than the top german universities. I doubt that tuition is the biggest factor though. Donations from alumni is more important. In the US loyalty to your alma mater is cultural. In Germany it is not. The biggest donation ever was 200M€ from an SAP founder [0]. Even two digits are noteworthy in general.

[0] http://spon.de/acq9Z

Ranking has nothing to do with quality of education. It is bullshit. Studies show they don't improve your grades, results or earning potential. They just look good on paper because they do creaming. They got the best research professors and students clustering there which makes their results look good.

But what matters is how much of an improvement does an ivy league mean to a student compared to going to an average ranked university. Turns out it makes no difference. In some cases it actually makes your grades worse. E.g. if you are at the lower tier of a ivy, then it will kill your self esteem and motivation being around so many smart people, that studies show you will perform worse.

Ivy's are like useless luxury products, like a Gucci bag. It is for show off. No wonder asians are so obsessed with university rankings. They are also obsessed with luxury products. That is because those are societies obsessed about showing status and accomplishments.

If OTOH you don't care about superfluous things you don't need an ivy. I've seen how going for Ivy stuff can screw up people. Being around all these bright people, can create an insane expectation on yourself, and if you don't live up to that afterwards, it can haunt you for the rest of your life. Many people would have simply been happier individuals if they dropped the Ivy's altogether.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com