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