What American universities can learn from Germany (2016)

Yes and no. Best example I know:you can teach engineering as a very applied trade (basically, here's how to select a technique known to work and here is how to tune it), which is how they tend to do it at the Fachhochschulen, or you can teach it as "here's how previously we stole all the cool ideas from physics and maths and what new techniques we built, you'll hopefully be able to find out how to build on it", which is more common on universities.

Having worked with both, the difference is noticeable. The FH guys are actually usually much better engineers in "standard" problems, cleaner code etc, but if you have to drop down abstraction levels and make your own techniques, the university guys tend to fare better(already filtering out incompetent people). It's a different education, with different goals. One is more general and aims to deepen your general understanding, Hoping you'll be able to derive the techniques. The other focuses more on practical application that will get you a job now and hope you'll learn the deep understanding with time. But there is not as much connection between what is taught as one might think. Likewise, ask any professional trader what they think of academic finance.

My tl,dr is that I think university or something should have the explicit goal of teaching "useless" knowledge with the aim of giving deep understanding. Then everyone who just wants a job can avoid that, and we don't have to water down the curriculum

It's called "skilled trade" for a reason. When the apprentice plumber has passed his apprenticeship everyone knows that this fellow knows his stuff and can follow developments in his field. If you want plumbing done, get a plumber, if you want electric get an electrician. If you want a trained monkey, go to America.

That sounds incompatible with American values on several levels. Locking people into careers and preventing other skilled people from doing similar jobs because they haven't bought into a union or become part of a special group is the source of most things Americans hate about similar systems where we have them.

You are right and I think half of the people here did not understand the difference between 'Duales Studium' and 'Duale Ausbildung'.

But on the other hand, I don't quite get what the Universities have to do with the dual education System?!? I mean, as far as I know, Universities are specialized in higher education.

I totally agree that stratification at age 10 is pretty terrible, but stratification in universities seems like a very different story.

At college age, people are much more capable of making their own decisions, and their actual capabilities and weaknesses have also become clearer and more stable. And it's not like going to a Fachhochschule is going to set someone up for a hard life as being assigned to a Hauptschule pretty much does.

Oftentimes it's a funding issue, but not always. Even in large metropolitan cities where each student pretty much receives the same amount of funding, there are still massive differences in the quality of education. Unfortunately the issue goes much deeper than funding and involves issues like the wealth of the surrounding neighborhood, the culture of the students and their parents in that neighborhood, etc. Even if two schools in the same city get about $10k/year for each student, if one school has a median family income of $100k and the other a median family income of $15k, there is going to be an absolutely massive difference in educational outcomes.

Then build more universities?

This is probably a good thing. Too many students waste time and money performing the surface-level ritual of college without any of the substance that the surface-level ritual is meant to support.

Spending four years in a cloister of like-minded folks, free from banal concerns like work and meal prep, is a framework built for a specific purpose. Going to class, reading books, writing papers, working problem sets, taking exams, etc. are concrete, observable, trivially emulated behaviors meant to support and facilitate that purpose, not the purpose itself: absorbing, grappling with, and applying ideas.

An enormous segment of existing seats in undergrad - entire institutions - are built around cargo-culting actual higher education through trivial busywork, graded to low standards. These seats are the worst offenders in the student debt problem: students are allowed to waste years of their lives, and all the money they can borrow, on performing a ritual that everyone else knows is hollow. We need to be aggressively closing party schools, not adding more of them.

Another enormous segment of seats in freshman classes (at institutions with relaxed admissions but reasonable grading, like most state flagships) goes to people who will not graduate within six years. In some states, this is over half the college-bound population. These are a similar waste of time and money, and their occupants will not even have a fancy piece of paper to show for the time they spent filling these seats. We don't need more slots in state colleges, we need close to a 50% reduction.

There are few people with the mental horsepower for the intellectual work that college is really about. Fewer still with the desire and determination to put in the work on a sustained basis. This population already fits comfortably into existing elite schools and the better departments of existing average schools. It's crucial to find every single one of these kids and get them to an institution where they will be challenged and thrive, regardless of their socioeconomic circumstances. It's crucial to make sure their rightful slots are not taken up by the mediocre children of the well-connected, though the upper middle class will have earned a disproportionate share through cultural practices and beliefs. But trying to get more people from outside this population perform the ritual college is a fool's errand.

Expanding the population of students who can legitimately attack higher education by increasing the rigor and effectiveness of K12 is, on the other hand, a great idea.

>Yes its flawed but not to the extreme like you suggest. One of the biggest problems we have, and this I think is common to almost all countries, is that there is very little emphasis on applied knowledge and much more on theoretical knowledge. The duale Studium is a better way to attack the problem than anything else currently out there IMHO.

As I've argued in a differnet post, the problem isn't too little theoretical knowledge, it's that uni is just seen as "the highest" and people who just want practical knowledge go to a place which is supposed to give you deep insight into the theories and research in your field because it gives the status qualification.

>Another problem we have is that motivations are flawed for our Professors. Many Professors want to conduct research and don't care about teaching the material, on the other hand you have some Professors that don't want to research and would just enjoy teaching the material, yet everyone is incentivized to conduct research because its the only way to progress. I think this is fundamentally wrong. Its bad for the students and bad for the professors. If a professor just wants to teach he/she should be allowed to focus on that area and be judged by how well his students can actually apply the learning they acquired in the course. If a professor wants to research he should be judged by his research.

This follows from my point above. We mix "I just want a job students" with "give me moar theory" students and the profs who (anecdotally) love dealing with the second type (explaining things to interested newbs is stimulating for insight) have to dumb down things enough so the job hunters can get their employer mandated checkmark

>There are so many other problem areas as well, for instance, I think we should allow much more mobility between disciplines than is currently the case. I've studied computer science and although I'm quite familiar with computational finance I would probably not be allowed to get a Phd in Finance since I've never taken business/economics courses. Although if you tested me on any number of financial subjects I wouldn't have a problem describing how to model/analyze/forecast the data. So there are a lot of arbitrary hoops that keep people down and force you to not to change you field of study.

That I actually have to disagree with...I know loads of CS and EE majors in economics, the reverse less but also. Especially at the PhD level, as long as you did something relevant, you can get in.

> Its also very difficult for older people mid career to get a degree and increase their personal capital that way. These again are just some problems that we need to address but "flawed in the extreme" - I tend to disagree on that one.

This is indeed a problem, but for example my alma mater has started offering part time degrees, with 25% of the workload required per semester and twice the allowed maxmimum study time. So there is change

> and then noticed the kids are completely overloaded

eh? of course they are overloaded. most schools have still nearly no school at the noon. school in germany is from ca. ~8-~13 on two days you also have 2 days at noon. sometimes even 3 days, but not that many hours, you NEVER actually have something like 8 hours. of course sticking more and more (the humanity learned more over the years and history is growing) into a max of 25 hours per week is challenging.

also I know the "need more workers" problem. my company needs more people, but it's hard to find one. especially trained ones. yeah we can raise one, however even after the "ausbildung" our trainee will not be as productive as he could be. a lot of that comes from the schools you maybe get said that you need to do things, but kids these days don't care, their school life is so extremly peaceful (and a lot of them don't like it, anyway). I was a "rebel", in these years, too. but I learned my lessons that if I raise my ass that I can make more money and be happier at the end and that I don't want to be a work puppy. but a lot of people here don't realise that in school and they never will, cause our system is extremly flawed. even in sports, we don't get prepared for the real life. we get prepared for the tests in our school life.

I probably know more than you, or at least I have better reading comprehension:

"By contrast, countries like Germany pursue a “dual educational” model that blends classroom education with on-the-job training through apprenticeships, equipping young people not bound for university with practical labor-market skills. From the beginning of the journey from school to work, dual-system participants establish close relationships with employers. Companies sign contracts with young people (typically around age 15 or 16) and provide them an hourly wage just below that of an entry-level worker. On-the-job training typically comprises two-thirds of the curriculum in the dual system."

This is clearly referring to "Duale Ausbildung", not "Duales Studium". The vast majority of people that study at university ("Studium") never do "Duales Studium", that's more of a novelty.

> Have you actually learned a real craft, in germany, or looked at it's curriculum? Because they learn a lot more than could be thought in 6 weeks. You could argue that they won't need it for the things their employer needs them to do when they work, but they learn it anyway. If they switch jobs later they won't need that much training.

Yes, they learn a lot of stuff they won't need for the actual job they will perform. If they switch jobs, they probably won't need it either, unless it's a very related job. For instance, if they become a painter, they learn all kinds of painting techniques that they will never apply. That's all fine and dandy, except if they just want to work painting houses, why they have to spend three years as an apprentice?

> But at the Berufsschule you still learn all the other stuff, for an example how to wire electrical Garage doors. If you later decide to switch Jobs, you'll be prepared.

If you already knew the one thing, chances are you could've quickly learned the other thing as well. Otherwise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it

Absolutely. I just say that not the majority is doing this.

What's wrong with this? Starting out in sales with a three year (not very well paid) apprenticeship still sounds a lot better to me than paying for college for four years, amassing a huge amount of debt and then going to work in sales afterwards with zero real world experience.

If someone wants to take up a certain trade, why is it stupid to teach him the necessary skills for that trade? It seems much less wasteful to me than a system in which everyone goes to college for four years and racks up a bunch of debt for an education that is ultimately of little value to most.