Hacker News Reader

Comment by ido | Hacker News Reader

For comparison in Germany and Austria public universities are mostly free or close to it (a few €100s per year in misc fees).

View on HN

On the other hand, the majority of US college kids would not be able to get into university in Germany nor Austria.

You are comparing apples and oranges. In the US, the best students get scholarship and aid and don't need to pay either (or at least have the option of free education unless they insist on going to a school that does not offer them scholarship). The poorest students don't need to pay. The middle pays for both.

In the German system only the best students are admitted period -- there is no university available for 2/3 of the population. And it only lasts 3 years. You would also be shocked to learn that the US government spends more per capita subsidizing tertiary education than the German government. Except that we also allow non-subsidized students the option of attending at their own cost, so at least they have more options than in the German system, where University education is simply unavailable to them.

Almost all German pupils that want to can study, the old haupt-, realschule and gymnasium system you refer to is a lot less meaningful these days than a few decades ago (e.g. lots of kids can go to a gesamtschule and still get into university even if they weren't admitted to a gymnasium).

Germany is actually a couple of places above the US in the education index (that measures years of schooling): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index

Additionally most vocational schools (Fachhochschule) are also free/cheap in Germany and Austria so even those pupils who can't get into university can still get affordable education.

You can study something somewhere, say at a trade school, or night school, but not at a university and we are talking about university education. We are not talking about secondary education or vocational trade schools. Telling a kid who wants to go to university that they can't do that because their test scores are too low but there is a great refrigeration maintenance vocational school that will accept them does not mean that university education is available to them.

In the US if you have a checkbook and pulse there will be a university that will accept you regardless of your test scores. Not every university, not MIT, but Joe Bob State will take you. Universities even offer remedial education programs so those who are barely literate and innumerate can still enroll, stay longer, and graduate from the university. In Germany you would have been routed out of the system and rerouted to a vocational school, which you are lumping in with a university education by using the vague word "study". "Anyone can study". Well, anyone can study at a library in the US, too, but we are talking about admission to university.

You might want to check what a "Fachhochschule" (University of Applied Sciences) actually is. It is not a vocational school in the way the US understands it. You can get accredited Master's degrees there, but usually no PHDs. The line is blurred though, some actually carry out research nowadays, but often in cooperation with another University.

Yeah not sure why this is downvoted. The US has WAYYYY more colleges and Universities, and in many cases there is no filter on admissions for them. If you can pony up 3 letters of recommendation and a cheque, you're in.

Many of these kids shouldn't go to Uni, and end up taking 5+ years to graduate.

In Germany most of these kids would go to a trade school or apprenticeship.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com