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Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I agree. The pillar of the Humbold University system is holistic learning and research with freedom from "practical" constrains and political interference. In particular it is a model of general education beyond just vocational training.

I also note that in addition to the Fraunhofer institutes which as you rightly say have a applied f9cus there are also the Max Planck Institutes with a much more fundamental focus. In fact I would argue that research in Germany is much more fundamentals focused than in many other countries.

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As far as I know the Universities are generally more research focused in comparison the the "Fachhochschulen". However according to [1] there are simply more Fachhochschulen than universities in Germany - obviously this doesn't say anything about their cumulative size in comparison to each other.

[1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/247238/umfrag...

The Fachhochschulen are an interesting case. Generally they cwn not grant PhDs and are doing quite limited (if any) research. I think this changed a bit in recent years and they are doing more research.

That said, they don't really relate to the topic of the article as they would not have had any influence on the German industrialisation, considering that they only exist since the 1960s.

Sure, there is the tradition of the purely academic Humboldt University in Germany, but there is also a long tradition of vocational training mixed with some theoretical schooling ("Ausbildung"). So there are definitely both strands, and to put fundamental scientific achievements into practice, the second one might matter more.

I don't think so, plumbers, bricklayers etc. are not the ones putting fundamental scientific achievements into practice. That's engineers and other scientists. That doesn't mean the German system of separating vocational training and university training is not useful. However it does actually the opposite of what the original post hypothized, it separates vocational training from universities. Unlike in many other countries, universities in Germany do not do vocational training in general.

There are also Fachhochschulen, "universities of applied sciences", that cover the middle ground between vocational and academic training.

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