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> Nowadays, there are quite a lot of classes that you have to sit in (depends a lot on the university and courses)

Higher education institutions are bound by the "freedom of study" ("Freiheit des Studiums") derived from the provisions on academic freedom in the German constitution (Art. 5 Grundgesetz) and explicitly formulated in the Framework Act for Higher Education (§ 4 Hochschulrahmengesetz). Also it is not directly mentioned, the legal interpretative tradition of these provisions tends to be that the freedom of study implies that compulsory attendance is only permissible if a certain study content cannot be acquired autonomously (e.g. for laboratory courses or seminar discussions). As this is not usually the case for simple lectures, compulsory attendance may not be required for them. I myself was involved in drafting study regulations in the late 2000s in which this had to be specifically taken into account. I am aware that not everywhere such attention is given to this and that there exist different opinions about the exact limits of the freedom of study. However, study regulations that include extensive attendance requirements run the risk of not standing up to legal scrutiny.

> the matriculant is now a full-fledged student, free to come and go at will. Absolutely no restrictions are placed upon him, he may attend all lectures or no lectures. He wears no academic dress, he lives in no dormitory." -------- This was true mostly all the way up until the bachelor reforms in the 2000s

I matriculated in the UK in 2013 and that was exactly my experience. I agree with you it could be a current description, the American experience at least as portrayed in film etc. - even that they call it 'school' - seems much more juvenile, for want of a better word.

As I understood it, I paid for the exams, and the accreditation if I passed them. The lectures were presented at the university's and lecturer's will, and attended at mine. No 'meal card'; halls in first year, but that was pretty much just a rent paid as it would be privately thereafter, albeit subsidised; no 'counsellor'.

American here. It doesn’t sound any different. Our university is not like Hollywood movies make it out to be.

Having walked (as a tourist without a car) through an American university campus on the day of a baseball match, some parts of the movies are accurate.

The decorated frat houses with passed-out guys on the lawn outside.

The enormous stadium in the centre.

Thousands of people (all students?) wearing team shirts.

Some sort of isolation, there were massive motorways around the university, barely any public transport and little space for walking, which may explain why I saw so few students in the nearby city centre.

I have 2 daughters at a public US university. There is tons of pedestrian traffic, and plenty of busses. Some students have cars, but parking is very limited. My daughters walk everywhere, or get a bus. Some kids use bikes or scooters.

No doubt especially that part varies, but I checked Google Maps for the university I walked through. There's a half-hourly bus on one side of the campus, and a bus every 45 minutes on the other side. There are several enormous parking garages.

Universities in similarly-sized European cities have at least a metro station, if not two, and many more bus lines.

Are you talking about public transit connections to the university? That’s a valid, but general complaint about American mass transit and car culture.

But almost every university I’ve been to is closed off from cars and walkable. Students walk on campus to get everywhere. Most students don’t own cars.

I passed frat houses most days during four years of college, and do not remember ever seeing anyone passed out on the lawn outside. I don't doubt that many of them drank too much, but they must have been able to make it in the door while still semi-vertical.

A lot of American universities were built out in the countryside or in small towns rather than in major cities, following I guess the Oxbridge tradition rather than the continental. In many cases they dominate a town that grew up around them, which doesn't always have much of a city center to it. I'm curious to know which city center they weren't found in.

Same here for me, graduated in 1977, Exeter Uni. Physics Department. But it varied from department to department, lectures were compulsory in Law for instance.

I taught at an UK university not long after that (2018), and there definitely was lots of mandatory assistance and general babying.

> This was true mostly all the way up until the bachelor reforms in the 2000s. Nowadays, there are quite a lot of classes that you have to sit in (depends a lot on the university and courses)

It varies a lot. In our university in the 2010s, nearly no computer science course had attendance requirements, but it was somewhat common in business administration (maybe one third of courses with mandatory attendance)

With the reforms since then, I think the general modus operandi now is that lectures do not require attendance, however almost every course has tutorials with attendance and weekly assignments. If or how this is enforced is completely up to the professor though, and some do not care.

> however almost every course has tutorials with attendance and weekly assignments

I don't think this is true for the vast majority of majors. Admittedly, in the natural sciences it tends to be more common to have weekly assignments but whether they are mandatory (or can be made so) or not depends on the university and has also been the subject of legal disputes. Mandatory attendance of tutorials, however? I've only ever heard that of medicine but those guys are crazy, anyway. (They basically saw your skull open and try to stuff as much in there in as little time as possible until you puke it out again during your exam. Not sure that's an effective method to learn…)

No, medicine students resembled to me rather like a sponge that is never filled yet never forgets a detail.

In one of my CS/math courses, the professor told us that he never went to class when he was an undergrad, so he didn't expect us to, but it would probably be a worthwhile trek from your bedroom.

I wonder if they already did the knocking on tables instead of clapping at the end of a lecture thing back then

Most likely. Although the exact origins of this tradition are unclear, there's evidence that this practice reaches as far back as the 18th century.

Brings back memories! Now in the US it feels weird just leaving the lecture hall without clapping or knocking

> academisches viertel

That's probably where Swedish universities got it from ("akademisk kvart").

At least back in the 90s, typical blocks for four 45+45 minute lectures a day were:

Before lunch:

08.15-09.00, 09.15-10.00

10.15-11.00, 11.15-12.00

After lunch:

13.15-14.00, 14.15-15.00

15.15-16.00, 16.15-17.00

There was a whole lot of shuffling around to get coffee/coke/pepsi and some sweets during those 15-minute breaks.

Same in Portugal.

>the matriculant is now a full-fledged student, free to come and go at will. Absolutely no restrictions are placed upon him, he may attend all lectures or no lectures. He wears no academic dress, he lives in no dormitory.

That's just normal university life, though.

It wasn’t in the US when this was written and for half a century after.

> Though in loco parentis continues to apply to primary and secondary education in the U.S., application of the concept has largely disappeared in higher education. This was not always the case.

> Prior to the 1960s, undergraduates were subject to many restrictions on their private lives. Women were generally subject to curfews as early as 10 pm, and dormitories were sex-segregated. Some universities expelled students—especially female students—who were deemed "morally" undesirable. More importantly, universities saw fit to restrict freedom of speech, on campus, often forbidding organizations out of favor or with different views from speaking, organizing, demonstrating, or otherwise acting on campus. These restrictions were severely criticized by the student movements of the 1960s,[9] and the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley formed partly on account of them, inspiring students elsewhere to step up their opposition.[10]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_loco_parentis

Although some of those restrictions were still there at a lot of universities in the US as late as the 1980s when I was an undergraduate. There were still dorms that were all male and all female and rules that you had to stay in one at least for your first year of university.

> More importantly, universities saw fit to restrict freedom of speech, on campus, often forbidding organizations out of favor or with different views from speaking, organizing, demonstrating, or otherwise acting on campus. These restrictions were severely criticized by the student movements of the 1960s,[9] and the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley formed partly on account of them, inspiring students elsewhere to step up their opposition.

Off-topic, but I always find it funny to know that during his time as governor, "freedom-loving" Reagan had students shot for that particular crime.

> Meine Herren und Damen!” (the order is signiﬁcant)" -------- Nowadays, it's the other way around ("Meine Damen und Herren").

It’s usually meine Damen und Herren, as it is in English (Ladies and Gentlemen).

In fact the only reference I can find to it being the other way round is in the first speech given by a woman in the German parliament in 1919.

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Juchacz

For me this sounds just like the lecturer inserted some casual sexism.

I can say from my own experience at least at my university, that "Altherrenhumor" ("old gentleman humor") like this is still very common in German engineering lectures even today, or at least well into the 2010s.

I would even call such a re-ordering of the genders in the greeting very tame. If you are a woman, you better come to your lectures on time. If you enter the hall half a minute late, the entire hall would whistle at you and cat-call you. Sometimes with support of the lecturer, who would consider it appropriate hazing for "disturbing" the lecture by being late.

At least there started to be at least some sort of push-back by the administration during the years in which I studied, and the really bad stuff only seemed to happen in classes dominated by the mechanical engineers.

Berekley also starts classes 10 minutes or 15 minutes past the hour