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Comment by aleph_minus_one | Hacker News Reader

> I was surprised that Germany doesn't offer a similar pathway to a Bachelors in Engineering for its vocational program students.

Germany does, though in a different way:

Normally, to study, you need an Abitur (Allgemeine Hochschulreife) high school diploma from your school [1] to study at a university (Hauptschulabschluss or mittlere Reife (these kinds of high school diplomas are hard to translate into English)).

Recently, it has become possible that if you got your vocal training in a technical area and have work practice, you can also study for an engineering degree without gettting Abitur via an evening school.

[1] There exist exceptions like Fachhochschulereife oder fachgebundenes Abitur, but let's not complicate things.

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But does it take 3 years or 4 years to get the engineering degree, after completing vocational training?

In India, you have two paths to earn a Bachelors degree in Engineering - the most popular one is to complete 12 years of schooling (i.e. high school), and then join a college / university to study Engineering for 4 years. Or, you can complete 10 years of schooling, and then join for a vocational Engineering program in a Polytechnic College. These are usually 3 years program. Once you get a Diploma from the Polytechnic college, you then become eligible to join the usual 4 year Engineering Bachelor programs. But, as you have already completed 3 years of Engineering study in a Polytechnic College, you are allowed lateral entry directly to the second year of the Bachelor Engineering program. This means that under both pathways, you get a degree in the same number of years - 12 years of schooling + 4 years for the Bachelors course = 16 years or 10 years of schooling + 3 years for Diploma Engineering course + 3 years for the Bachelor's course = 16 years. (Note that in both cases, this is in a regular day college, and not a part-time or evening college. Those who have done their 3 years Diploma Engineering courses, but also have to work due to financial constraints have the option to study part-time for a Engineering Bachelor's degree in evening classes too. But these usually are 5 or 6 years program if I remember right).

> But does it take 3 years or 4 years to get the engineering degree, after completing vocational training?

You will have the ordinary amount of time at the university.

As I wrote: the time that you save is getting "(fachgebundenes) Abitur" via evening school, which was historically necessary. So you do save time, just not during attending the university.

In the vocational training, one learns practical skills, while the university is there to teach you the theoretical grounding. So, basically nothing that you learned in your vocational training transfers to university. There is a reason why vocational training vs university were historically two completely different and separated kinds of tertiary education.

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