American students head to Germany for free college
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At the same time, being a net importer is not in itself a bad thing. The reason the US doesn't have free college for everyone is not because it is a net importer. The US could afford Germany-style benefits; that's not the problem. Canada probably could too.
i think of countries export to import ratios like personal finance income vs expenditures. if you spend more than you make, where we you get the money to reinvest in yourself. you'll borrow it until you can't make the minimum payments and then default.
There are many reasons why the US does not have free college (taxes too low, universities are run like business now, etc.) but running huge deficits and not having any savings to invest in society is one of the reasons.
No. If everyone strives to be a net exporter, you quickly end up with a race to the bottom.
> i think of countries export to import ratios like personal finance income vs expenditures. if you spend more than you make, where we you get the money to reinvest in yourself. you'll borrow it until you can't make the minimum payments and then default.
This is the wrong way to think about it. The trade deficit is nothing like personal finances/expenditures; this is a common meme in Germany, though, so I understand where you might have gotten the idea from. (Germany is presently dragging down the entire Eurozone with these beliefs.) You are not "borrowing" by having a trade deficit (nor do you have to borrow to have one.) It's just an outflow of currency, which is not particularly harmful to countries printing their own currency.
> There are many reasons why the US does not have free college (taxes too low, universities are run like business now, etc.) but running huge deficits and not having any savings to invest in society is one of the reasons.
This is not a reason at all. The trade deficit has nothing to do with US budget deficits, and the US still has plenty of money to invest back into society. It's a matter of political will and the way the government and education is organized. A lot has changed over the past decade for the worse and the better. Before the recession, there were actually enormous state subsidies to public universities that reduced their cost. During the recession, states began cutting back, which has been a contributor to rising college costs. At the same time, the government has modified the student loan program to be much better: indeed under the program as it now exists it's not really so much a loan as it is a tax on your post-college earnings. At the same time, universities are plagued with large, overpaid bureaucratic administrations, an increasing focus on new amenities, and perhaps even worse, a sense that the more money it costs to attend, the better the college must be. Students are in part rewarding colleges for raising prices - conservatives blame this on the ease of finding loans to pay for school, but I think the situation is more complex. If you had a dramatic restructuring of the US system, say, for example, you slashed public university administration budgets and froze spending on anything non-academic, instituted price controls, and consolidated all the various local, state, and federal programs to fund schools or scholarships, you could probably make college a lot cheaper or even free right now with minimal tax increases. The wealth and resources are already there. There was actually an Obama proposal to make community college free (a small step toward this), which the media estimated would cost 15 billion - chump change in the US budget.
As an aside, college costs are more complicated than people think. In many (most?) states, sufficient academic performance (as measured by an ACT or SAT score) automatically guarantees a full scholarship (or less, depending on your score.)
You also have community colleges, which are much cheaper and allow you to obtain a two year degree and transfer to a four-year university.
Once you get outside of private colleges and the big-name schools (usually on the coasts), public university costs are much reduced. And you can get in even if you're academically terrible, a situation you don't necessarily have in the European systems.
For example: I attended community college for free because of my ACT score. I could have gone directly to university for free, but I chose not to because of my age. I transferred to a four year school, paid for 3 (2.5 undergrad, .5 grad) years with money I earned at a minimum wage job, and then finished out grad school with an assistantship that paid my tuition plus a stipend. I graduated four years ago. This is still easily doable in most of the country. In fact it's still exactly doable if you just go directly to university and don't have to pay anything.
However, Germany - and other € countries - are not printing their own currency.
I've heard the German educational system steers students in these directions early in high school. When I was in high school, we used to have vocational and college prep paths, but they've since ditched that in an effort to "leave no child behind." Now we have a glut of students graduating from community college in a market with low demand for their degrees.
Let's admit that except for being able to transfer those credits to a college of higher prestige, and being granted the same degree from there, community college is of little value. In my area, I can tell you for a fact that the same science and math courses vary greatly in difficulty between the private engineering school I attended, and the local state school. Full-time students knew of this loophole, and took some of these harder classes down the road at the state school.
We have de facto tracking by parental income and social capital. Look at the other thread about high school kids taking AP computer science: AP CS is basically a class that is only offered if the parents agitate for it and the district has the money. Somehow in Mississippi this just doesn't happen, and we are fine with that as a nation. Keeps us wringing our hands about who says what words in the workplace instead of having to make a substantive change in what we offer students.
There are swaths of the US (with power) that benefit from this socioeconomic/cultural capital tracking of students. Keep the poor relatively poor with shitty schools for all, keep the rich rich with private tutoring so their SAT scores get 'em into a decent college, get the immigrant parents to put out good workers by running their kids through prescribed hoops so they can rise a little and be good middle managers and developers. Then we don't have to deal with poor kids with ability or rich kids who are dumb as dirt -- we can say everyone has equal opportunity with clean hands and conscience!
I think you'll find that the people "wringing hands about who says what words in the workplace" (at least, if by that, you are referring to public concern with things like race, gender, and sexual orientation-based harassment) are, in no small part, the same group of people actively concerned about and things like math and science education. They just aren't particularly influential in Mississippi.
The parent comment to my previous one implied that we in the US have equality of opportunity, unlike Germany with its tracking. I am experimenting with the argument that we in the US say all the right things and yet insidiously do worse. Our rhetoric and our reality in the United States don't really line up. My high school had International Baccalaureate classes open to all, but only some kids signed up. How have we built this self-perpetuating organism of inequality that plods along even though we say all sorts of "correct" things? Even in Mississippi people are publicly concerned with race, gender, and sexual-orientation-based harassment. And yet.
* The US is obsessed with race, and tracking makes it too obvious black kids aren't doing as well as white kids.
* Parents all believe their own child is above average regardless of the mathematical implications, and they get very upset if you hint the possibility little Johnny might not be the most intelligent child in his class. Clearly he just doesn't do well on tests.
* Children tend to live up or down to expectations. Obviously you can't make a dumb kid smart by expecting him to be smart, but you can influence the amount of effort he puts into school.
* People have looked at income statistics and decided if we send every child to college they can all be doctors and lawyers, and the toilets will magically clean themselves.
It's not that fascist.
For one, the parents decide which schools their kids go to, the states can only give recommendations (which are regularly ignored by Special Snowflake Parents).
Additionally, the decision is not final. Students can (and do) switch to a higher school form if their grades are good enough, and work their way from the lowest school form to university.
And after a recent reform, they don't even need to, as vocational schools (for which all students are eligible to after 9 years) are now able to grant bachelor degree equivalents.
It happens after the four-year primary school, yes. But as said, the school merely gives recommendations, and the parents can put their children in every (public or private) school they want, only home schooling is heavily restricted (and basically only possible if it's medically necessary).
> and that moves between tracks were infrequent.
From my (limited) personal experience, yes. But there's little bureaucratic obstacles to such a move, as far as I can tell, most don't move because there's little need – even the lowest secondary degree allows you to attain a bachelor of arts (although it's a rather long route and you're looking at a total of 20 or more years via vocational school time versus 15/16 years via university).
i think striving for net exporter is only a race to the bottom if you use one tool to get there. but if a country innovates their way there, is it not a race to the top?
germany finally bent a bit letting the eurozone printing money. i like to see it as germany trying to steer the eurozone into real economic growth rather than fake growth (unleashing new money at a low interest rate(. everyone is applauding the us econmic recovery, but it is not real growth, and they will have to pay the debt piper some day.
i generally agree universities are bloated and to expensive, gravy trains for some, huge financial burdens to most.
i was a community college kid who transferred to a 4 year.
This money is needed to sustain Germany's export as much as it is needed to sustain Greece's and Spain's and Italy's import… because guess where Germany's exports go?
The Eurozone can only function if there's (internally) a trade equilibrium.
In comparison, Singapore does really well on a much lower tax base per capita. Excellent public infrastructure.
Here at the University of applied sciences in Münster, you would have to pay a total 235€ every six month, consisting of a social contribution of 85.44€ and a student body contribution of 145.75€, for which you will get a ticket for free travel by bus or by train inside North Rhine-Westphalia for the whole six month. Some people in here just register because of that ticket. :D
To study in germany, you normally just need to prove that you have a specific amount of money to survive, pay for a flat, food and health insurance. And thats it.
As the website stated, we need skilled immigrants, because with a birth rate of just 1.3 childs per woman, the germans are slowly dying out, not to mention that our society is getting older and older like the one in japan. Attracting foreign students with a nearly free college is a great and very cheap way of getting highly skilled workers, its makes perfect sense.
I don't even know how to set commas right in German, let alone in English...
I had wondered why the German taxpayers would be so generous to American students. Perhaps this will last longer than I expected, especially if some of the students hang around after graduation. I can't imagine it being official policy, but the obvious way to hook people into staying would be to get them married to Germans before graduation.
This is exactly the way University admission should be handled. It's much the same throughout Europe and the UK. I would hate to have had to go through the hoop jumping exercise of the US college admission process with all of the emphasis on extracurricular activities and proving that I'm the 'right kind of person' for them.
To apply in the UK, I sent a form with my exam results, and that was it. I could have added a 'personal essay' but didn't even bother. Not sure if this has changed much, but I hope it hasn't...
So there are no prep classes or anything like that in the UK. Everyone sits the same set of exams (modulo being Scottish or English/Welsh/NI, which have different types of qualification) and those results dictate whether you can go to University or not. I suppose you could study more if you wanted?
Rich parents can of course help their kids be better in school, but there is no efficient exam prepping.
The last two years of school are generally a prep course for the German SAT equivalent (and grades in those two years account for around two thirds of the final score).
In which case schools located in areas with a higher cost of living are effectively receiving less because any teacher working their, while on an absolute scale making the same, is making less on the more realistic scale that adjusts for cost of living.
(I remember having to choose one lecture to study beforehand and I chose Feynman's introduction to Special Relativity. I didn't even know who Feynman was at the time but really enjoyed his book of lectures, and a couple of years later he became one of my heroes after reading "Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman")
But for any other university, A-level subjects and grades are the only important factor. To take an example, LSE is often the third-ranked university in the country, and they literally have web pages listing grade requirements [1].
Naturally, not everyone has recent UK A-Levels so there's a little flexibility, but the results of standard tests are what drive admissions.
[1] http://www.lse.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/howToApply/departme...
I also think essays and interviews are great ways to assess the candidate's true interest and compatibility with programs.
I studied engineering in Europe. When I went to Boston or London to work it was like I was the boss or something because I was much better prepared than Americans or British.
But Americans have much better job opportunities that make them better than Europeans after working some time in any field.
The world is controlled by the petrodollar and Americans enjoy lots of benefits as a result.
Europe is old and taking risks is so hard here. In Asia it is even harder.
Could you be a little more specific? The size of Europe, America and Asia is too huge for statements like that. There are definitely universities in Europe that are more similar to some in the US than other universities in Europe.
I'm a student in Sweden and I have not experienced anything that supports the quote above.
1: That's right, Finns are paid to study. I think students in most of the Nordic countries are.
edit: formatting
There are scholarships (all over Europe) that depend on acquiring a minimal number of Bologna-credits, and those (at least in some countries) existed since the foundation of the higher education itself.
The grants when I studied in Norway were not huge, but they were unconditional for some number of years as long as you could document that you were still studying (basically it was sufficient to sign up to a couple of courses and attending the exams, whether or not you passed). This was 20 years ago - details may have changed.
I lived on my grants + student loan for the first year of my first startup, by continuing to sign up for a couple of courses which I didn't actually study for (attended may be two lectures...)
In contrast, I studied in UK and getting through university at an Engineering course was very easy if you didn't care about grades too much. You could even fail an exam completely and still be allowed to continue, which is unthinkable in Poland.
The main difference is, that in Poland all that matters is the diploma,not the grades you got, while in UK a diploma with a third or 2-2 grade is nearly worthless. So I think that Universities in Poland are much more careful about actually letting people graduate, while in UK pretty much anyone can graduate,but poor grades make their education worthless.
It's about the philosophy behind it. In Poland (and Romania too, BTW), an institution defends its reputation first and foremost. Somewhere else, it's more business-oriented and the reputation is kept more by marketing than by other means. That is also how "top universities" classification is made - by counting only the highest results, not all of it. It's a nice hack on human mind, as both the students' and the average employers' bells ring when they think of those "top" universities, abstracting away a lot of "uninteresting" information.
Student discounts used to be massive in public transportation, accommodation and almost everywhere, even in some restaurants and bars in academic cities. Nowadays these discounts are not as they used to be, so I don't think it is still a common practice.
You got for free card for public transport, which for Berlin only cost me 80 Euro/month. Also health insurance is somehow cheaper.
I think there is still an age gap, to prohibit people from overusing it.
What do you mean by "I studied engineering in Europe"? London is in Europe.
Fog In Channel Continent Cut Off
This is not unlike the way that the 48 contiguous states of the US are considered 'the continental US'.
Frankly, I find the attitude of some English people towards the continent and Europe as a whole to be somewhat silly.
I understand your objection, but on the other hand there is also a reason of compacting the message sent across that may work for other European countries too. Instead of saying "somewhere outside my country, but here in Europe nevertheless", it goes just "in Europe" taking the speaker's location as a relying context (opposed to "in here", as "in this country").
Great comment. Anyway I will never leave Europe for US/Canada/Australia[1]. I've visited some family in the latter and I feel that the advantages of these countries are not enough to make me live there. Exchanging peace of mind and a huge decrease of life quality for some extra probabilities of being rich and extra consumption doen't worth IMO.
Also have in mind that Germany != Europe
Edit: [1] I'm sure these 3 countries are very different between themselves (I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings), but they are still "new world" countries, where the main goal of voluntary "colonizers" was/is getting rich and be able to consume more than in their native countries. This common goal leads to a lot of similarities between them as, for example, the urbanism: suburbs is a "new world" invention and this will always imply a common lifestyle (car dependency, malls, ..).
And in the next sentence, you remind us that Germany is not Europe.
Before the Canadians lynch you, you should amend your comment to point out that you are very cognizant of the differences between the US and Canada! Australia's different from the others in its own ways, not least of which is that it's on the other side of the planet.
If there's one thing that sets a lot of Canadians off though, it's being considered like some large, deep-frozen 51st state of the US. For one obvious example of the differences, Canada has universal health care.
Also, that's a rather tenuous connection to suburbs. US suburbs mostly developed 200 years after colonization. And 100 years after London (that's "old world", right?) invented suburbs.
I'm sure you agree also that suburbs in "old world" (Europe) don't have such a massive presence that they completely imply a certain lifestyle.
I don't think you understand what it's like to live in the US and Canada as an educated worker.
>* but they are still "new world" countries, where the main goal of voluntary "colonizers" was/is getting rich and be able to consume more than in their native countries.*
Whoa, how are you using the internet back there in 1912? I don't think you understand the reason that English colonists came to America or how America even works today.
Your whole comment reeks of arrogance, ignorance and condescension but hey what do I know? I'm just an new world American, not a cosmopolitan, wise European who is recently celebrating twenty consecutive years without an episode of ethnic cleansing happening on his continent.
[1] I couldn't find a better term to refer to western world outside Europe, I don't have the intention of hurting anybody's feelings.
[2] With "voluntary colonists" I don't mean only English colonists, I mean emmigrants in general.
I'm a European currently living in Canada, who has also traveled the US pretty extensively. The US and Canada aren't really interchangeable. Canada can at times feel like America-lite but in most real ways it's thankfully very different to the US.
I didn't move here because I saw "advantages" regarding personal prosperity, mainly just for the experience. The quality of life here in Toronto isn't a huge difference from what I've experienced in Europe. Comparatively low crime when compared with other major cities on this side of the pond, low poverty, reasonable cost of living relative to IT salaries, etc.
Apart from that, the people are great and really live up to the stereotype and are overall comparatively laid back like in Europe.
What it is lacking though is cultural substance and identity. It's pretty bland. Nothing has any real character. In that way it can feel a bit like a major US city and will be the main reason I move back to Europe in the coming years.
Living and working in the USA is something I'd never consider personally. I'm also approaching 30 and in a few years kids will be along the way, and I would never consider bringing a child up in the US. I don't mean to offend American posters here with this, but what you offer is just not for me, and I could never be a part of something that actively supports the US government and its policies.
But if you were looking for a change I'd suggest giving Canada a shot for a while. It's very different to the other two you've lumped it in with and in great ways and if nothing else it would give you an experience to learn from.
You nailed it. 'Lack of detail', it seems silly but that's what I really miss in the 'new world'.
Marty McFly: What do you mean, Doc? All the best stuff is made in Japan.
Young Doc: Unbelievable.
My favourite advertising slogan and I'm in the UK!
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/18/vorsprung-durch...
[NB Also a big fan of all VW group products!]
While Universities in the UK (and probably the US as well?) boast with their retention rates that seem to approach SLA levels of nine nines, it is the exact opposite in Germany. Some of our universities are proud of their drop-out rates >50%, partly because only good students will get a degree at a good university. But you also have to keep in mind that quite a few courses don't have any entry requirements in many universities (others require a minimum score that consists of your GPA, optional test scores, and other metrics). You just fill out a form, attach a copy of your Abiturzeugnis (A-levels / high-school diploma), and voilà, you're now a student of computer science at one of Germany's top universities. It should not come as a surprise that not everyone finishes their course. In fact, tough exams after a year of study serve to weed out the weaker students. This gives everyone the chance to prove themselves in the subject, not some random test. It is also perfectly normal to change studies in Germany, so being kicked out isn't a disaster by any means (although you should reflect back and see where you went wrong ;))
On the whole, I think it's a lot fairer.
Quite a few could be found in the social-sciences and humanities departments after they were "weeded out" of the hard sciences. Personally, I think this is a crappy way to run things, since it means social-science and humanities professors have to deal with lots of students who are only there for a generic degree they can manage to obtain rather than for the specific degree path.
On the other hand, I put scare-quotes on the "weeded out", because often the precise method of weeding out weaker students is to simply not even try to teach well in the first year or two of math, science, programming, and engineering courses. So for instance, my fiancee actually cleared all her differential and integral calculus requirements via Advanced Placement (exams high-schoolers can take that grant university credits), with perfect scores, but when she tried to take Linear Algebra in our undergrad math department, she found the teaching so bad that she struggled to understand anything at all. Despite this, she pulled an A- in the course and was one of the top three students in her class/section -- but insists she barely understood anything at all.
It really makes me wonder what kind of pedagogical wonders we'd see if university professors were actually trying to teach well in courses below the third year.
It's a lot easier for professor to teach a subject they are enthusiastic about to advanced students than it is to get students interested in an introductory course.
American students are far more complex and broad in their knowledge. And that's a very good thing you shouldn't underestimate. It helps a lot in your career.
Germany loves hierarchy and "conservative" thinking. And that is reflected in every aspect of society, even academic education. The main focus is to produce people that Germany needs. We have a shitload of "Fachidioten" here. That's a good thing, and also a bad thing.
tl;dr If you want to reach for the stars in your career, study somewhere else.
But the German education system isn't like Anglo (e.g., US) systems. 27% of this generation of Germans have post-secondary education, compared to 43% of their American counterparts.
Someone explained to me that this is due to Germany's focus on trades and apprenticeship.
Yeah, the Berufsschulen (vocational schools) mirror the university system with 5+ year trainings that net apprentice/master certifications; and a master is in many trades necessary to be allowed to work as freelancer/found your own company – even for blue collar jobs like plumber, painter or car mechanic.
This has started to erode in the past two decades, though, because all those jobs are being automated and/or outsourced and people try to rush to the universities.
Edit: Apparently, (partially in reaction to this) a Meisterbrief now is considered to be equivalent to a Bachelor of Arts degree.
As the (currently) first post states, americans love the safety of germany and the free education - and the beer. I encourage everybody to come here, then take home what you appreciated and make american universities a better place too (I write this under the impression of suicide reports at MIT and poisoning of competing lab colleagues at stanford, the murder of a visiting german student in Missoula last year). Ignore the german hierarchies. I wouldn't put it as drastic as DrinkWater, but german universities have their little kings at the tops indeed. But this doesn't concern students, only scientists.
The atmosphere is much less competitive here, more a friendly competition that supports teamwork and good science - as it should be.
Have a good time everybody.
Yes, thinking is more narrow here in Germany and the "Fachidioten" that you are referring to are real. However, the depth and thoroughness of domain specific knowledge that you acquire with a German university degree are hard to beat, specifically in Engineering / STEM.
I would even go as far as to say that the top German Engineering Universities (Munich, Darmstadt, Aachen) are comparable to the top US universities in that area (Stanford, MIT, ...).
Now with regards to broadness of thinking and knowledge, it's true that the US values this much higher than Germany and the situation hasn't especially improved with the Bologna process in Germany. However the big argument is that German universities are free and cost of living is low. Then why not study in Germany and get some of the US mentality later in your professional life by working in the US?
I'd argue that valuing choice of college/university too high is a mistake that many people make. Instead figure out first what you want, focus on getting your skills and how to discover new opportunities in life. No college university can really help you with this.
If you major in CS in Denmark, you will take CS courses and only CS courses, to a fairy close approximation (due to staffing this might include 1 or 2 courses taught in the math department, but that's about as far outside the CS department as you're likely to get). Whereas if you major in CS in the U.S., it's frequently the case that there is a "common core" everyone has to take that includes other courses. For example, I did my CS degree in the U.S., and I had to take about 4 semesters of natural sciences (w/labs), 1 of engineering, 6 of mathematics, several humanities courses, etc., in addition to my CS courses. In Denmark a CS student is very unlikely to ever find themselves in the natural-sciences, humanities, or engineering departments (in Copenhagen they aren't even in physical proximity).
As you can see, about a fifth of the of the credits have to come from "support electives (soft skills)" and applied subject courses. I suppose this is quite representative for a German bachelor program.
You also have to keep in mind that the curricula at a US high school and a German Gymnasium are not equivalent. German students at the beginning of their university career on average have the equivalent of at least one year more of school education compared to the US students -- at least that used to be case.
So you will see many highly qualified graduates working as waiters or in startups who pay little to nothing - so they can stay in posh Berlin.
At the same time companies in the countryside have a very, very hard time to get employees.
Apart from that spatial problem, there is one huge drawback: the language. Most of the study programs are still solely taught in German. And the requirements are tough!
I had some classes in English and it was totally weird, as there were never more than 2 students who were not German natives. Quality dropped as well, when you're discussing German philosophy in English, obviously.
I hope that the startups and competition between them will drive up salaries eventually.
Less than €550 per semester for foreign students (if you are Turkic it is cheaper (might be free), or if you are Turkic country citizen, or if you have graduated from a Turkish high-school in a foreign country etc). http://oidb.metu.edu.tr/en/tuition-fee-amounts
Also there is another campus in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is private (acts like a private). http://international.ncc.metu.edu.tr/tuition-scholarships/
But do not go for the academic quality. The best courses were just on par with the average course I had at a no-name German university. I don't know how they came up with the top 100 ranking---perhaps it's based on research?
For the academic quality, I don't know foreign universities thus I cannot compare them. But at least I can say that almost all teachers are professors and most of them are idealist. And in order to be an academic member at METU you must get at least one degree (B.S or masters etc) abroad. My teachers were not best teachers but at least they were very knowledgeable at their fields. It is not the best of course, however other Turkish universities are worse than METU. For the teaching quality, I have wished it to be better. May be METU is good for forcing you to study very much in detail, but it is not providing easy to study material and easy to understand teachers.
But, as others have said in this thread, there are drawbacks, which have been addressed. But that's true of anything anywhere.
So overall I highly recommend Germany for studies. Plus German is just a cool language to know as well.
Diversity has proven benefits in many cases, I see it in my daily work. It is much more than just a number in a ranking.
> low-income regions (e.g. ex-Russian territory, Asia)
Asia? Low-income? These times are gone in many places. You need to update your knowledge. Diversity in your workplace could help :-)
In regards to the ranking - one of the most important rankings for international Universities is the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Methodology section: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-ranki... this factor is measured by the ratio of international to domestic students and is worth 2.5 per cent of the overall score.
German Universities have a big issue about ranking performances, case and point giving certain Universities a Government issued "elite" title.
At the remote university in Hagen I paid ~120€ a year for the student union. Every course is 60-100€.
At the university in Stuttgart I paid ~300€ a year and all courses were free.
There was a time I paid 500€ per semester extra, but they are long gone.
The four years I took for my bachelor were the only four years with study-fees in Germany. So I paid more for my degree than the Americans who study here now.
BTW, the article mentions Germany, but isn't education cheap in most European countries?
If I was born in the US I'd never move to Europe to study anything tech related, being in a major university like Stanford or MiT just gives you so many connections and makes you able to experiment beyond your regular coursework. Just like someone said on a post here a while ago, the difference between you and your friend who studied at Duke is that Tim Cook is just a phone call away because they walked to class together every morning.
Your comment comes across as quite xenophobic with it's 'aliens can have a free ride'.
That probably makes financial sense. Of course, it doesn't scale, but for the number of people studying right now it's probably a net benefit.
>Germany wants these international students here, even though their taxpayers foot the bill.
>“Germany is not a country that's growing,” Malone says. “Its population is not growing. They need people, they need immigrants. They want to be a migration country.”
>Think about it this way: it’s a global game of collecting talent. All of these students are the trading cards, and the collectors are countries. If a country collects more talent, they'll have an influx of new ideas, new businesses and a better economy.
Entering into an age that will be dominated by robotics, greater general automation, artificial intelligence, etc., having more people across the board will not be a net benefit. Germany is worrying about this at exactly the wrong time.
Germany has vastly expanded their economy since 1970, while adding zero additional people. They'll be able to do exactly the same thing over the next 40 years by leveraging the incredible productivity gains that are inbound right now. No population growth is necessary or desirable; if Germany holds its population steady, and increases economic output through greater productivity, they'll greatly improve the odds that the median standard of living will increase in line.
For a comparison see:
It's a different kettle of fish when more of the people are retired and living on generous tax-payer pensions, and less are working.
The effective population changed quite a bit, too: first fall of the wall, later integration of eastern central Europe into the German economy.
It is better to get someone who has already graduated, but getting someone about to graduate and contribute to the economy is not bad either.
Also, the program is selective, which means that you're hopefully only grabbing decent people and not riffraff. This further maximizes your return.
However, since more and more Germans want to go to uni some fields of study are jammed with students in recent years. This in turn means that the quality of education goes down (for example: not enough capacities for tutors and not enough actual seats for students) So from that perspective it doesn't make sense for German taxpayers. If capacities are already stressed getting more students doesn't help.
On a more human level it is probably beneficial when Germans and Americans form more friendships and thus learn to understand eachothers views of the world.
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[0]"Although you can study in Germany for free at public institutions as an undergraduate, there is a charge per semester for enrolment, confirmation and administration – usually between €150 and €250 (US$170-280) depending on the university. There may be an additional charge of around €100 for a “Semesterticket”, which covers public transport expenses for six months. If you exceed the standard period of study by more than four semesters, you may also face a long-term fee charge, which could be as much as €800 (US$920) per semester." www.topuniversities.com/.../how-much-does-it-cost-study-germany
It's really outrageous. 35 years ago when my parents were in college, they could make enough money doing typical college-kid jobs (waiting tables, working summers, the same sort of things college students do now), to support themselves AND pay their tuition. I'm a software developer, working full-time, and I don't clear enough money after taxes in a year to pay for a year of tuition at the college I graduated from, unless I were going to be living in a van down by the river and surviving on free pizza provided by student groups.
What you are saying is that if you want to do competitive sports, you won't get a degree in history of business or other feign courses pros take in the US university sports system.
(See http://ingeb.org/Lieder/palmstre.html for the full text of the poem.)
Also, I studied in the UK and my tuition fees have been payed by the UK government. So it seems only fair to invite others to study in Germany.
I think that this is the crux of it. In my experience in the U.S., my taxes are funding things that I not only get no benefit from, but actively oppose on a moral level. That makes it a much harder thing to accept.
Though Germany isn't as bad as Italy or Greece
However, if Europeans had to do their own taxes for their salaries, I'm sure many more would be upset about high taxes.
There must be a similar process in Germany for people who aren't 9-5 types.
Germans are not so obsessed about not paying taxes like e.g. Americans or Swiss.
The reason for this being that the tax declaration is fairly straight forward and simple. Fairness of the (progressive) tax code is quite widely recognized, which makes for good - if not happy - tax payers.
If you're implying that evading taxes is something like a Swiss hobby and legal (bullshit I see quite often spouted by even reputable American papers) this is absolute rubbish. Tax evasion is not legal in any way, shape or form.
So my question stands: Where do the Swiss come into your equation?
If your argument is Germans pay their taxes and don't care how the money gets spent I have to say I'm a bit skeptical.
That was with £17,000+/year fees (for non-EU students), so they were super-rich and also clever. If studying at Cologne is free for them, and in English, that will attract potential students away from Britain.
I paid about £1000 year, like all British students, but I'd definitely consider Germany if I was 17 now. Fees for British students have increased to ~£9000/year! My workplace has a very international staff, all bilingual staff's teenage children are pretty much guaranteed to study elsewhere in the EU, with others considering it.
The closest equivalents are either offered by the local public transit unions (which are limited to the region covered by that public transit union, of which there are a ton in NRW) or the BahnCard 100 (which covers all of Germany -- but not necessarily all local public transit -- and is ridiculously expensive).
In Europe,in most countries, education is virtually free, just look at the cost of law school or med school in France or Belgium for instance. It's what $500 dollars a year at most?
Of course there are plenty of private schools in Europe, but even these are usually half the cost of American ones.
I graduated in computer science, in France. 4 years of college education cost me, what, 1000$ at most?
Now sure, I pay a LOT of taxes. But I know at least some of it goes into education and allow other student like I was to afford a good education. Having stayed in US for a while, while salaries seemed higher I don't think the cost of life is cheaper than in western Europe.
In the 1960's, tuition & fees at a UC school was less than $2000 (2015 dollars) per year. In the 1950's, it was less than $750 per year.[1][2]
Today, tuition & fees at a UC will cost you $15,000 per year.
In order to completely pay for tuition and fees, the state of California would have to increase revenue $3 billion per year. Or increase tax revenues by just 3%.[1][3]
I, as a citizen, feel like our government's priorities have been absolutely abysmal since the 1980's. To me, this level of insanity transcends political ideology. It's just plain dumb not to fix this.
> Now sure, I pay a LOT of taxes. But I know at least some of it goes into education and allow other student like I was to afford a good education. Having stayed in US for a while, while salaries seemed higher I don't think the cost of life is cheaper than in western Europe.
Cost of living is lower in the US (as a whole) than Western European countries, and median household income adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) is quite a bit higher in the US.[4][5]
That doesn't make any of this sensible, though. Sure, I'd take lower taxes if Californian kids had to pay just a couple thousand more to college than French kids. But $14k more? Insanity. Raise my taxes please.
1. http://www.dailycal.org/2014/12/22/history-uc-tuition-since-...
2. http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=84&year1=1956&y...
3. http://www.sco.ca.gov/state_finances_101_state_taxes.html
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity#OECD_co...
My point is, it's very difficult to compare the economic realities in different countries. There are whole categories of expenses that just do not exist in many western European countries. That said, I'm sure if you add everything up, Silicon Valley is the place to be for single, healthy, smart engineers. But that's a pretty narrow set of the population.
Simply stated, because of the high levels of tax and rife avoidance, it's probably quite difficult to quantify earnings in London, for example.
How? Which particular state benefits are you talking about?
(And it seems like you're talking about evasion - which is illegal, rather than avoidance which is a mix of normal tax planning (a contractor registering for VAT and claiming some of that back) and loophole-manipulation).
Health care is the obvious one. University has kinda jumped the shark though.
Trust schemes or defer forever, depending on your attitude to risk. I'm not saying said schemes should be used, just that it's popular and skews what people really earn.
Avoiding tax once you're not PAYE is pretty easy, there are loads of loopholes but the government sanctioned method is to take £40k per year at under 20% and leave the rest in the company. If you have a non-working spouce, this becomes £80000. You can also contrib, I believe, £40k to a pension, double again for your spouce and set yourself up for a super early retirement.
If you're open to more risk, there are loan based trust systems that'll get you access to your money a lot quicker. They're currently totally legal but the government does make a lot of noise about shutting them down.
Point being, earnings aren't reflective of wealth in the UK and you can do well here too as sadly, the well off have a lot more opportunities to legally avoid tax.
Do the numbers really come out in favor of raising taxes? Another commenter gave the 3% required rate for the tax increase. Would a student actually be better off paying 3% extra taxes for the rest of his/her life, as opposed to paying 15k/year for only 4 years (I'm asking from a numbers perspective)?
Currently, this tax is raised in the form of fees, due quarterly (or per semester) for the four (or more, or less) years of UC education consumed. Paid for by students and/or their families. Payment plans, subsidies, and loans may be available to pay this tax...
(I know I'm being a bit colorful, but I hope you catch my drift)
What I am trying to say is that, from an individual perspective, it makes more sense to pay the $15k. If you're making $50k/year in income, 3% of that for the rest of your life (assuming you work for about 50 years) comes to about $60k, which is what 4x$15k is anyway. However, if your income is above that, you pay significantly more. The US median income in 2014 was $51939 (got this number from a quick Google search, might not be 100% accurate), so half the population would indeed pay a total sum larger than $60k with a 3% tax.
I meant 40 years here (and HN won't let me edit the comment anymore).
Which government? What does the federal government have to do with California's subsidy of the UC system?
1. We have a 20% sales tax, income tax that is usually somewhere between 35%-45%... car taxes, highest energy costs in the world... just taxes everywhere.
2. The overall mindset here is much less libertarian and much more "let the Goverment handle it".
3. Smart brains are needed for the local economy to stay competitive.
4. Another thing to keep in mind: the actual cost for a student isn't really that much money. There are no million dollar sports teams, luxury gyms, technical equipment usually just isn't on the same level...
No, that's not the alternative at all. The alternative would be to have people from other countries pay their own way and provide free education to your own citizens.
http://reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/comments/2itsz2/germany_of...
So, that is a tough thing for us when recruiting because they have so many easier options over there instead of working, even remote, for people in the US.
So the biggest problem I see with moving to English within the German higher education system is that it creates the illusion that you don't really need to speak German to live in that country. But at the university, you live inside a bubble: some of my coworkers have come here from other countries five or more years ago, and still speak hardly any German. And that's fine because the working language in our department is de facto English. There are even German classes that the university offers and that some of my coworkers took, but since they never really needed it inside the bubble, their success at learning German has remained rather humble.
Now, one of my coworker wants to move on from academia and has been looking for jobs -- IT-related, that is. He's (over?)-specialized (with his PhD almost finished) in a specific area (speech signal analysis), but basically speaks no German. He's having a really hard time getting any reactions at all to his job applications. Most of the time, the companies do not even send rejection notes. I've been helping him a little bit with this, and given his credentials, I really find it difficult to understand why he cannot even get to the interview stage -- except for his lack of German.
The big problem is: if he cannot find something very soon, his visa will expire and he will be forced to leave the country. He's got a wife and two young daughters, the younger one of which was 2 years old when the family came to Germany. She's now 7 -- Germany is the country she grew up in, and she might be forced to leave it soon and move to the country of her father. Ironically, she doesn't even speak her parents' language perfectly.
So, there is a caveat when studying in Germany if your goal is to start a life here afterwards. Language matters.
What I cannot understand at all in this matter, though, is that by offering university courses in English and not requiring students to acquire very good German skills as well, Germany is basically investing a lot of (tax) money in the education of people who are more or less guaranteed to leave again when they're done with their studies.
The return of investment is thus pretty low... you could say, almost non-existent.
Not speaking Dutch is all fine while you’re on your student visum in an English speaking environment, but it breaks down when you have to pay taxes or get a letter from the immigration office—all that is in Dutch.
Personally, I think it is great to learn a new language, and you’ll gain a lot from it as a person, but there is also a real necessity to it once you start to live somewhere for a longer time—a fact that one might not immediately recognise because of European enthousiasm to speak and interact in English.
Denmark has gone to the next level and even this is largely in English now too, which makes it even harder / less motivating for foreigners to learn Danish. Most government websites are dual-language, and every civil-service employee speaks English. Many state agencies (and banks, pension funds, unions, etc.) now also give recipients an option of Danish or English for receiving official communications, and some actually default to English if you're registered as a non-Danish national, so you'd have to specifically request Danish if you wanted it.