Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

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All of these stories suggest United States students who simply haven't done enough shopping among United States colleges, of which there are thousands. Most of the situations described could fit the same student getting a complete tuition waiver (variously deemed "financial aid" or a "merit scholarship") at plenty of United States universities. List price is not the price that many college and university students pay to gain their higher education degrees, and full list price is plenty low at many United States colleges and universities.

On the other hand, as an American who studied abroad (after gaining my undergraduate degree here), I have to say I'm happy that American students are considering studying overseas, as that has educational value (being in another country) even if the college is a poor value:cost trade-off. Especially studying in a non-English-speaking country (as I did) is very educational, and I highly recommend that to any American.

Full need-based aid (not merit scholarships), is extremely rare outside the very top universities.

At other schools, including those ranked in the top 30 or so, "need-based aid" is a euphemism for loans, often in extremely high amounts.

Anecdotal, but I've even seen bait-and-switch tactics at some places: my brother was accepted at Tufts with a decent aid package, and then after freshman year, with no change in family financials, saw it drastically reduced. He dropped out and transferred immediately.

As mentioned in other comments, American education has a lot of pricing similarities to American healthcare, and the lack of any sort of true market mechanisms is a big reason why. Good to see some price pressure getting applied.

Now, whether or not this is a good idea for Germany is a whole different question...

Depends on how many people stay, and for how long.

You are making the same argument that proponents of the extremely high cost of health care in the united states make.

"list price is not the same as what people actually pay"

Are we in the bargaining meat markets of India ??

There are a non-trivial number of students who are paying out of their nose. The current student loan of the country is 1.3 TRILLION dollars.

Your anecdotal experience doesn't change the fact of the entire country.

I am glad that Germany is poaching many american students. This is the surest way to hurt the american educational industrial complex.

The point of this article is that as a B+ student, you can get into a globally competitive university for free. Financial aid at a competitive college in the US is available to students at A- or above.

A different view is countries compete for knowledge-based workers that may go on and start startups. The key criterion in starting a startup isn't academic performance. In a startup heading towards a foreign environment and navigating it may be just as valuable.

The article may also be pointing to the beginning of a trend. That globally competitive universities exploit a major flaw in the US education system.

"I feel like my child is getting an absolute wonderful education over there for free. Betrayal is too strong of a word, but why can't we do that here?""

There is some truth to this. For my Master's degree, I got a fellowship where I did some work that the university had a grant for (maybe 10-20 hrs/wk) and they fully covered my tuition and housing, with a bit left for food (but I would have had to eat very cheaply to make it cover all of my food).

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