How US students get a university degree for free in Germany

French here, the tuitions are close to 0 in Finland and France too (granted that you learn French). Our parents pay up to 50% (I don't have the exact percentage) of various taxes based on their salaries and daily life goods, and we as children will do the same. It makes sense that our government rewards us in some way: health care for free, school for free, retirement... In Europe, the government avoids you to shoot yourself by managing part of your money for the well being of the society. In return, we may look less rich by looking at our bank balance. If you take a 3500 $ Swedish salary with all the taxes applied, your life level might be equivalent as a 7000 $ salary in US.

Beware not to overuse this trick. In the past many other European countries were accessible for virtually free. Until an army of Chineses came, studied for free for 5 years and went back to their hometown without any contribution to the society (taxes, intellectual contributions...). That's why Sweden granted recently the free access to only Europe citizens that anyway pay common taxes in their own country.

Perhaps we should send more kids to Europe for schooling to see how a civil society lives, then bring them back after graduating to fix the problems with America. win/win :)

There should also be an article on how Asian (Indians, Chinese, Filipino, etc) students get graduate degree for free in the USA. Thanks US for my free Masters and PHD ;)

How is the quality of engineering education in Germany these days? I quote Paul Graham:

"There don't seem to be many universities elsewhere that compare with the best in America, at least in technology.

In some countries this is the result of a deliberate policy. The German and Dutch governments, perhaps from fear of elitism, try to ensure that all universities are roughly equal in quality. The downside is that none are especially good." [1]

He goes on. Is this still accurate?

[1] http://paulgraham.com/america.html

"To cover rent, mandatory health insurance and other expenses, Hunter's mother sends him between $6,000-7,000 each year."

That's actually a little bit low for Munich. I think two or three times that would be more realistic to cover living expenses.

To spare people the click after that dumb clickbait title:

Germany only requires tuition fees of ~30-100€ per semester* from any student, regardless country of origin.

* For administrative stuff and often includes public transit tickets.

Also, previously (today even): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9656905

It only shows the American political establishment prefers a capitalist system that impoverishes white people rather than have a fair social system that has the side effect of benefiting blacks and latinos as well. Ditto Brazil.

I work with someone who got a graduate degree in Germany. She simply can't believe anyone goes to college in the US without massive scholarships. From the student's perspective, I've come to agree.

I want to go to a free! country, like Cuba, I mean Germany, I mean the Unite States, I mean Russia, I mean Ecuador ... oh help me out guys.

Sadly, I find the article to be fairly misleading. First of all, the living costs are far higher than they make you believe and then there is the "free degree" vs. "semester fee + x" debate that is actually very different from university to university in germany - and I believe they are oddly mistaken when it comes to the University of Munich.

Where I studied, the rent was 350-450€/month and the semester fee around 250-300€/term. True, the health insurance for students is incredible (~70€), but I'm not going to comment on what the BBC apparently thinks is reasonably in terms of "Groceries" and "Misc.", that's just seems weird to me. Bottom line, as a student you are not going to get by with 7k/year in Munich.

Oh, and hey, you need to get accredited at a university first, of course ;)

The drinking age in the US is 21. This doesn't stop college students from drinking, it just means they can end up in trouble with law enforcement or the university authorities.

US students who study in Europe are free to drink without breaking the law.

Also, some would argue that Germany beer is better.

Why in the world did I go to college in the US?? I hate that the US education system is so capitalistic and not out to provide for the citizens of this country! Wish I would've included colleges outside the US in my college making decision..

Truly shocking they haven't discovered "out of country tuition". That is the big scam here in the US, most of the state schools have out of state fee's that are 2x-5x as high as the instate ones. The excuse of course is saving money and how the students parents don't pay taxes (ignoring they pay taxes elsewhere).

The best part of course, is the lame/insane rules they come up with to determine if your instate or out of state. Mostly because in the US just having a utility bill from a rental or what not is enough to transfer a drivers license/residency. Amusingly enough, most of these states actually require in state vehicle registrations for said students in order to get the tax money...

Is it possible to do this for Canadian students? I don't see Canada listed on the admission assessment page.

See Argentina. Free college, university, med school, engineering, PHDs, doctorates, etc. Other problems though.

Pedantic tangent: saying Germany has "abandoned" tuition fees is not entirely correct.

Until a few years ago there were no tuition fees in public universities in Germany. In fact there still aren't any non-public universities, though there are private academies.

University education is also not as common in Germany as it is in the US: although more jobs require formal education and certification in Germany (e.g. if you professionally paint cars in Germany, you need a specific formal qualification to do so), there are long-standing trade-specific education systems that provide these, rather than universities. These are typically three to five year trainings consisting of an internship as well as formal schooling. Historically university has been more academic in nature, being considered to be more about higher education than a job qualification for the industry. In other words, someone with a university degree effectively has no job experience but may understand the higher-level concepts of the business domain (i.e. the "why") whereas someone with a non-university trade education has less high-level knowledge but a lot of hands-on experience (i.e. the "how").

Public universities only charge a comparatively low fee (typically around EUR 200-400), which mostly covers services provided by the university's student union who also often negotiate deals like public transit tickets (which are then paid from the student union's cut). The student unions are thus able to adjust the fee to provide additional services but generally puts decisions which would result in higher fees up to a direct vote by all enrolled students. The decision-making council is also directly elected by the students (which has resulted in a political microcosm that is quite similar to the government-level political parties).

A few years ago, Germany officially adopted the Bachelor/Master system because various European nations decided to standardize higher education degrees across Europe. The general argument for doing so was that it made degrees from different countries more comparable and thus reduced the HR headaches for internationally hiring companies.

Shortly after the BA/MA switch, Germany changed a law that previously prohibited tuition fees in public universities so it only specified a cap of EUR 500 per semester (on top of the existing baseline fee). This was officially part of an initiative to raise the quality of education, along with funding for universities that were trying to create "elite" faculties (i.e. specialising). Officially this would not result in reducing the government spending on universities but it was an open secret that the cap would be raised over the next years as tuition fees gain more acceptance and thus allow the government to slowly pull out their funding to make universities more independent. Officially it was also predicted that most universities wouldn't set their tuition fees to the legal maximum.

Predictably, the vast majority of universities introduced tuition fees at exactly the legal maximum (EUR 500 on top of the existing fees). While EUR 700-800 is still "low" by American standards, it effectively meant an up to 3x increase many students couldn't easily afford. To add insult to injury, the universities' invoices would often contain ads by state banks offering student loans at "reasonable" terms (i.e. lower-than-average interest and they'd pay the tuition fee for you so you continue to only have to pay the baseline fee yourself, giving you the illusion that nothing has changed until you graduate or drop out and suddenly have accrued quite a bit of debt).

It should also be noted that culturally, Germany is a nation of savers, not loaners. While most students were previously able to graduate with no debt at all (except for a public grant known as BAFöG which covers up to 100% of the baseline fee with only the difference accumulating as debt) the tuition fees threatened to change that entirely.

Also predictably, the students reacted quite vocally. There were lots of protests all over Germany and the way most universities handled was a bit upsetting because it violated the silent historical agreement (established by precedent after the famous 1968 student protests) that university disputes are handled non-violently by the university and its students, not by riot police.

After spending a few months explaining to students that tuition was here to stay and that EUR 500 per semester is entirely negligible (to quote the head of the University of Cologne: "just drink one less beer a day" -- I should probably add that binge drinking frat parties are less of a thing in Germany), some universities finally dropped the tuition fees, resulting in a slow cascade as the growth of applicant numbers shrank for those universities that still maintained non-zero tuition fees.

Nowadays, I don't think any university still charges tuition fees. I'm not sure whether the government intervened at some point and repealed the act that allowed them in the first place or whether it was entirely "voluntary" but they're effectively gone now.

It's important to recognize that the outrage was less about the specific sum -- while a 2x-3x increase in cost can be world-changing for low-income students, it's still manageable, especially if you can stomach taking a loan (or are poor enough you don't have to pay the fees at all). The more important thing was that it created a slippery slope. The only reason the tuition fee was that low was that it was the legal maximum. Adjusting that maximum would have been politically much easier than passing the act that allowed the fees in the first place, especially if the increase is gradual.

A change from zero to a low value is much more intrusive than a change from a non-zero value to a higher value. Introducing tuition fees set a precedent that created a potential path to US-level costs while also turning student debt from an exception to the norm. The UK is a good parallel (tuition fees were introduced in 1998 with a legal maximum that has been increased several times since).

Yes, dear Americans, the US is considered the negative example by German students -- although German politics and industry of course fawn over the quality of elite universities in the US (while ignoring that the quality of German universities compares favourably with non-elite universities in the US).