Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by n1 on Wednesday June 10 2015, @05:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the mmrpg dept.

BBC reports that Germany has abandoned tuition fees altogether for German and international students alike and more than 4,600 US students are fully enrolled at Germany universities, an increase of 20% over three years. "When I found out that just like Germans I'm studying for free, it was sort of mind blowing," says Katherine Burlingame who decided to get her Master's degree at a university in the East German town of Cottbus. "I realised how easy the admission process was and how there was no tuition fee. This was a wow moment for me." When Katherine came to Germany in 2012 she spoke two words of German: 'hallo' and 'danke'. She arrived in an East German town which had, since the 1950s, taught the majority of its residents Russian rather than English. "At first I was just doing hand gestures and a lot of people had compassion because they saw that I was trying and that I cared." She did not need German, however, in her Master's program, which was filled with students from 50 different countries but taught entirely in English. In fact, German universities have drastically increased all-English classes to more than 1,150 programs across many fields.

So how can Germany afford to educate foreign students for free? 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. For a society with a demographic problem - a growing retired population and fewer young people entering college and the workforce - qualified immigration is seen as a resolution to the problem as research shows that 50% of foreign students stay in Germany. "Keeping international students who have studied in the country is the ideal way of immigration," says Sebastian Fohrbeck."They have the needed certificates, they don't have a language problem at the end of their stay and they know the culture."


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @06:52AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @06:52AM (#194417)

    the student sub culture has so many significant perks so as to reduce the costs of living substatially.

    You will need insurance which can cost as little as .20c per day.
    But ya, why would you live in the toilet of the USA and PAY huge for an education when Germany is available for free?

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Touché=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Touché' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   1  
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday June 10 2015, @11:57AM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 10 2015, @11:57AM (#194476)

    You will need insurance which can cost as little as .20c per day.

    There's probably little point arguing with an AC, but I considered getting a job and going back "home" because conditions seem better there than here, better future for my family, etc, and from memory the .de health care only average something like 3000 euro/year/person so its not as unaffordable as the US where our wealth transfer to the rich corporations is like 9000 euros. Despite spending a third, all their outcomes are better than the USA, they just don't have as many rich crooks as the USA produces. Also the public health insurance system was implemented as an income tax something like 7% of gross income up to 50K euro or WTF it was exactly. Not having the crazy military expenditures of the USA and not paying for 200 overseas military bases and multiple simultaneous undeclared wars means the .de pretty much get health care "for free" or in exchange for not having a (shit-ily run) world empire.

    As for why I didn't end up going, there's 80 yr old mother on one side, 70s year old mother on other side, you get the idea.

    Now a 20 year old kid with healthy parents who can take care of themselves would be pretty dumb to stay in the USA and not go to .de or, well, pretty much anywhere in Europe would be better than back home other than the economically collapsing southern tier (greece, spain, etc). I had to study the history of Spain quite a bit in Spanish class a long time ago, it'll be interesting to see how Spain turns out after the next revolution or if theres a breakup (catalonia and all that). I'm at the age where I can start thinking of how to get my kids out of the USA, get them somewhere safe, somewhere cops won't shoot them in the back, where they can get health care, where they won't be victims of criminals, where they can get an education, safe food, basically the anti-USA.

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 10 2015, @12:48PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday June 10 2015, @12:48PM (#194495) Journal

      I'm at the age where I can start thinking of how to get my kids out of the USA, get them somewhere safe, somewhere cops won't shoot them in the back, where they can get health care, where they won't be victims of criminals, where they can get an education, safe food, basically the anti-USA.

      I'm born and raised in America, and I'm thinking exactly the same thing. My wife and I have been talking about how to save for our kids' college, and I've had to repeatedly drive home the reality to her that if tuition is $59K/yr at a 4-yr American university today, in 12 years it will easily wind up putting 1 of our 2 kids $500K in debt to get a degree. I had been rounding out a strategy of getting our kids into apprenticeships, winning competitions, and starting their careers without taking the huge financial hit of going to college in America, but college for free in Germany sounds like a good deal. I speak German from my time as an exchange student there in high school, and my cousin's family lives outside Hannover (he was an exchange student in Switzerland and returned to Germany to build his career after graduate school), so we have more connective tissue to that place than most.

      Well, we'll see. Perhaps the revolution will come here, first, and we won't have to.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 10 2015, @01:15PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 10 2015, @01:15PM (#194501)

        Perhaps the revolution will come here, first, and we won't have to.

        Perhaps. The only successful business model for the past 40 years or so, has been find something people will "pay anything for" like health, education, "defense/public safety", housing, maybe cell phones, then charge them everything they got, squeeze all that blood from the stone cause they're dumb enough to pay anything for that so we'll screw them till they scream... Its the American Dream(tm) after all.

        Now what is left as a tool to screw us over? Food? Cheap cars? Contraception? recreational drugs? The business model of the last 40 years is running out of things to screw us over. There just isn't that much left, not to mention most of the blood has already been squeezed from those stones. You only get to destroy the middle class once, unless you rebuild it somehow in between.

        You can make a bunch of billionaires over the past 40 years by impoverishing a nation by screwing up their market for medical care, college, and houses. But how many billionaires can you make in the next 40 years by impoverishing a nation by exploding the price of condoms, beer, shitty corn syrup based food, and commuter cars? Not much, I figure. You can get a lot of buy in when the whole graduating class of Yale in years past will transfer a billion bucks each from the poor to their pockets, but when practically no one will get rich off a "condom bubble" its going to be hard to get buy in and cooperation, and greedy people are not known for cooperation even under ideal circumstances.

        I don't think the existing economic model has long left to run. Hope the new one sucks less and the transition isn't too awful for my kids.

        • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 10 2015, @03:52PM

          by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday June 10 2015, @03:52PM (#194560) Journal

          Well said. In my mind's eye I see the best revolution being everyone voting with their feet, like what happened to East Germany when Hungary removed its border fence with Austria. Erich Honecker's regime simply collapsed. Everything was non-violent, except for when East Germans sacked the Stasi headquarters. Those guys had it coming, but even then I don't remember any of them being killed because they had lit out for the hills.

          The American version I see is probably better called voting with dollars. Enough people put solar panels on their roofs and EVs in their driveways, and the fossil fuel industries that have had a stranglehold on America for 100+ years will collapse. Enough people 3D print what they need, recycling waste for feedstock, and all sorts of forms of centralized control collapse. That would probably be enough to erase this current model of economic production and the political system that pairs with it.

          --
          Washington DC delenda est.