Bloomberg reports that for the first time in almost 40 years many German universities are now charging tuition. In most cases the tuition costs are very nominal when compared to Anglo-American prices. For instance, the average cost in seven of Germany’s sixteen states is only 1,000 Euros per year.
German universities are making this shift because American and British universities are consistently beating them in global academic rankings. One reason for this is the fact that Anglo-American institutions spend more per pupil than Germany does. American institutions in particular spend much more because of their relatively high tuition costs coupled with very aggressive fund raising efforts. This has led American colleges to take fully half of the spots in the top 100 institutions of higher education in the global rankings compiled by the University of Shanghai while German universities took only 5 spots.
One last piece of astounding trivia: according to the article Harvard spends $149,686 per student per year! Harvard is a good school, but this is a ton of money. Do you think Harvard is spending this money efficiently?
Our school expenditures are even higher per student. That’s because we receive almost 1.5 billion a year (the next highest is Mich with about 850 million) in research money from the government and we’re much smaller than Harvard. But, then again, I don’t see much of the money (or only 17.5k per year!).
I think that those global rankings have strange criteria. For example, Oxford and Cambridge have very low admissions standards for doctorates–at least in Hebrew Bible.
Harvard does provide students with health insurance, which is a plus. But I will say that there is a strong likelihood that fat and bureaucracy can be cut out of lots of institutions.
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