Free tuition in Germany is not enough
The row over BAföG shows that access to university means little if students cannot afford to stay
Studying for the first time at a German university, I was confronted by many of the same culture shocks as other Americans abroad — from the absence of weekly homework to knocking profusely on a desk instead of clapping after a seminar.
The most jaw-dropping of all, however, was that students didn’t pay tuition. Instead, they forked over twice-yearly administrative fees that probably cost less than three textbooks at a US university. On top of that came a world of student perks, from low-priced Mensa meals to a heavily subsidised semester ticket for public transport.
So to me, it seemed like a fairly innocuous remark when Research Minister Dorothee Bär of the centre-right CSU recently described German students as “very privileged.” From the perspective of someone raised in a country where higher education often means graduating with five-figure debt, she wasn’t entirely wrong.
Yet Bär’s comments struck a nerve for many Germans…