For German universities, having to select foreign students is a new development and it will take time and a bit of trial & error to get it right. It's the same in Switzerland: every Swiss high school graduate can attend university, so an "admissions process" just didn't exist there. And now that many international students want to attend Swiss university, you get a lot of students in master's courses who don't have the required pre-requisities. But I'm confident the universities will learn and build up these capabilities.
Also, you are right about some Universities being closer to German standards than others in India (I guess every country has good and bad Universities, the onus here is on the German Universities to identify the right ones and improve the admission criteria). I personally do not see a lot of difference between my University back home in India and the one I am enrolled at in Germany.
The reason those people aim for jobs in the UK or US is because there aren't good tech jobs in Germany. Arguing for mandatory German classes to 'lock in' talent somehow is simiarly uninspired as tech companies here. What about creating jobs that good people are willing to work at?
Note that Elon Musk is still dreaming about building tunnel boring machinery, while at Herrenknecht you can already innovate in this field today.
What better than German tech jobs are there in the UK? It is not about the jobs. They are aiming for a language they already know, but want to get a free education on the way.
My point is, that taxpayers should benefit from their investments. There is nothing wrong with creating a lock-in, which is silly btw.: There is a German speaking market of > 100 Mio speakers, you can benefit from. Nobody in the Philippines or India speaks German. See what kind of job opportunities Turkish-German people have in Turkey.
If your point is true and there are no tech-jobs, we can benefit from it, then stop the program and work on that first. The foreign students also would, because except for 3 neighborhoods in Berlin and Frankfurt, you cannot integrate into German society without some German language knowledge and without a proper skillset.
The German economy is heavily based on the Mittelstand with so called "hidden champions", one does not know about, but who are the global market leader in smaller, obscure markets. They often sit in a village somewhere in rural (but rich) Southern Germany. No way, you can make it there without German language knowledge.
Also, how would creating the jobs reduce the risk mentioned by anon_7523? Do you believe it's a bad idea to integrate the people you already provide with education, for free?
I would add calling something "typical German" is also typical German :)
The reason those people aim for jobs in the UK or US is because there aren't well paid tech jobs in Germany.
I've fixed it for you.
Apart form a bit of fin-tech in London, most programming jobs in the UK are quite badly paid and not comparable with US/SV salary levels.
I see what my UK-based students are earning, and it's typically not really above German levels.
This is also wrong. I would rather say "there aren't well paid tech jobs in Germany if you don't know German on a decent level".
Most tech companies today use english as work language anyway. Not necessarily social talk among people, but usually in meetings, emails, documentation etc.
Still I recommend learning the local language. It has advantages but it is not something you are completely dependent on.
And it is not like getting a degree is an automatism. If you are bad, you will fail and drop out. There has been an inflation in grades in the recent years, but most degrees are still hard to obtain and require that you really learn what you are doing.
Maybe it is different in different fields, but at least this is my impression in physics and the natural sciences.
When i talk to them, most of them state they wish to return to their home country once they finish their degree here. Needless to say, there are exceptions to the rule that hustle hard, excel and plan to stay in Germany once they finish.
In summary: Germany seems to get the B or C level bunch of students, while the A level students go to the US or the UK.
(My German is 1- to 1 right now, but I could probably get to 2- to 2 without too much work over a year, but I have no undergraduate degree. If I wanted a professional degree without completing undergraduate, I'm mostly stuck with UK schools (LBS, LSE, ICL being the top options) in MBA or Econ, or a back-door "special student" PhD route somewhere. If there were a German institution which made this straightforward, it would be worthwhile for a lot of people in the mid-career stage in technical fields who don't have formal credentials. Those people would be far more likely to remain in Germany, or at least to maintain some connection to Germany.)
- They are not required to learn German, so they speak very little to sometimes none at all. - They can only pick companies where speaking only English is tolerated. - Since they speak English, they tend to stick to themselves and cannot integrate. Some of them have a hard time even ordering food. - Indian Bachelor degrees are not comparable to German degrees. I have the feeling that there are some good universities, but others are nowhere near the German standard. Their skill levels are usually lower than these of their German counterparts. It makes sense: I have talked to people, who came from a small village and used a computer in their undergraduate course for the first time. - When you talk about their plans, it becomes clear, that they aimed for the US or the UK and took Germany only for the price and are often not planning to stay, but to take the next opportunity to board a plane to the US.
At the moment I do not think it makes any economical sense for Germany. I would do the following:
- mandatory German language courses - mandatory German language knowledge, even for English speaking courses - much stricter admission standards, individual tests instead of trusting non-EU standards - better integration with the labor market - maximum to the number of months you can stay in a dorm (already the case for German students) - initiatives to form German + foreign flat shares (primary way of living for students in Germany)
At the moment we are just sending the bad students back home and the good students to the US, after they got a free education here.
The local university close by reacted and increased the required GRE test scores to Ivy League level. The admissions dropped by an order of magnitude.
Germany is very social-democratic when it comes to education, so politicians avoid the word "elite", but when it comes to picking talent, you really should not. I think Germany should capitalize on the political climate in other countries and pick quality over quantity. A tax paid university should not be a third-world aid program.