Maybe those German universities should get in on this online action! I could do an online masters from Germany just as easily as I do one in Georgia...

That's actually a very interesting idea for a country with socialized education wanting a large academic footprint in the world: also open up your classes to online and service the world. I don't know how expensive it might be, but it's got to be a lot cheaper per student for the university.

The universities in many European countries, are subsidized by the state because education is considered a human right. Having a proper set of teachers, brick and mortar universities, research, etc. costs a lot more than 1k/year per student. While allowing a 5-10% foreign students is good for the remaining 90% because culture, variety, etc., opening up the lectures to people who effectively do not pay taxes, makes no sense.

This is why in Bulgaria, Cz and other countries you see locals paying low rates while other Europeans paying private college fees.

> This is why in Bulgaria, Cz and other countries you see locals paying low rates while other Europeans paying private college fees.

That's incorrect. In EU you can't price-discriminate, based on nationality, regardless of the product or service you're offering. Of course, that applies to EU citizens only. Non-EU citizens do indeed pay higher university fees than locals.

As far as I can tell, the price here (Czechia) is based on language of the study programme not nationality. You can study in Czech for free even as a citizen of another EU (not sure about not-EU) country. I don't think it's particularly practical idea though. The fee for the english version was about 5-6k$ for academic year last time I checked.

In theory or in practice? :-) You're right (in theory), in practice I can assure, it happens.

Quick Google search: https://www.medicalstudyguide.com/bulgarian-university-tuiti...

Come to think of it, they probably discriminate on the basis of the program language: If you take the English course you have to pay high tuition fees, while if you take the local language program, you don't.

> In theory or in practice? :-) You're right (in theory), in practice I can assure, it happens.

If you're foreigner, haggling at a local flea market, of course it can happen. But in "official" places, this is simply not possible. And yes, that program discriminates based on language. If you take the version in Bulgarian, you'll pay same fees as locals, though you're usually forced to undergo a paid language course before enrolling.

As someone currently working my way through OMSCS, I imagine that the incremental cost of adding students is very low. I don't know exactly what ratio GT uses, but the only non-digital scaling they do is TAs. With more polishing of the online content and improvement of the auto-graders, they could probably push the ratio down pretty low. Just have to figure out how to do it without compromising the perceived quality of the education. And TAs aren't expensive in any case, I'm pretty sure they are compensated pretty poorly.

I'm led to believe their student-TA ratio is about 50:1.

The US$15/hr TA pay rate is absolute garbage - when I TAed as a 3rd year undergrad in Australia, I was paid double that.

Taken from an email I got last semester:

Working as a TA pays $15 per hour, distributed twice monthly based on submitted timesheets (alumni are salaried, however).

Well there's the language barrier but hey, for 10K I'll learn German also.

I imagine they would just teach it in English. I believe it's pretty standard for Western European students to learn English fluently. Maybe dual language? OMSCS gets a fair number of foreign students from around the world and only teaches in English AFAIK.

Dutch master's are all English for a while now. You don't get the same subsidies as EU residents, though, but it's also no more expensive than this online business and you get to have an actual classroom (for many that's a plus).

Most masters degree students are over the age of 21.

Also “move to Germany” isn’t really something you can just...do.

It is. People treat moving like some sort of impossibility -- apply for a student visa and go.

The quality of education you'll get there is questionable, though

I find in STEM that's not such an issue.

I mean I studied Physics at a good UK Uni but it isn't like one of the best in the world or anything.

Then I did Neuroinformatics at Edinburgh which is really competitive due to their reputation in AI etc.

It was fine, ultimately linear algebra etc. are the same wherever you learn it. I think in less objective and more qualitative fields the reputation of the University etc. counts a lot more.

As someone who's taken two linear algebra courses at different schools -- it's really not. When the expected level is familiarity with basic concepts vs. being prepared for a top-tier graduate degree program, the course content becomes very different. When this is aggregated over all of your courses, then you start to get a gigantic disparity.

>The quality of education you'll get there is questionable, though

Why would you think this? From my experience technical universities in Europe do a lot less hand holding and a lot more practical courses than American ones do.

Do you got a source on your quality statement? Many European universities do quite good in the rankings.

> Belgium/Germany where university education costs less than a thousand per year.

France too, and I suppose most(?) European countries. Many universities have international masters where classes are taught in English. Students come from everywhere, including the US. It's easy to get a student visa.

I know this is an online degree, but just going to throw out there that the states has better beer than Europe these days. And Atlanta is one of the new up and coming stars. My brother in law's brewery went home with a silver GABF medal last year.

super fast broadband.. super fast autobahns.. super good cars.. in Germany..

super fast broadband is something Germany is... not great at.

Can't speak about Germany, but we have 100Mb/s symmetric internet for about 5$/month at the Charles University student dorms here in Prague.

Technically, there is supposed to be some fairly brutal bandwidth sharing and the speed is not guaranteed in any way but I never had my speedtest drop under 90Mb/s

Universities are a bit of a different bag in general, and yes, I was specifically talking about Germany. There's large differences between European countries when it comes to internet speeds and costs.

The price and the healthcare ... Ok they got us here. But beer? The breadth and depth of beer in the US is insane now.