This statement is not true. It is the case though that many if not most public German universities have costs that run in the very low thousands i.e. 1-5k for total degree costs.
However, there are some drawbacks to the way this system works. For one, you will be hard pressed to find online degree offerings or continuing studies options from public Universities (i.e. these types of low costs offerings) that allow you to continue your education while working fulltime. Most of these come from private institutions or specific programs which have higher costs typically running in the 10k+ cost range area.
Its great if you are a student graduating from high school and going to university - you won't be burdened with high costs. However, the public system largely still neglects (this lone University being the only example in all of Germany which I am aware of) many other situations where people might want to further their education.
We do have something called Volkshochschulen, which is in some ways similar to Junior Colleges in the United States and provides some level of extended studies at a public level, but anyway, I won't go into details, suffice it to say the systems don't translate one-to-one onto each other and there are cons with our system as well.
Yes indeed this is the only state run distance-learning university, but I'd argue that you only really need one such institution. After all, you can study from anywhere :). They have regional centers in many German towns, but for most courses you only need to be there for the exams at the end of the semester, so you can also study hours away from the next regional center.
And it's quite successful. By number of enrolled students, it's the largest university of Germany at 77k, with the runner up having only 56k students.
Regardless, I think initiatives like this one which in general provide more opportunites to more people to better their lives is something I would like to see more of, not just in Germany but all over the world.
The atmosphere is very different and having studied in the UK i see the merits of both: a UK university basically runs like a school with a very strong support system and 1:1 touch with academics. In Germany its really a more "mass" approach in lectures and then seminars with lower ranking staff, not the actual professors. Also less other support e.g. psychologists, tech support,.. To succeed at a German university you have to grow up ;)
Also interestingly German universities seem to be much more political places. The UK I experienced as filled with extracurricular stuff, while in Germany there's much less of that and in return a much more vibrant political and debate culture.
Volkshochschule is not a college but does offer yoga and knitting classes, some language classes and maybe a computing class for seniors.. nothing that would prepare you for a career
I generally agree with you but this is a little too far. At least bigger Volkshochschulen do offer non-academic qualifications, especially in the area of continuous education for those with existing qualifications.
Besides languages, this ranges from various finance and law classes for people who are starting their own business, over “Ausbildung der Ausbilder” (Train the Trainer but a formal qualification the German dual system), to certificates like CCNA.
The courses that are offered vary widely between cities, it’s difficult to generalize.
What you find is courses that are job-qualifying degrees. The VHS is really structured around taking individual, stand-alone, courses.
The one exception I can think of is that some VHS’ are offering “Hauptschulabschluss” for those who left school without graduating.
Volkshochschule are "low level" community training courses. Yet many people successfully learned Languages there. It is far below a University or a poly-technical college. It has nothing do do with a real degree.
FUN FACT: I read once a Serbian guy took a course there in Economics, had the certificate translated into Serbian and the translator translated "Volkshochschule", to "Peoples University" and became an Economics professor with this certifica in Serbia until the whole scam became public.
To give you the perspective: Basically every guy here on Hackernews could give a "Python course" there or something. for 2 hours every week for 6 months and one of the attendees would manage to become a CS professor with this.
Sadly the Fernuni is in one way stuck in the past: for many (all?) courses there are mandatory presence seminars. You can do the exams at many places in Germany (e.g. Volkshochschulen) and at all embassies and Goethe institutes abroad, but for the seminars you have to still go in person it seems. Else I would long have done a Fernuni degree.
Volkshochschule courses are usually languages, painting, photography, cooking etc. The teachers are usually non-professionals. The course is usually about ten weeks of one or one and a half hours.
- Onboarding students directly out of secondary schools who don't yet have the academic requirements or financial ability for university, usually with intent to use this as a springboard to a cheaper university education; usually this terminates with a transfer to a university (and may or may not include an associate degree);
- Providing formal education for people interested in changing or advancing their career; usually this terminates with an associate degree;
- Providing formal but "casual" adult education, which includes the kind of courses you find at a Volkshochschule but also simply introductory tertiary courses (many of which would actually be final secondary courses outside the US) - the teachers are usually professionals but there's no expectation for the students to "use" the knowledge and auditing may be as common as taking the course for credit.
The main thing I want to point out is to avoid translating Volkshochschule as "junior college" which has an increasingly negative connotation in US English. Most decent junior colleges have expanded their programs and rebranded to full community colleges (or even universities) now and the term is mostly used for private, for-profit, vocational training.
(I should also add these terms vary a lot across English-speaking countries; I'm just referring to the US here.)
Ich komm dir gleich rüber! /s
Speaking and writing German is a bit complicated but for rudimentary understanding of texts you do not need to know as many words as in English.
If you are looking for Computer Science there are many English lectures available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Awful_German_Language
The title translated into German is "Die Schrecken der deutschen Sprache" ("The Horrors of the German Language") which is more appropriate.
There is a saying: "Hungarian... the only tongue in the world the devil respects."
(Disclaimer: I say this as a physicist, where all the German words for physics concepts are quite straightforward.)
Also I agree with foepys that you can do more in German with a smaller vocabulary. Schlag is also used in sports and music :) Plus, people like to downplay it, but most people here do speak english, so if you have difficulty, it's ok to ask in english when you're 1:1.
In Law though, nothing seems to beat the preciseness of the German language. It’s very good in expressing exactly what the relationships and rules should be. Some people love it from the “literalistic” point of view - but I just like the efficiency of the English language and the distinctive humor that a lot of english speaking authors put in their writings; so I can’t speak to that. The German language feels to me like it wasn’t made for science, engineering or fun but rather law and bureaucracy.
Just my personal two cents.
Also Western philosophy had a slightly German-language bend.
I doubt there is a substantial body of science that can be expressed much better in English. It's probably a wash, with some words and concepts easier to express in this, and some in that.
No meaningful papers in these domains are published in German...
Of course most people don't do that, because they learned the terminology in English and there's no particular reason to invent a completely parallel set of made-up terms. But if there were such a reason (e.g. if English literacy were uncommon among German computer scientists) it could be done.
Yes, you would not make up these words just for the sake of speaking in German. We are not in the 30s any longer.
But no person in its right mind would speak German with 30% of the words “borrowed from english” because “all the other advantages of the German language outweigh borrowing so many english words”.
I love how people are downvoting me in their evening frustration about their lives - but yeah, if you miss like all the relevant vocabulary in a language why would you state that communicating in it is “smart of efficient”? There is no inherent reason. English has -for many fields- the best vocabulary. The english language does not get lost in four line sentences so easily like the German language and it’s not made up of 80 character words.
Have any of you ever read a German paper or textbook on a topic? Its awful. I love english textbooks I love english papers.
Of course, today everyone publishes in English. And of course, many English words are used in German academia.
But there is no inherent property of the English language, why it is better suited to communicating topics in machine learning.
No, but I suppose you miss all the vocabulary you need to efficiently communicate about ML in German... Or why is it?
My experience is quite the opposite anyways, I often felt, English sentences lacked clarity that you could have in a German sentence
I mean, like I said for contractual arrangements etc. German is more precise.
But I never found that the “English language was not precise enough” to convey something - unless it was a choice by the author.
It’s easier to express because Englisch is _the_ lingua franca of those fields. It would have been a totally different case had some other language, say French or Mandarin had been at the forefront of scientific literature advancement and dissemination.
You miss 30% of the vocabulary, well, you won’t have a great conversation about a topic...
A friend of mine was translator into English and French, and she said that it was easier to translate into French, because there was basically one way to say it. In English, there'd be many different options (mostly vocabulary substitutions, but not only), with slightly different connotations.
A pertinent aphorism I've come across (anyone know the source?):
"English is among the easiest languages to speak badly, but one of the most difficult to speak well."
I’d buy the english original book on any topic 100% of the time instead of a german alternative or its translation.
Ask any german university student in computer science or engineering or business - 9/10 prefer english textbooks.
I would love to see how you tackled the Adjektivdeklinations issue in German. For me that has been an achilles' heel, and there's simply no easy way around it.
"A complete bachelor's program costs between 1,600 and 2,400 euro, while a master’s program costs between 1,000 and 1,200 euro. These estimates are based on course costs of 20 euro per credit hour, plus a student body contribution of 11 euro per semester."
BTW, I never knew, but they run an efficient operation, it seems.
My Alma Mater, the University of Stuttgart, has 23k students, 5.3k staff, including 265 professors. They run on an annual budget of 536 million Euros.
(All numbers from Wikipedia)
The FernUni has 76k students (3x), 1.3k staff (1/3), including 90 professors (1/3), on an annual budget of 90 million Euros (1/6).
If you look it through the reverse lense, the ratio of professor to student is much worse than your alma mater. So one professor has to take care of much more students, exams, etc.
To me the Fernuni seems great if you want to study while having a job, during a pandemic, are just interested in the degree, are not a in-Person Person, are a Self-motivating learner or live far away from a Uni City.
The traditional Uni seems great, if you want to experience social life, are a study group kind of person, want to go into academia, like noodles for 2€ in the Mensa. Also a lot of STEM or medicine that needs access to research facilities will be easier in a traditional Uni.
https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html
If you are interested, here is a good starting point:
https://www.uni-assist.de/en/
Edit: Changed "free" to "almost free"