Fraunhofer Society is a conglomerate of various research institutions. A lot of research in Germany is being done not at universities but at dedicated institutions like the Fraunhofer Society, the Max Planck Society, and many more.

The Fraunhofer CEO probably meant that the research part of German universities is bad, which is their main "competitor". This is still a ridiculous take and I attribute this to the general arrogance that was already mentioned by GP.

Yea, I am German myself and I really do not get this comment. I‘ve studied abroad and US universities / colleges are laughably easy in comparison. Grade inflation is a real thing and the result of inflated college fees.

Most US courses did not count as credit for my masters because they are too easy to get 100% in and they rarely cover even half of the average course load at TUM.

Agreed

I have been involved in several comparisons of German to US universities. The good German ones are ahead of most/all US ones in terms of several academic measures.

Though most of those measures are about research output (# papers published, # high-impact papers, # awards won by faculty weighted by award prestige, # post-docs placed to tenure-track positions, # conferences chaired, # journal editors...)

German universities are mostly so-so but that is true everywhere. There are some very good professors all over Europe as well.