Mad Dogs and Englishmen

I was about to start with "our education is crap", but since you don't want to hear that, let me try to be a bit more objective. First of all, don't be blinded by the beautiful promise of spending more money in higher education. It's just that, beautiful and very empty promises. We've had to deal with huge budget cuts and their unpleasant consequences as well. Now, of course, things depend a lot on which Bundesland you're in, and which university, and which course, but it's not a rose garden over here. Many universities here also have huge classes, mediocre teachers, the whole shebang. And when our politicians decide to spend more money on something, it's usually some weird show-off project that concerns a tiny minority of students ("look at us, we're spending money on education!"). Now if you're doing something like that, awesome. If not ... less awesome. I have never studied in the UK, so I can't compare. I'm just warning you not to expect too much of our universities. Also, I don't know what exactly studying is like in the UK, but here we have usually really tight rules and restrictions about which classes we HAVE to take. This is at least true for Bachelor and Master degrees; once you're doing a PhD you can do whatever you like. It used to be very different, but since the big university reform a few years ago the curricula are pretty strict. I don't know if this is any different in the UK or not, just saying. As I said, we have huge differences between the different Länder and universities, so if you really want to study here you should choose carefully. Unfortunately many of the supposedly good universities are in small hicktowns nobody wants to live in. As for the fees, they're of course a lot lower than in the UK. Again, it depends on the Bundesland you're in: some have so-called Studiengebühren, I think the highest is something like 500 or 700€ per semester, but I'm not sure. Other Länder don't have that, there you only have to pay smaller fees for administration and stuff. At least here in Berlin that's around 270€/semester (and that's including a semester ticket for the otherwise insanely expensive public transport around here). This is of course only for the state universities. There are private schools and universities that are a LOT more expensive. It really depends on what you want to do and where you want to go. You can ask me if you want to hear more, but I can only speak from my experiences and the things I've heard from friends, and most of that is limited to the different universities in and around Berlin. And while Berlin is no doubt the best city to live in in Germany, we are not exactly known for our great universities anymore.