The brain-drain starts here

[skull_bearer]

So, what with education in the UK being stripped of basically everything, and the PM cutting anything which has 'public' anywhere near it. I've been eying the old Deutschland more and more appraisingly. After reading that Masters degrees are next on the chopping block (First they came for the undergraduates, and I said nothing....), I decided to see just what it was like over the channel and far away.

I swear this is some sort of dumb plot.

The scattering of pages my google search: 'Germany education news' brought will be paraphrased as follows:

Germany proposes 'happiness index'!
Germany education minister pledges to spend more money in higher education!
Germany's impoving economy in trouble because of lack of skilled workers!
Germany proposes bringing in more foreign students to its universities to make up for lack of skilled workers!
Visit our amazing International university in Berlin! (okay, that one was a bit random)

Grief. I mean, I'm used to moments where then world seem to be scream 'YOU! DO THIS!', but I though that was usually limited to Holocaust related stuff.

Unfortunately Paramour's previous visit to Germany was as part of the occupying forces, and being of the baby boom generation I think he still has the 'kraut=nazi' shorthand. He says he'll probably get over it.
Which is good, I have two years to do this course, and unless things get turned around sharpish, there's not going to be much for me to do around here.

So, you peeps who live in Germanland, please tell me what education is like at your end (ps, don't tell me it's crap, everything thinks their education is crap). My German teacher tells me that the fees are something like £1,000 a year (or was it in euros?) and if that's true it's already miles better than the UK.

Ok, I won't be able to sing 'Night of the Long Knives' in public, but then I probably shouldn't have done that anyway.

Comments

[shadowvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

I second what people said above: it's not bad over here, but it absolutely isn't the promised land, either. Recent reforms have brought tight curricula and thus made studying what interests you a lot harder.

And while studying is a lot cheaper -- with fees, train ticket and social compensation stuff, I pay roughly 500 € a semester in total, which is about average afaik, plus the usual living expenses (rent, food, the yadda) -- this comes at the cost of much larger classes (often with hundreds of people, very rarely less than 30), and subsequently stressed-out and often unfriendly profs who don't have time for individual students and usually don't know you by name. (Though with a "smaller" (attendance-wise) subject like History, that's less extreme than it was in English when I still did that, or what I've heard from the business-related subjects.

Before you decide on where to apply, make sure you check the subject-specific uni-rankings (must be somewhere on the internet), because the quality differences are huge. Often, small universities trump the big ones like Berlin, Munich, or Cologne. Obviously, I'm all in favour of Münster and you should consider it advertised for special consideration. ";-)

[shadowvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

I should add for reasons of fairness that my department isn't so great for Holocaust-related things and only appeals to me as a Medievalist. So you might want to find a different uni.