The article has many points that are not correct. I was a foreign student who did studienkolleg (preparatory university course), bachelor and master degrees in

The article has many points that are not correct. I was a foreign student who did studienkolleg (preparatory university course), bachelor and master degrees in German in Bavaria. In total, I spent 6 years in their educational system. One thing to highlight is that German universities are very different to the American system of small groups, interaction with students, labs, hand-holding, etc. Traditional German education is one where you are not obliged to go to classes and you only have one final exam at the end of the semester. Some classes had up to 800 students. In other classes, we never got to see the professor and we were taught by a PhD student. Nobody knew your name and you were just another face, if you ever showed up to class. Thus, the marginal cost of having an additional local or foreign student is minimum. This system is not for everyone and given that my classes were all in German, it was very challenging. University-level German (vocabulary, idioms, etc) is very different from the one you learn at the Sprachkurs. Most foreign students dropped out and went back home. This is also accentuated by the fact that if you fail an exam 3 times, you are expelled from the university and you are banned from studying that study field for life across all German universities. Moreover, German universities do not have their own sport facilities and luxurious campuses as their American counterparts. Normally, for sports, there is a shared facility for all local universities and you pay an extra semester ticket to have access. The average German university has old facilities and no luxuries. Thus, the cost base is completely different to universities in the US. Back then, we were told that Germany offers education to foreigners to foster relations with foreign countries. If we foreigners study in Germany and are shaped the German way, once we go home, not only we will be well qualified, but also we will be keen to establish business relations with German companies. During my study times, around 2006, they introduced at my university fees for everyone. The idea was not popular and it was not covering the cost of education. The idea did not last long. Some years later it went back to be free for everyone. German universities are very left-leaning and in the German society there is a wide consensus that university education should be free for all. The CDU and FDP, two political parties on the right spectrum, constantly push the idea of charging foreign students to help finance public education, but the idea has never gotten any type of support in the society.