I went through it and did the "optimal" track up to and including a Master degree. Today, almost everyone does Abitur and a Bachelor's degree... tbh you are re

I went through it and did the "optimal" track up to and including a Master degree. Today, almost everyone does Abitur and a Bachelor's degree... tbh you are regarded as pretty simple if you didnt finish at least a Bachelor and given our traditional dual system of diploma and trades it's really sad to observe this... We actually have a solid and proven system for people to learn the trades (Ausbildung) after secondary education. Master craftsmen like electricians have potential to earn WAY more than many of the snobby academics and will have insane job security. But "society" (read: industry) conditions people that a Bachelor is necessary. Got a Bachelor degree in whatever? Welcome to your new job as secretary, here is your €30k/year pre tax (with some plumber laughing in the background). The meaning of the Bachelor degree has been watered down to nothing in the last 20 years. It sounds arrogant, but I really do know students in university who are incapable of composing a sensible German sentence that is logically conistent and grammatically correct. As if there was zero academic requirements to enter. Germany has a "numerus clausus" (required minimum grade)for many popular fields but Abitur grades are not comparable at all across federal states. 1.0 in Bavaria (actually hard) means something entirely different than in Hamburg (quite achievable) but students from both will be treated equal when chosen for university. It's almost impossible to fail Abitur and the Bachelor's unless you make your own life unnecessarily hard or have some pretty bad luck in life. "Street smart" people will easily get a Bachelor degree because cheating is easy and expectations are minimal - unless you decide to do engineering at RWTH Aachen or TUM (which are amazing programs) in whcih case you'd actually be doing something mildly demanding. When Germany switched from its diploma system to a more "internationally standardized" Bachelor/Master model it destroyed a successful model of education in an attempt to be more comparable on an international scale. Back in the day, people in the US or Asia wouldn't immediately know what degree "Dipl. Ing." corresponded to and how you'd translate that but I will defend my opinion to death that those degree programs were better at actually producing capable people. Industry just wants to produce work drones and modern universities are their partners in crime. Actual academics start after the Bachelor when the simpletons and bored people have left.