5 ms·

As someone who went to University in Germany but left for the US right after I found this very interesting. My daughters are going to (state) universities in th

As someone who went to University in Germany but left for the US right after I found this very interesting. My daughters are going to (state) universities in the US and there are profound differences between the systems, some of them appear to have a very long history, judging by this account. My biggest complaints about the US system: sports and other non-academic activities as well as administration consumes way too much money. On the other hand, German universities are still much more selective so class hierarchies are reflected in the trade-school/vocational school/university hierarchy. Whether that's a good thing or not is a different question.

codethief 4y ago
> German universities are still much more selective …than US schools? https://giphy.com/gifs/nWn6ko2ygIeEU https://giphy.com/gifs/nWn6ko2ygIeEU What are you basing this on?
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  Public universities in Germany will take anyone who they believe could pass the course if they worked hard enough. For practical purposes this means you got the school leaving certificate, the Abitur. If you went to a less academic school (Realschule) rather than a Gymnasium, a grammar school you need to take an extra year but you can still go to a university of applied sciences which offer Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees as well. The only complications to open admission are for high demand courses that are very expensive to teach, mostly medicine. But if you got an Abitur and didn’t get good enough grades to get in your can just wait. I met someone who did a physiotherapy apprenticeship[1] in the three years of waiting. [1] Yes, what in the rest of Europe is a Bachelor’s degree and in the US a “professional doctorate” is a three year apprenticeship in Germany.
- zwieback 4y ago
  Sorry, poor wording. What I should have said is that the overall educational system ends up letting a smaller percentage of the population into universities, partially because sorting happens as early as age 10.
  - ongy 4y ago
    I'd say that's a feature, and sadly declining. Though I do agree that the early split is questionable at best. The enormous inflation in degree requirements just makes things harder on everyone. Most jobs don't require college education in reality. And there's some benefit in specializing into more practical or more theoretical aspects during secondary ed. Providing different usable levels and styles of education to everyone is better than trying to get everyone into one shoe. Especially if there's people on the top of that education system benefiting directly from the system because they run an investment fund with an attached education institution.
TechBro8615 4y ago
Alumni who were athletes in college tend to donate more money. (I wouldn't be surprised if they make more money on average, too.)
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  All the traits that make someone better at sports make them better at earning money too. Extroversion, communication skills, competitiveness and physical energy almost certainly aren’t worth a much as intelligence but when would they hurt?
- chucksmash 4y ago
  This feels charmingly naive. The SEC is getting $300 million per year from TV rights to football games. Surely the marginal amount donated by athletes versus non-athletes is not the reason we've ended up with the college sports industrial complex.
  - TechBro8615 4y ago
    No, but at places like Ivy League schools it's a big reason why there is still preferential treatment toward athletes.
JackFr 4y ago
With respect to the sports, the association of sports with universities is a historical quirk of the United States and partially an extension of what we inherited from the British system. That being said —- two further points: The budgets of public universities sports teams are to a large extent driven by the people who pay for them, that is taxpayers. The people of Alabama, Texas, Ohio and Louisiana very much want competitive sports teams and are happy to pay. The second is that a competitive sports programs can drive a university’s national profile. Two cases in point are the University of Connecticut whose academic profile, endowment and selectivity all improve dramatically as they became a basketball powerhouse, and Gonzaga University a small Jesuit school in Spokane had applications go up more than 300%, academic standards rise and their endowment more than double as they grew into a national basketball powerhouse.
- cma 4y ago
  > The second is that a competitive sports programs can drive a university’s national profile. Two cases in point are the University of Connecticut whose academic profile, endowment and selectivity all improve dramatically as they became a basketball powerhouse, and Gonzaga University a small Jesuit school in Spokane had applications go up more than 300%, academic standards rise and their endowment more than double as they grew into a national basketball powerhouse. These are still possibly negative sum academic acheivements though, some other universities necessarily dropped in the positional ranking and nearly all diverted more to sports.
- csa 4y ago
  > The people of Alabama, Texas, Ohio and Louisiana very much want competitive sports teams and are happy to pay. Iirc, the Texas and Alabama sports programs are self-funding and (when I last looked at it) contributed some amount of excess revenue to the university. Specially, the football and basketball programs are profitable at these schools, and these profits fund all of the other sports programs. I haven’t read a good research study on how sports performance impacts applicants and donations (esp. from alumni). That said, I know that admissions profiles at Alabama have gotten stronger (better grades and test scores) since Saban (a winning football coach) has been there, ostensibly due to an increase in the number of strong applicants from out of state.
andrepd 4y ago
>On the other hand, German universities are still much more selective so class hierarchies are reflected in the trade-school/vocational school/university hierarchy. I was under the impression that in Germany vocational schools were in general high-quality and prepared you for decent jobs. Is this not the case?
- ongy 4y ago
  They are. But outside some specific ones, a (good) univeristy education is still better. Judging from the comment further down, I also assume that they are talking more about social class of students reflecting in the student bodies. Which I can't confirm. I studied at a University that's by all measures one of the best in Germany and we had people from all social levels. Having no tuition at all, makes this easy. And from what I hear from Americans is very true for the US. I agree with the clarification in the other comment, that we split/filter education significantly too early in young lifes. And while there are various way for "a second approach to education" there's way less help for older people than during youth/direct/first education paths.
  - johannes1234321 4y ago
    > we had people from all social levels. Having no tuition at all, makes this easy The missing (or very low) tuition indeed makes it easy for those who qualify indeed. However the distribution isn't even across different groups of society. A reason is that the school system segregates early. After 4th grade it is initially decided which students go to Hauptschule (general school, or nowadays often Gesamtschule) on track of a "lower" education to start some apprenticeship after 9th grade or for "higher" education with an "Abitur" Qualifying for university after 12 or 13 grades. While there are ways to switch tracks or getting on the "zweiter Bildungsweg" the early separation correlates quite high with the parents ability to assist which depends on their social background (did the child learn proper German at home, can they afford an apartment bug enough for a quite place for doing homework, are the parents busy working or can help studying, can they afford a tutor, ...) Many of those differences become smaller as the number of pupils who qualify for university rises, but in research the difference is visible (especially in "traditional" states like Bavaria, less in others)

codethief 4y ago

> German universities are still much more selective …than US schools? https://giphy.com/gifs/nWn6ko2ygIeEU https://giphy.com/gifs/nWn6ko2ygIeEU What are you basing this on?

barry-cotter 4y ago
Public universities in Germany will take anyone who they believe could pass the course if they worked hard enough. For practical purposes this means you got the school leaving certificate, the Abitur. If you went to a less academic school (Realschule) rather than a Gymnasium, a grammar school you need to take an extra year but you can still go to a university of applied sciences which offer Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees as well. The only complications to open admission are for high demand courses that are very expensive to teach, mostly medicine. But if you got an Abitur and didn’t get good enough grades to get in your can just wait. I met someone who did a physiotherapy apprenticeship[1] in the three years of waiting. [1] Yes, what in the rest of Europe is a Bachelor’s degree and in the US a “professional doctorate” is a three year apprenticeship in Germany.
zwieback 4y ago
Sorry, poor wording. What I should have said is that the overall educational system ends up letting a smaller percentage of the population into universities, partially because sorting happens as early as age 10.
- ongy 4y ago
  I'd say that's a feature, and sadly declining. Though I do agree that the early split is questionable at best. The enormous inflation in degree requirements just makes things harder on everyone. Most jobs don't require college education in reality. And there's some benefit in specializing into more practical or more theoretical aspects during secondary ed. Providing different usable levels and styles of education to everyone is better than trying to get everyone into one shoe. Especially if there's people on the top of that education system benefiting directly from the system because they run an investment fund with an attached education institution.

TechBro8615 4y ago

Alumni who were athletes in college tend to donate more money. (I wouldn't be surprised if they make more money on average, too.)

barry-cotter 4y ago
All the traits that make someone better at sports make them better at earning money too. Extroversion, communication skills, competitiveness and physical energy almost certainly aren’t worth a much as intelligence but when would they hurt?
chucksmash 4y ago
This feels charmingly naive. The SEC is getting $300 million per year from TV rights to football games. Surely the marginal amount donated by athletes versus non-athletes is not the reason we've ended up with the college sports industrial complex.
- TechBro8615 4y ago
  No, but at places like Ivy League schools it's a big reason why there is still preferential treatment toward athletes.

JackFr 4y ago

With respect to the sports, the association of sports with universities is a historical quirk of the United States and partially an extension of what we inherited from the British system. That being said —- two further points: The budgets of public universities sports teams are to a large extent driven by the people who pay for them, that is taxpayers. The people of Alabama, Texas, Ohio and Louisiana very much want competitive sports teams and are happy to pay. The second is that a competitive sports programs can drive a university’s national profile. Two cases in point are the University of Connecticut whose academic profile, endowment and selectivity all improve dramatically as they became a basketball powerhouse, and Gonzaga University a small Jesuit school in Spokane had applications go up more than 300%, academic standards rise and their endowment more than double as they grew into a national basketball powerhouse.

cma 4y ago
> The second is that a competitive sports programs can drive a university’s national profile. Two cases in point are the University of Connecticut whose academic profile, endowment and selectivity all improve dramatically as they became a basketball powerhouse, and Gonzaga University a small Jesuit school in Spokane had applications go up more than 300%, academic standards rise and their endowment more than double as they grew into a national basketball powerhouse. These are still possibly negative sum academic acheivements though, some other universities necessarily dropped in the positional ranking and nearly all diverted more to sports.
csa 4y ago
> The people of Alabama, Texas, Ohio and Louisiana very much want competitive sports teams and are happy to pay. Iirc, the Texas and Alabama sports programs are self-funding and (when I last looked at it) contributed some amount of excess revenue to the university. Specially, the football and basketball programs are profitable at these schools, and these profits fund all of the other sports programs. I haven’t read a good research study on how sports performance impacts applicants and donations (esp. from alumni). That said, I know that admissions profiles at Alabama have gotten stronger (better grades and test scores) since Saban (a winning football coach) has been there, ostensibly due to an increase in the number of strong applicants from out of state.

andrepd 4y ago

>On the other hand, German universities are still much more selective so class hierarchies are reflected in the trade-school/vocational school/university hierarchy. I was under the impression that in Germany vocational schools were in general high-quality and prepared you for decent jobs. Is this not the case?

ongy 4y ago
They are. But outside some specific ones, a (good) univeristy education is still better. Judging from the comment further down, I also assume that they are talking more about social class of students reflecting in the student bodies. Which I can't confirm. I studied at a University that's by all measures one of the best in Germany and we had people from all social levels. Having no tuition at all, makes this easy. And from what I hear from Americans is very true for the US. I agree with the clarification in the other comment, that we split/filter education significantly too early in young lifes. And while there are various way for "a second approach to education" there's way less help for older people than during youth/direct/first education paths.
- johannes1234321 4y ago
  > we had people from all social levels. Having no tuition at all, makes this easy The missing (or very low) tuition indeed makes it easy for those who qualify indeed. However the distribution isn't even across different groups of society. A reason is that the school system segregates early. After 4th grade it is initially decided which students go to Hauptschule (general school, or nowadays often Gesamtschule) on track of a "lower" education to start some apprenticeship after 9th grade or for "higher" education with an "Abitur" Qualifying for university after 12 or 13 grades. While there are ways to switch tracks or getting on the "zweiter Bildungsweg" the early separation correlates quite high with the parents ability to assist which depends on their social background (did the child learn proper German at home, can they afford an apartment bug enough for a quite place for doing homework, are the parents busy working or can help studying, can they afford a tutor, ...) Many of those differences become smaller as the number of pupils who qualify for university rises, but in research the difference is visible (especially in "traditional" states like Bavaria, less in others)