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Originally Posted by Thomen
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Originally Posted by McBeck
Yup its those high figures that ensures free education among other things....
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Free education as in the whole shebang (incl. College/University) or just the 'lower tier' like from Kindergarten to Highschool?
Germany had the all free deal too, but I do remember that they started to charge for 'public' University education.. some relatively small amount of a couple of hundred Euros per semester or something like that. |
Some German federal states have introduced charges per semester indeed, ranging from 250-500 Euros per semester. As long as the money is left to the universities indeed and not beign used to fill holes in the state's budget elsewhere, and as long as the charges don't get any higher, I can accept that to improve the equipement of the universities. However, the education mistry keeps locked a study that showed that these charges alredy has been high enough to prevent a significant ammount of young people from socially weak families, and many females, to go to university. the effect is unwelcomed for the offocial position of the government which claimed this would not happen, so they try to delay the publication to find ways to relativise the findings.
The percentage of young people in Germany going for a university's degree is relatoivels small compared to other Wetsern nations, so in Germany this study's findings really are an issue. On the other hand universities in germany, the status of their buildings and rooms and the equipment especially of libraries in not rare cases leave a lot to be desired.
In general I propagate general access to education for all people, if they want, for an educated population is precondition for a free and responsible society. For the same reason I want education to not focus exclusively on technical specialisation, but on educating the character and positvely forming the general attitude of people, what in german traiton would be the old humanistic education ideals of Humboldt. But eduaction more and more is falling apart over here, in school it becomes a politically overregulated, uninspired ideological trenchwarfare of flawed paedagocical concepts versus simple healthy reason, and university focusses very strongly on just tecnical specialisation, not on the rest I mentioned. Both is a loss of education culture.