Tuition Fees: England vs Germany

[mcbook]

This article describes the higher education situation in Germany and highlights that university education is free there while student pay up to £9,000 per annum in England.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34132664

The key point of interest for me is that in Germany only 27% of young people go into higher education while in England it's 47%. I'm not an expert on the subject but have long thought that too many people go to university and then end up working in jobs they could have gone straight into from high-school. The article mentions a recent CIPD study that seems to back this up.

So, are too many people going to university in England? What should we do with them instead? How about more apprenticeships? Or something entirely different?

[anonymous-user]

Old news, have a look at EU countries, some offer free degree courses and postgraduate Oones. Let be honest UK people unis are just there to churn out numbers, a lot in the EU are there for proper development.

You can even do free courses online, I was looking at a few, in english too.

[youngsyr]

Sending so many young adults to university is also a very effective way of lowering youth and total unemployment figures, albeit with unknown long term consequences.

[cptsideways]

I think you will find Germany has a very high Technical/Engineering degree level as opposed to keeping youngsters off the streets liberal woolly education degrees.

[Hoofy]

I'd like to think that:
1) if they came out with a degree then it proved that they should have gone in
2) if we have enough qualified people in this country then we would reduce the need for immigration or at least put them off because the jobs market becomes saturated IYSWIM.

[FredClogs]

cptsideways said:

I think you will find Germany has a very high Technical/Engineering degree level as opposed to keeping youngsters off the streets liberal woolly education degrees.

You'll also find the quality of German creative industries, art output (including music), television output and general cultural richness rather staid.

I'm an engineer and spend all day with other engineers, I'm quite glad of the woolly minded folk when I clock off.

[LeoSayer]

47% of students go on to higher education?

I can't believe it's that many.

[anonymous-user]

LeoSayer said:

47% of students go on to higher education?

I can't believe it's that many.

I would guess a-level or equivilent go into further eductation.

[anonymous-user]

youngsyr said:

Sending so many young adults to university is also a very effective way of lowering youth and total unemployment figures, albeit with unknown long term consequences.

But surely that only works for one intake, 3 years? Hardly a worthwhile political expedient.

[Prince Philip]

REALIST123 said:

But surely that only works for one intake, 3 years? Hardly a worthwhile political expedient.

I notice that my old game, sec science teaching now likes people with masters degrees. (another £11k of debt)

[Swervin_Mervin]

Higher (yeah right) education for the masses - another New Labour burden that should be abandoned asap imo. It's only served to saddle the majority of people it was designed to benefit, with huge debts they'll take years to pay off.

[youngsyr]

REALIST123 said:

youngsyr said:

Sending so many young adults to university is also a very effective way of lowering youth and total unemployment figures, albeit with unknown long term consequences.

But surely that only works for one intake, 3 years? Hardly a worthwhile political expedient.

There are 1.75m undergraduates currently in the UK, ignoring foreign students that might be in that total, if you were to halve that number to get closer to the German level of participation (UK 47% vs Germany 27%), you would add 875,000 young people (plus the people involved in educating them) to the job market at any given time.

That's would have a noticeable impact on the unemployment figures.

[AJS-]

I suspect it's more to do with Germany having a fairly good apprenticeship system that has been established for a long time rather than the price incentives.

[Willy Nilly]

I bet the Germans beat us on penalties again

[Axionknight]

woowahwoo said:

youngsyr said:

There are 1.75m undergraduates currently in the UK, ignoring foreign students that might be in that total, if you were to halve that number to get closer to the German level of participation (UK 47% vs Germany 27%), you would add 875,000 young people (plus the people involved in educating them) to the job market at any given time.

That's would have a noticeable impact on the unemployment figures.

Yep, it's almost like a three-year, largely self-funded unemployment scheme

What percentage of student loans are never repaid, out of interest?

[Axionknight]

AJS- said:

I suspect it's more to do with Germany having a fairly good apprenticeship system that has been established for a long time rather than the price incentives.

Agreed.

An apprenticeship almost seems to be considered the dirty option in this country, IMO. Many turn their nose up at the idea of such work instead of "further/higher education", I was called a drop out by my friends when we left school in 2004 and I went on to do an apprenticeship and college day release where as they went on to full time college/sixth form.

[youngsyr]

Axionknight said:

woowahwoo said:

youngsyr said:

There are 1.75m undergraduates currently in the UK, ignoring foreign students that might be in that total, if you were to halve that number to get closer to the German level of participation (UK 47% vs Germany 27%), you would add 875,000 young people (plus the people involved in educating them) to the job market at any given time.

That's would have a noticeable impact on the unemployment figures.

Yep, it's almost like a three-year, largely self-funded unemployment scheme

What percentage of student loans are never repaid, out of interest?

Any figures will only be estimates as the current system (with much smaller loan amounts) was only introduced in the late 1990s and the hike to £9k fees p.a. only occured in 2012. The earliest any of these loans can be written off is 2037, as I understand it.

However, this report gives the following figures:

Report said:

baseline estimate is that each £1 of loans issued will cost the government 43.3p in the long run. Around 60% of this ‘government subsidy’ arises because some loans will never be repaid in full, while 40% arises because, on average, loans are offered at an interest rate below the government’s long-run cost of borrowing. We estimate that the average loan issued per student over the life of their course is £40,286, and thus that the average loan subsidy amounts to £17,443 per student. For an intake of 300,000 students, this would amount to a total cost to the government of £5.2 billion.

http://www.ifs.org.uk/comms/r94.pdf

[mcbook]

AJS- said:

I suspect it's more to do with Germany having a fairly good apprenticeship system that has been established for a long time rather than the price incentives.

Although I never mentioned this in the post, it was on my mind. Germany are very successful with apprenticeships but they seem to do them properly with rigorous standards and 'blue-collar' work still having a certain prestige that it seems to have lost in the UK.

I would much rather my kids chose to do a decent apprenticeship rather than opted for a questionable degree at a lesser university.

[youngsyr]

mcbook said:

AJS- said:

I suspect it's more to do with Germany having a fairly good apprenticeship system that has been established for a long time rather than the price incentives.

Although I never mentioned this in the post, it was on my mind. Germany are very successful with apprenticeships but they seem to do them properly with rigorous standards and 'blue-collar' work still having a certain prestige that it seems to have lost in the UK.

I would much rather my kids chose to do a decent apprenticeship rather than opted for a questionable degree at a lesser university.

I suspect it will be Oxbridge or nothing by the time my kid(s) are 18 (in 18 years time) - anything else just won't be worth the cost.

[Martin 480 Turbo]

Take a look here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_education_syste...

The German educational system is fundamentaly different from the british.

It is quiet usual that a teen chooses an apprenticeship first (for about 3 years), only
to do some further studies later. So 27% going into higher education after school is not fully comparable to british figures.

Those apprenticeships are combined with wide spanning academic education in vocational schools, resulting in young people having irl experience combined with theoretical knowledge that makes them superior to the ones who have "only" done a bachelors degree, from an employers point of view. (This is why every fulltime student over here really strives to do a master thesis.)

Only backside I can see is that the system a little more costly for the companies and the state but it looks like it pays of in the long run.