German Universities Now Charging Tuition

From Awilum. I had considered applying to Tübingen for graduate work precisely because (aside from being great in our field) there was no tuition. My interests changed and I don’t regret my time or degree from Oxford, but the student loans… ugh.
The End of a Free Ride? Möglicherweise

Bloomberg reports that for the first time in almost 40 years many German universities are now charging tuition. In most cases the tuition costs are very nominal when compared to Anglo-American prices. For instance, the average cost in seven of Germany’s sixteen states is only 1,000 Euros per year.

German universities are making this shift because American and British universities are consistently beating them in global academic rankings. One reason for this is the fact that Anglo-American institutions spend more per pupil than Germany does. American institutions in particular spend much more because of their relatively high tuition costs coupled with very aggressive fund raising efforts. This has led American colleges to take fully half of the spots in the top 100 institutions of higher education in the global rankings compiled by the University of Shanghai while German universities took only 5 spots.

One last piece of astounding trivia: according to the article Harvard spends $149,686 per student per year! Harvard is a good school, but this is a ton of money. Do you think Harvard is spending this money efficiently?

The citation referenced above is:

Goethe University spent about 10,126 euros, or $13,200, per student in 2006, compared with $149,686 at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, according to information on their Web sites.

I would like to see how that figure is arrived at. My guess is that Harvard’s figure presumably comes from a simple formula of total expense divided by the number of students (only undergrads?). Since an undergrad in History is not going to cost nearly as much as a doctoral student in cell and molecular biology.

(Via Awilum.com.)