The importance of a university education is undeniable when it comes time to finding a job that offers a decent salary. Forbes magazine stated that a four-year-college graduate earns on average $55,000 per year; people with post-graduate degrees, master’s degrees and doctorates earn $65,000 per year and beyond. Education is considered a great equalizer and a symbol of the American dream, but this gets difficult to comprehend in the face of continually rising tuition and fees, which leave students drowning in debt after pursing their undergraduate degrees.
In a dream world, tuition fees wouldn’t exist at all. It seems Germany has made that student dream a reality. Higher education is now free throughout the country, even for international students. Lower Saxony recently became the last of seven German states to get rid of tuition, which was already extremely low when compared to those in the United States.
By U.S. standards, Germans barely had to pay for undergraduate study even before the tuition and fees were abolished. Universities did not attempt to bankrupt students before their life had already begun, as semester fees averaged around $630. Furthermore, students were rewarded for their pursuit of higher education with perks such as free transportation within and between cities.
Dorothee Stapelfeldt, senator for science in Hamburg, told The Times, Europe, “Tuition fees are socially unjust.” The state of Hamburg scrapped fees in 2012. “They particularly discourage young people who do not have a traditional academic family background from taking up studies. It is a core task of politics to ensure that young women and men can study with a high quality standard free of charge in Germany.”
This seems like such a valid concept, and it is unfortunate that more nations do not believe in this approach.
There are, in fact, several government measures that could be implemented to relieve the huge weight of student debt; some basic steps could make higher education accessible to all. An example of this is already in place in Tennessee, where they have recently voted to make two-year colleges free for all high school graduates. Moreover, the U.S. as a whole could follow Germany’s lead and make public universities free with relative ease. The U.S. government spent approximately $69 billion funding college education and another $107.4 billion on student loans in 2013, according to the Atlantic. The total cost of tuition at all public universities actually costs much less than that, at about $62.6 billion in 2012. With an efficient restructuring of the education budget, the price of attending public universities could certainly be brought down to zero. This in turn would also apply pressure on private universities to lower their own tuition fees to be more competitive.
There is no doubt the U.S. system needs to be reevaluated if other powerhouse nations are capable of offering free higher education. There needs to demand for fiscal accountability from institutions of higher learning so that future generations have access to higher education and therefore the American dream. However, in the meantime, learning German might be the best financial choice an American high school student can make.
