GERMANY: Tuition fees deter students

An unpublished survey commissioned by Germany's Education Ministry has further fuelled the debate on tuition fees. According to the new study, leaked to a news agency ahead of an unsuccessful 'Education Summit' last week, far more young people are put off from studying by tuition fees than previously assumed. The Stifterverband, Germany's donors' association for science and the humanities, also claims that poor study conditions are acting as a deterrent.


The study was submitted to the Education Ministry some weeks ago. It states that out of the secondary-school-leaving cohort in 2006, up to 18,000 students had not gone on to further education because of worries about tuition fees - even though only two out of Germany's 16 Länder, or federal states, had introduced tuition charges. A further five states have since introduced fees.

The survey shows that women and young people from educationally disadvantaged groups of the population who are most deterred from studying. Ulla Burchardt, head of the Parliamentary Committee on Education, and a Social Democrat, called for an immediate release of the survey after it had been leaked to deutsche-presse-agentur, a leading German news agency.

Burchardt demanded the results be addressed at the Education Summit but the survey has still not been published. The Education Ministry is headed by Annette Schavan, a member of the Christian Democratic Party (CDU), the senior partners in the ruling coalition. So far, tuition fees have only been introduced in CDU-led states.

Stifterverband President Arend Oetker claimed it was not tuition fees that were putting people off from studying but poor study conditions: "The Stifterverband believes that young people are worried about the detrimental circumstances they are supposed to study in. Poor study conditions are unsocial, not tuition fees," Oetker said. He thinks that tuition fees are essential to improve study conditions and lower dropout rates.

Commenting on the outcome of the summit, Oetker said, "Federal and state governments have shown a lack of courage. They have given up the goal of motivating more young people to opt for studying."

Germany was the only country charging young parents several hundred euros a month for sending their children to kindergarten while retaining free-of-charge education. "It ought to be exactly the other way round," Oetker said. "Instead, we already start with social selection when children are just three or four years old. That's the real scandal. Prospective academics benefit from the EUR500 they have paid on semester tuition fees when they starting earning more than others later on."

michael.gardner@uw-news.com