* It's not exactly free, there's a €50-€100 administrative fee per semester (depends on university).
* Some kind of perk with public transportation is usually included in the student-ID. You can ride the bus for free during daytime on work-days or something like that. Plus rebates for cinema or water-park or museums (depends).
* There's language-courses at the university, so foreign students can learn german on the side. And most german students are proficient in english anyways.

Costs of living:
* About €2.50-€3.50 for a two-course-meal at the canteen, e.g. soup+meat+sidedish+salad. (There's a student-rebate included.)
* About €300 a month for a one-room-apartment of about 20m². (Small but sufficient.) Some students prefer apartment-sharing, so you only have to pay a share of the rent. (Warning: Apartment-sharing is either a really good or a really bad experience.) There are dormitories, too, but they are notoriously booked out.
* About €20-€30 a month for electricity and water.
* About €30 a month for internet-access. And you get an account at the university so you can surf the internet there for free and print out stuff (within a reasonable limit).
* About €90(?) a month for health-insurance.


How courses in english themselves are handled, I don't really know much about. But there's this:
http://www.studying-in-germany.org/study-in-english-in-germany/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Academic_Exchange_Service

About $1500 per round trip (I know Lufthansa gives student discounts)... That's still cheaper than in-state tuition at state schools where I'm from. Like, considerably cheaper.

http://www.fu-berlin.de/en/studium/studienangebot/english/

"All German universities are now free to Americans and all other international students."

German universities are extremely selective and course requirements are rigorous. Dropouts rates of 80% for first-year students are considered normal. Students also have to declare their major and have it approved at the beginning of study.

There's no such thing as going to college to "find myself."

However, Germany also has a long tradition of vocational training and apprenticeship which is why their youth unemployment rate is less than half compared with the U.S. and the rest of the Euro Zone.

We can learn plenty from Germany, but I don't think many young Americans (or their parents) would like to see their path to higher education blocked because a group of experts decided they didn't possess the requisite aptitude.

I've been doing business with German companies for decades and there is much to be admired in their approach, but it's highly stratified and selective--many here would say discriminatory.

not so much college. But now? The republicans do EVERYTHING they can to make a GOOD education unavailable to anyone but the most well-heeled.

America is indeed exceptional...exceptionally piss-poor.

We have the best University system in the World. An incredible scholarship program. And millions from other countries trying to get into our schools. The students with loans most likely wouldn't be able to attend University in Germany due to not high enough academic grades or aptitude. However many would go on the vocational track.

eom

eom

Attend college then fine.

eom

we check some of your evidence? Perhaps a long look at how American students stack up against their counterparts throughout the world, including graduates of universities. That might explain why I think American universities are piss-poor. The expenses for a university degree are a form of legalized theft. What do American students get? Thousands of dollars in debt that they will have great difficulty paying off. Perhaps you would prefer students attend America's rip-off schools, such as University of Phoenix?

Kids expect to have 24 hour workout facilities, swimming pools, elaborate living quarters, etc. this is one of the reasons costs have gotten so out of control. Dorm rooms aren't built like they used to be..

we can bomb way more people and that's what makes us indispensable and great and stuff.

Good beer and free college... can't go wrong.

1. Bierkastenlauf ("beer-crate run&quot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kastenlauf

Each team consists of two people and a crate of beer-bottles. It's basically a foot-race over several miles, except that you have to consume all the beer before you cross the finish-line.



Sometimes there are bonus-points for particularly nice crate.





2. Flunkyball
http://www.speaking-denglish.com/2012/05/flunkyball/

There are hundreds of local rule-sets, but here's the basics:
- You need: two teams of ~5 players each, 5 empty beer-bottles, lots of full beer-bottles, a soft ball (e.g. a roll of toilet-paper wrapped in gaffa-tape)
- The two teams line up on opposing sides of the field (~20 feet across), each player has a full beer standing at his feet.
- The empty bottles are lined up in the middle of the field.
- One player from Team 1 throws the ball at the empty bottles. If he hits a bottle, Team 1 may drink from its beers until Team 2 has put the bottle back up, caught the ball and is back at their positions. The teams take turns throwing.
- The team of which all the players have emptied their beers first win.
- Penalties during the game include having to ex a beer and being forced to start over with a fresh beer.

http://cdsun.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/cornell?a=d&d=CDS19810508.2.63

The beer was available at stands for us, we didn't have to carry it with us. The average time over the 1.1 mile course was about 3 hours. You Germans are much, much tougher than we were, but our costumes were more ridiculous.

But it good to see that young Thor can carry on a bit in his father's (uneven) footsteps if he attends university in Germany.

Other drinking games we played included beer pong, quarters, whales tales, liar's polker, and being mean to Carl Sagan. I'd provide links to these, but I'm on an iPad and grabbing and pasting links does not work well with DU.