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Education

Germany, the next USA for Desi students ?

By: Karthik :+: Under: Education
On: ⋅ December 2, 2006 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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The country known for its amazing cars is now stepping into the education arena. A recent change in law allows International students to stay for upto a year to ’search’ for jobs. This law is very similar to the OPT (Optional Practical Training) program allowed in the United States of America.

I had no clue that till recently German state universities did not charge students for their higher education. The recent law has allowed some State aided Universities to collect fees, but capping them at 500 Euro or $664 US a semester. I remember paying twice that after I was given financial assistance by the school.

The Hindu reports that the students can stay for upto four years after their education if they find a job in a related field and longer if their jobs are seen to help the economy.

Happy Pakistani students from RWTH-Aachen University, Germany

Mr. Ulrich Podewils, Director, German Academic Exchange Service in a chat with The Hindu says that some Universities might not charge for the education and instead attract International Students.

“Of course there are still issues to be debated, and there are three lines of thought, one for levying fee, another — namely those institutions that do not attract many international students — not for levying fee, and the third, which represents some of the State Governments, that wants the issue to be decided by individual universities,” he said.

Mr. Podewils also added that Germany was looking for more than just engineers.

“Of course, we want more Indian talent to come into Germany but it needs to be broad — not only science or engineering but also in areas of humanities,” he adds. In Germany, there was a significant rise in the number of students entering higher education and that meant the capacity in the 300 universities had to be raised, he said.

Combined with a tougher procedure to get into the USA and costlier education system, Germany would be a very attractive alternative. Added with the fact that German is a viable and available second language option in many Indian schools, I do not see why people would not choose Germany.

Young Germany has some very interesting information for future students.

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