The change to The Open University in the UK (to remove subsidy and drive it's fees up to ~2/3 the cost of other universities) has to be one of the worst things that has happened in the UK in he last 10 years. My Dad did an OU degree late in life and it was really important to him, I think that an opportunity - like the one in this story or like the OU - for people to find another direction later in their lives, no matter what their background, is hugely important.
I remember when some OU tutorials were broadcast on the television (BBC) in the UK. Anyone could watch and as a teenager I remembered being entralled by some of the maths courses [1] - it probably influenced my career choices in the end.
In a way it was a precursor to similar material on YouTube and MOOCs - technical material freely open for all.
Incidentally, it's wild seeing the physical models of 3D surfaces in the Open University video you linked -- nowadays, the equivalent visualisations can be obtained so quickly, at such low cost, and reach so many more people.
It is wild! I was struck looking at these agaim after so many years how similar they are in spirit to modern equivalents - I actually find the physical versions a bit more engaging. Both are so much better too than can be achieved in a physical classroom with just a whiteboard.
Completely agree - I was enrolled in the OU at the time. It seemed like they made the change to stop the OU from steamrolling traditional universities when they introduced tuition fees for regular degrees. The OU could easily run courses for the low prices they used to charge (~£4000 for a degree?), but it would banjax our new commercial university system.
I once thought about doing an OU degree as a hobby when I got to a point in my life when I had some spare time for learning.
Wow turns out they're astronomically expensive and even a simple bachelors takes a stupid number of years.
Also maybe it's just my field but I never see any research output from the OU either, and I don't know any academics working there at all, so I don't know what kind of standard of staff you're getting.
I'm not sure who's spending money on these things?
(Quality: three TACAS'20 papers this year... and most of our departement doesn't target that conf)
Our programmes are accredited by the same institution as other programmes of all other unis in NL. The accreditation committee was even impressed with the quality of our bachelor theses in comparison to other universities.
I definitely think there's room for improvement, but the Dutch OU is a serious university, and aims for a high quality of teachers and teaching materials.
I've seen strong research from OU people in knowledge management, and in knowledge representation. Their webpags give an overview of the interests in compsci.
OU is so strange to me. Last time I looked at is, as an American, I could not qualify for any of there technical programs given my nationality, but I could try some of there legal programs. I also really like the option they provide to sort of make your own degree, but seems impractical given the biggest benefit of university, especially an online program, is solely credentialing.
Sure, but it’s still a BA from a real and accredited university, and there are plenty of situations in life where that’s needed, regardless of the subject. Many immigration programs will take it into account, if you want to become a teacher, access to further education or professional qualifications.
In short, I don’t think a BA in Open Studies or whatever they call it is any less useful than a BA in International Relations or any number of other non-vocational BAs.
International Relations may be "non-vocational" to a certain degree (hah!), but it's much closer to certain vocations than an Open Studies degree is. (At least, a generic Open Studies degree. I suppose one could tailor a particular Open Studies degree to be quite vocational, for some very narrowly defined vocations.)
Firstly, again, I don't think it matters. A BA/BSc is a tick-box what needs a tickin' in quite a few situations in life where the subject is completely by-the-by.
Secondly, though, to pick up on your "I suppose one could tailor a particular Open Studies degree to be quite vocational", I think you can actually take that further. With reference to the link below, I think you could create a curriculum that was far more relevant for the roles most people do than most degrees are? I feel like I could pick out courses there that would make a university a far more useful developer than most compsci courses?
To be clear, they removed subsidies for people to get a degree at a level to which they already had a degree, AIUI. i.e. if you already had a masters, then they was no subsidy for getting a second.
Personally, this feels fair enough - it's not clear why this sort of education should be subsidized.
> Personally, this feels fair enough - it's not clear why this sort of education should be subsidized.
The core aim of the OU is to help build the economy & promote social mobility. One of the ways this can occur is via easy access to retraining as job sectors die (either locally or nationally). If a degree-level education is required, OU is one of the few realistic ways of acquiring that education. Substantially increasing the price of degrees closed this path off for many. Whether a person has a previous degree shouldn't really factor into an ability to retrain if necessary (and yes, successive governments since the 80s have given lip service to the need to provide for this and done nothing, allowing this was just more of the same)
The neat thing is that any foreigner can study any subject at any University in Germany for almost free. The only drawback here is that obviously most classes are in German, so knowledge of the "awful German language" (Mark Twain) is required.
> The neat thing is that any foreigner can study any subject at any University in Germany for free.
This statement is not true. It is the case though that many if not most public German universities have costs that run in the very low thousands i.e. 1-5k for total degree costs.
However, there are some drawbacks to the way this system works. For one, you will be hard pressed to find online degree offerings or continuing studies options from public Universities (i.e. these types of low costs offerings) that allow you to continue your education while working fulltime. Most of these come from private institutions or specific programs which have higher costs typically running in the 10k+ cost range area.
Its great if you are a student graduating from high school and going to university - you won't be burdened with high costs. However, the public system largely still neglects (this lone University being the only example in all of Germany which I am aware of) many other situations where people might want to further their education.
We do have something called Volkshochschulen, which is in some ways similar to Junior Colleges in the United States and provides some level of extended studies at a public level, but anyway, I won't go into details, suffice it to say the systems don't translate one-to-one onto each other and there are cons with our system as well.
> this lone University being the only example in all of Germany which I am aware of
Yes indeed this is the only state run distance-learning university, but I'd argue that you only really need one such institution. After all, you can study from anywhere :). They have regional centers in many German towns, but for most courses you only need to be there for the exams at the end of the semester, so you can also study hours away from the next regional center.
And it's quite successful. By number of enrolled students, it's the largest university of Germany at 77k, with the runner up having only 56k students.
Agreed. Its fantastic we have any such place. However, having had conversations with friends and family outside of Germany, they usually hear the costs and then imagine the system in the USA or their home country just with much lower costs. And this is just not the case. Our German system is a very different system from the USA at all levels which complicates direct comparisons.
Regardless, I think initiatives like this one which in general provide more opportunites to more people to better their lives is something I would like to see more of, not just in Germany but all over the world.
The system in Germany is much less stratified than US, UK or even China. There are few "top" universities if you look at the global rankings, which probably comes from both the lower budgets and the lower incentives to compete on the ranking metrics. But the German universities consistently perform well; Germany really has no bad (public) universities.
The atmosphere is very different and having studied in the UK i see the merits of both: a UK university basically runs like a school with a very strong support system and 1:1 touch with academics. In Germany its really a more "mass" approach in lectures and then seminars with lower ranking staff, not the actual professors. Also less other support e.g. psychologists, tech support,.. To succeed at a German university you have to grow up ;)
Also interestingly German universities seem to be much more political places. The UK I experienced as filled with extracurricular stuff, while in Germany there's much less of that and in return a much more vibrant political and debate culture.
There is an administrative fee usually that is in the low 3 digit range per semester, I’d assume it’s still below 200€ per semester and usually includes a ticket for the local public transit. When I studied a real fee was introduced (2007 iirc) and abolished again before I graduated.
Volkshochschule is not a college but does offer yoga and knitting classes, some language classes and maybe a computing class for seniors.. nothing that would prepare you for a career
I generally agree with you but this is a little too far. At least bigger Volkshochschulen do offer non-academic qualifications, especially in the area of continuous education for those with existing qualifications.
Besides languages, this ranges from various finance and law classes for people who are starting their own business, over “Ausbildung der Ausbilder” (Train the Trainer but a formal qualification the German dual system), to certificates like CCNA.
The courses that are offered vary widely between cities, it’s difficult to generalize.
What you find is courses that are job-qualifying degrees. The VHS is really structured around taking individual, stand-alone, courses.
The one exception I can think of is that some VHS’ are offering “Hauptschulabschluss” for those who left school without graduating.
Volkshochschule are "low level" community training courses. Yet many people successfully learned Languages there. It is far below a University or a poly-technical college. It has nothing do do with a real degree.
FUN FACT: I read once a Serbian guy took a course there in Economics, had the certificate translated into Serbian and the translator translated "Volkshochschule", to "Peoples University" and became an Economics professor with this certifica in Serbia until the whole scam became public.
To give you the perspective: Basically every guy here on Hackernews could give a "Python course" there or something. for 2 hours every week for 6 months and one of the attendees would manage to become a CS professor with this.
That lone university is exactly intended to be the only one. No reason to compete if there's no economic reason to compete. They are qualitative, reasonably priced and tend to have good reviews.
Sadly the Fernuni is in one way stuck in the past: for many (all?) courses there are mandatory presence seminars. You can do the exams at many places in Germany (e.g. Volkshochschulen) and at all embassies and Goethe institutes abroad, but for the seminars you have to still go in person it seems. Else I would long have done a Fernuni degree.
A small nitpick: A Volkshochschule is usually better compared to a community college (open to "everyone" and the main inexpensive option for adults seeking more education outside their career). "Junior college" is closer in connotation to a Fachhochschule or even a Berufsschule.
Isn't a community college a real professional education?
Volkshochschule courses are usually languages, painting, photography, cooking etc. The teachers are usually non-professionals. The course is usually about ten weeks of one or one and a half hours.
- Onboarding students directly out of secondary schools who don't yet have the academic requirements or financial ability for university, usually with intent to use this as a springboard to a cheaper university education; usually this terminates with a transfer to a university (and may or may not include an associate degree);
- Providing formal education for people interested in changing or advancing their career; usually this terminates with an associate degree;
- Providing formal but "casual" adult education, which includes the kind of courses you find at a Volkshochschule but also simply introductory tertiary courses (many of which would actually be final secondary courses outside the US) - the teachers are usually professionals but there's no expectation for the students to "use" the knowledge and auditing may be as common as taking the course for credit.
The main thing I want to point out is to avoid translating Volkshochschule as "junior college" which has an increasingly negative connotation in US English. Most decent junior colleges have expanded their programs and rebranded to full community colleges (or even universities) now and the term is mostly used for private, for-profit, vocational training.
(I should also add these terms vary a lot across English-speaking countries; I'm just referring to the US here.)
I don't think German is really difficult. Some things are strange for an English speaker: declension, therefore flexible word order and gender is more elusive compared to Spanish.
There is a saying: "Hungarian... the only tongue in the world the devil respects."
The language is pretty great beyond the surface, IMO. Most of the common hurdles (akkusativ/dativ, long words, and also number order) are dealt with in the first months of german learning (A1 level) and are not really an issue in real life. I still might misgender objects from time to time, but it can also happen in the other three romance languages I speak. It's also fun when it happens and the jokes are a good mnemonic device ("the sun is not a boy, how dare you").
Also I agree with foepys that you can do more in German with a smaller vocabulary. Schlag is also used in sports and music :) Plus, people like to downplay it, but most people here do speak english, so if you have difficulty, it's ok to ask in english when you're 1:1.
I feel that English probably is the most effective language for anything science/engineering/business related. It’s so much easier to express yourself in good and convincing and clear ways (plus as the lingua franca in many of those domains, there isn’t necessarily a great German translation). So I actually prefer having any conversations in these fields in English, even w/ German colleagues.
In Law though, nothing seems to beat the preciseness of the German language. It’s very good in expressing exactly what the relationships and rules should be. Some people love it from the “literalistic” point of view - but I just like the efficiency of the English language and the distinctive humor that a lot of english speaking authors put in their writings; so I can’t speak to that. The German language feels to me like it wasn’t made for science, engineering or fun but rather law and bureaucracy.
German was not quite the lingua franca of mathematics, but something many mathematicians learned at least to some degree, before the World Wars. That's why so many German words have survived there (take eigen vector, for example).
Also Western philosophy had a slightly German-language bend.
I doubt there is a substantial body of science that can be expressed much better in English. It's probably a wash, with some words and concepts easier to express in this, and some in that.
Image processing, machine learning and computer vision come to my mind. How do you translate
“Convolutional Neural Networks”, “back propagation”, “loss function”, “noise-contrastive learning”, “ Generative Adversarial Networks” in German? It’s not “just a few words” but you will essentially end up speaking German with mixing it 30% with “english words that bring the actual science and innovation across”.
No meaningful papers in these domains are published in German...
You could translate these as "faltendes neuronales Netzwerk", "Zurückübertragung", "Verlustfunktion", "Rauschkontrastlernen" and "generative Gegnernetze".
Of course most people don't do that, because they learned the terminology in English and there's no particular reason to invent a completely parallel set of made-up terms. But if there were such a reason (e.g. if English literacy were uncommon among German computer scientists) it could be done.
I have never in my life heard any of these words. They are poorly translated and unpronounceable.
Yes, you would not make up these words just for the sake of speaking in German. We are not in the 30s any longer.
But no person in its right mind would speak German with 30% of the words “borrowed from english” because “all the other advantages of the German language outweigh borrowing so many english words”.
I love how people are downvoting me in their evening frustration about their lives - but yeah, if you miss like all the relevant vocabulary in a language why would you state that communicating in it is “smart of efficient”? There is no inherent reason. English has -for many fields- the best vocabulary. The english language does not get lost in four line sentences so easily like the German language and it’s not made up of 80 character words.
Have any of you ever read a German paper or textbook on a topic? Its awful. I love english textbooks I love english papers.
Right, but that was not the issue. The issue was a language suited for rules and relations on the one hand, and a language of humor and expressiveness on the other.
Of course, today everyone publishes in English. And of course, many English words are used in German academia.
But there is no inherent property of the English language, why it is better suited to communicating topics in machine learning.
That's why English works well for professional discussions: the ambiguity is a tool. The obvious case being 'you' and the implied level of formality, but also plenty other words/phrases have a similar effect.
> It’s so much easier to express yourself in good and convincing and clear ways (plus as the lingua franca in many of those domains, there isn’t necessarily a great German translation).
It’s easier to express because Englisch is _the_ lingua franca of those fields. It would have been a totally different case had some other language, say French or Mandarin had been at the forefront of scientific literature advancement and dissemination.
> It’s so much easier to express yourself in good and convincing and clear ways [in English]
A friend of mine was translator into English and French, and she said that it was easier to translate into French, because there was basically one way to say it. In English, there'd be many different options (mostly vocabulary substitutions, but not only), with slightly different connotations.
A pertinent aphorism I've come across (anyone know the source?):
"English is among the easiest languages to speak badly, but one of the most difficult to speak well."
That is not the point I was making. There are situations where this preciseness is utterly useful and required (e.g., law, literature) and cases where this isn’t the case (e.g., sciences).
I’d buy the english original book on any topic 100% of the time instead of a german alternative or its translation.
Ask any german university student in computer science or engineering or business - 9/10 prefer english textbooks.
The good thing about German is that it's not hard to get to B1 level, however things start getting harder after that. I, for one, am stick on the B2/C1 plateau for a long time, and lots of expats struggle with it.
I would love to see how you tackled the Adjektivdeklinations issue in German. For me that has been an achilles' heel, and there's simply no easy way around it.
"A complete bachelor's program costs between 1,600 and 2,400 euro, while a master’s program costs between 1,000 and 1,200 euro. These estimates are based on course costs of 20 euro per credit hour, plus a student body contribution of 11 euro per semester."
I assume that the amount of research that is done, papers produced, etc. is much higher in traditional Unis compared to the Fernuni.
If you look it through the reverse lense, the ratio of professor to student is much worse than your alma mater. So one professor has to take care of much more students, exams, etc.
To me the Fernuni seems great if you want to study while having a job, during a pandemic, are just interested in the degree, are not a in-Person Person, are a Self-motivating learner or live far away from a Uni City.
The traditional Uni seems great, if you want to experience social life, are a study group kind of person, want to go into academia, like noodles for 2€ in the Mensa. Also a lot of STEM or medicine that needs access to research facilities will be easier in a traditional Uni.
I studied with the OU too, though only a Diploma of Higher Education (equivalent of 2/3rds of a Bachelor's; I think Americans would call it an 'Associate's Degree'?).
I found the material of good quality, and the tutorials/lectures I attended were fantastic. I did, admittedly, feel that the level of support could've been greater, but for a predominantly distance learning education that's par for the course, IMO.
The debt is indeed a bummer! Still, their fees are lower than most other UK universities right now, and my study landed me my current DevOps position, so I'm very happy.
I did a BSc in Computing at the OU, completing it around 2010. I was also very happy with the quality of the courses - I don't recall any module being sub-par.
While I didn't personally feel like I needed support, there were others in my tutor groups that did, and it was apparent that the level of input from tutors varied wildly - I recall one that offered weekly 1-on-1s for anyone that wanted, and another that took days or even weeks to respond to any query whatsoever.
My wife is now studying at the OU, and her more contemporary opinion echos everything I said above.
Many Germans use it over the FernUni, because (a) there are many, many more courses, and (b) you don't need Abitur. The FernUni is a traditional university with traditional limits to access.
Shameless plug for the UNED, as well. From what I've heard, it's very similar to FernUni: they have exam points you attend, and the rest is online and with UNED books (they used to have these hilariously Soviet-like designs).
I considered it for my studies, since my area's universities were pretty far away. They're as strict as the regular Spanish universities and you'll get the same degree.
Studying through UNED is pretty hard though. Spanish universities are still pretty opposed to other countries style of handholding education that Bolonia (tried) brought to Spain, and UNED is probably the most extreme version of that.
Also, depending on the faculty, UNED books can be pretty bad (and expensive), although I heard this changed lately.
From what I gather from people in other countries, they also require you to study and to be competent, but it is extremely rare to find teachers and professors with ridiculous standards that you often find in Spain. So, If you have the opportunity, save yourself the pain. You'll still learn, be respected and it will be easier.
I wonder why they don't have a real philosophy degree program (only some courses within a cultural program). Also theology. Both should be relatively easy to do in that setting.
They even had an electrical engineering program, one of my colleagues got a Master there, but they shut it down a few years ago. I suppose the lab work was too difficult to support.
I have an economics degree from that university. Before that I got a mechanical enginerring degree from a conventional university and must say that for me the Distance learning University totally sucked compared to the "real" university. Social life is IMHO very important for studying. At the converntional university we had a great group of people who helped and motivated each other. And we had a lot of parties and fun. Not so at the distance learning university, which was dull and boring. There was nobody who motivated you, nobody you could have a good time with. I think there was one meeting in person, which was quite horrible, and of course you do not make real friends within a week.
On the other hand I heard from a friend, who is very introverted, that he liked studying at the distance learning university quite a lot. So it looks like it depends what kind of person you are.
Is this a 'viable' alternative to a US-based bachelor degree?
One of the reasons why I haven't bothered to get my degree is due to the cost. I'm not interested in one for obtaining jobs, but mainly situations that have a hard requirement for a degree (ex: obtaining a work visa).
I'm not familiar with the differences in degrees between countries, but assuming a person is already competent in German, I don't see the downsides (barring that "obtaining a first job" mention earlier, I'm sure employers wouldn't like it) to this path versus a degree from the USA.
Graduating from an american university gives you an american network. This can become quite useful later in life if you want to spend your career in america. Building the network later on is still possible but harder.
This isn’t correct in a wide variety of circumstances. The top end of schools have networking opportunities that are in a league of its own, but school based networking/affiliation remains important regionally, especially for large state universities. I’ve definitely known instances where the deciding factor for someone in a hiring situation was they went to the same university as the boss (decades apart), and the regional alumni networks of some of these universities can be influential.
Now it’s true the further down the prestige chain you go the less it matters, but saying that networking via meetups Birmingham is equivalent to the network you’d get via having gone to U. Alabama or Auburn seems unlikely.
Sure, ivy leauge etc gives you the best contact networks, and this is probably what distinguishes it most from the non ivies that still offer good education, but even your non-ivy-leauge peers go end up having careers, and can open doors for you. Indeed you can also hang out at meetups but I feel like you'll have a harder time.
You need the money upfront. Admissions requirements will be harder to meet. Teaching quality may be lower, leading to less retention and lower grades.
The first is the real killer. You can't use financial aid. You could maybe use a private loan, but I am not aware of anyone giving those out for foreign schooling.
Why do you need the money upfront? If you move here on a student visa, you are also able to work here and support yourself financially.
Also most fees are payed on a half-year Basis, Students have Access to cheap housing. For example the city I live in (Leipzig) has yearly Uni fees of ~500 EUR, monthly lodging for ~300 EUR. Assuming you work weekends, you can easily earn ~800 EUR per month which gives you enough wiggle room to eat at the Uni canteen (price per meal 2-5 EUR, heavily subsidized by the state). In the study breaks you are able to work more.
Edit: University Leipzig lists [0] the following costs of living on "average" per month:
If you can find a job that pays significantly more than minimum wage, that's not going to be much of an issue, but otherwise you might have to control your spending very carefully.
Working students are paid, at the very least, 15 Euro per hour. Mostly tax free, you only pay a token amount for social security. Max. weekly working hours are, if I remember well, 10ish during semesters. During semester breaks, no such limits apply. And going from the number of non-EU working students I met and worked with, it can't be that hard to be eligible. Not sure about the legal details, so I could be wrong.
Fun fact, in my last working student job before graduation I earned more net during the brake per month than in my first full time job in the first 6 months. Of course, being full time counts towards retirement and a couple of other things working students are not eligible for. But still.
I investigated schooling in Germany. It is not really attainable for most US citizens. You need course credits typically only available in college, and you need to know German before you go. The reports of people learning German at the same time as they go are very poor, it tends to not work out.
In my case I do know enough to transfer into a program but as I haven't completed a degree there seems to be no way to get those credits recognized.
I wasn't aware of the 10k Euros, makes sense. TBH a smart idea anyway, because in the first few months after a move to a foreign country you are likely spending more time on learning language, culture, dealing with bureaucracy, etc.
Also interesting that you are not able to self-employ as a foreign student. This is how I worked most of the time while studying.
Anyhow, spending money carefully is kinda implied with the numbers above. But we were mostly discussing money spent compared to the US, here is an example. Let's assume you want a BSc in Computer Science. According to [0] tuition alone is around ~25k USD for an affordable Uni in the US, while 870 EUR monthly expenses [1] TOTAL * 36 months around = 37930 USD for a BSc. And this is comparing a rather low tuition with average total cost of living in Germany.
I’ve found a few affordable online degrees in the US (only by the grace of me moving to a state with good in state tuition benefits), ofc you’re extremely limited in what you can major in, and outside of CS most of the programs are what you would consider “useless degrees”. But yes, the way I see it, if you cannot quit work, you either have to shell out a ton of money or a ton of time, neither of which are worth it in many cases IMO.
Fernuni is a public/government university. The big thing is that you get a UNIVERSITY degree that is recognized in Germany. This may have implications, e.g. doing a MS after a BS there or getting a University degree after you attended a poly-technical college, both entitles you to better career options in the public service.
They have also several other niches. E.g patent lawyers are getting trained there after their STEM degrees.
I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who has studied at FernUni.
I have been toying with the idea of doing some kind of maths or comp sci degree for a while now. It would have to be part time / remote because I'm not willing to stop working. The only suitable thing I've come across is Georgia Tech's online masters.
I considered the Open University but their CS courses look poor and it has become too expensive for something that would be a hobby.
However, I'm not really sure what FernUni would offer over just buying OU books on Amazon and working through them.
I consider the maths degree at FU Hagen to be quite good. They maybe don't have the same breadth that larger departments might have, and they do have 1 or 2 bad courses (probability theory for example), but especially the introductory courses are didactically excellent.
I'm somewhat less convinced about the CS credit I did (as a minor), some of it seems hopelessly outdated.
I’ve been absolutely shocked at the lack of mathematics degrees available on line. I think I’ve seen more engineering and science programs online which would seem much less impractical than math.
I'm a maths BSc at Fernuni Hagen. Not everything is perfect, but the distance learning really worked well for me (I already have another degree and I'm working 4 days a week).
Are these courses accredited by WES Global Services?
If I completed Masters from this university and apply for Canadian PR, would I be getting extra CRS points for completing Masters from this University?
Thanks beforehand for taking interest in my questions
"The University of Hagen is a member of the European University Association (EUA), European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) and it is accredited by ACQUIN, FIBAA (Foundation for International Business Administration Accreditation) as well as AQAS (Agentur für Qualitätssicherung durch Akkreditierung von Studiengängen)."
I guess if Canada recognizes any European university, it will recognize this one. Hagen is only different because of its remote learning approach, legally it's exactly the same as any other German university.
