CAN AMERICA LEARN FROM GERMAN UNIVERSITIES?
Until Hitler took power, German universities were the envy of the world. They had they best facilities, offered the best training, and employed the best researchers. Between 1901 and 1932, scholars based in Germany won 33 Nobel Prizes for academic work (counting the historian Theodor Mommsen, but excluding other winners in Literature). Americans won just five.
The academic balance of power has changed. American universities dominate international rankings. And German officials periodically warn of a “brain drain” toward the United States. It’s a sad decline for the land of Humboldt, Hegel, and Heisenberg.
You might reasonably conclude that German universities have something to learn from their American counterparts. The Notre Dame professor Mark Roche made that case in a recent book. Last week, he turned the argument around. In a piece for FAZ (link in German), Roche suggests that American universities emulate seven features of German universities: the intellectual independence they offer students; the seminar system; a place of honor for the traditional lecture; double majoring; professors who take a broad view of their subject; respect for the humanities; and a generous attitude toward academic training for non-academic careers.
Roche could have mentioned another appealing aspect of German universities: they’re much cheaper to run. As Rebecca Schuman reminds progressives impressed by the fact that they don’t charge tuition,
German universities consist almost entirely of classroom buildings and libraries—no palatial gyms with rock walls and water parks; no team sports facilities (unless you count the fencing fraternities I will never understand); no billion-dollar student unions with flat-screen TVs and first-run movie theaters. And forget the resort-style dormitories. What few dorms exist are minimalistic, to put it kindly—but that’s largely irrelevant anyway, as many German students still live at home with their parents, or in independent apartment shares, none of which foster the kind of insular, summer-camp-esque experience Americans associate closely with college life (and its hefty price tag)…There is also little in the way academic advising, which in the U.S. is now so hands-on that it has become its own cottage industry within the administration. Over there, you’re expected to know what you need to take, and to take it.
Roche provides useful reminders of the shortcomings of American higher education, which is quite expensive and not all that effective for undergraduates.
Samuel Goldman is assistant professor of political science at The George Washington University.
Read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/can-america-learn-from-german-universities/
