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Foreign Students Face New Hurdles in Germany

October 17, 2011, 3:20 pm

Germany’s largest state has shut down the preparatory schools it ran to help foreign students get ready for university entrance examinations, raising worries that access to German universities will become difficult for all but the wealthiest students able to afford the private fee-paying schools that are replacing the state-run prep schools, Deutsche Welle reports. German universities are among the most international in Europe, with 11.5 percent of all students coming from abroad. But according to Deutsche Welle, “a shocking 50 percent of foreign students fail to successfully complete their studies in Germany—throwing into doubt the credibility of the university entrance exam and the effectiveness of preparatory schools, which many see as an unfair hurdle for foreign students.”

Another problem the country faces is the retention of skilled graduates, with regulations requiring non-European Union citizens to have a job making more than $80,000 within a year of graduating in order to qualify for a visa to remain in the country, Deutsche Welle reports.

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  • wingedwarrior

    In my former life on the “dark side” as an administrator, I always did my best to help people get where they wanted to go. I lost some people I didn’t want to lose, but I also gained some people others didn’t want to lose.

  • aruether

    I agree that providing more money or a better title won’t make someone happy enough to stay at a job they don’t like for very long.  I also agree that no one is indispensable.  But one thing I don’t understand in the article, many of the comments, and at my own institution is the ease with which people will let a talented person leave.  Given that it is hard to find great people, if you have a high-performing person, why not try to figure out creative ways to make them stay?  Hiring someone is a gamble.  If you are trying to make your institution the best it can be, don’t you need the best people?   

  • happyprof

    I agree that “retention packages” just breed resentment among the other faculty.  Even as a graduate student, I knew the details of every such case at my university because the other profs would let it slip in their less retrained moments. Once the information slipped out, it was out forever and became the stuff of legends. 

    As someone who did make a mid-career move, my experience was that a retention offer wouldn’t have made me stay, anyway.  I wouldn’t have been willing to risk the potential downsides of making a bid to move just for new perks… I truly wanted to go, and specifically told the admins that there wasn’t any reason for them to spend any political capital getting me a nice counter-offer.

    Also, while I’m generally neutral on the issue of “opportunity hires” and the like for under-represented groups, I will say that this information also tends to get out, and can also be a source of resentment among peers.  The fact that this takes place also makes it harder for meritorious and coincidentally underrepresented hires to function at their departments, since the assumption is that they, too, were opportunity hires.  

  • nzumanu

    Retention packages must be proactive and not  used to stop somebody who is working on his departure arrangements.

  • razorbrass

    I’m amazed to hear so many people say to let them go. I guess the only people worth retaining on campus are administrators and coaches. Think of the millions schools could save if they would use the same approach with those two groups.

  • juliewhite

    I have mixed feelings on this issue. Sometimes it is just time for a person to move on.  But I also have seen that, often, it’s the most innovative, out-of-the-box people that tend to move on.  On one hand, higher ed. institutions are bureaucracies, and  bureaucracies function best when people fit their particular role well.  But the down side of that bureaucratization:  don’t we lose innovation and creativity when we can’t find a way to help people grow within the institution, when they are ready?

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