Harvards on the Rhine

In fact, six states, including Bavaria, have challenged in Germany's highest court the government's refusal to let public institutions levy fees. As soon as the court gives them the go-ahead, many states have said they plan to initiate fees.

In the meantime, five states have already begun charging "perennial" students. Germany has more long-term students than other countries. Thirty percent of students interrupt their studies without a degree. Widespread failure to finish college promptly, say some educators, is due to a lack of motivation, poor conditions, and the fact that school is free.

But the very concept of free college is now being reexamined by some Germans. "Why should a taxi driver's taxes finance the cost of higher education?" asks Florian Kreuzer, a student at Witten/Herdecke University, Germany's oldest private college. "It's not a social system."

The issue, however, remains deeply divisive. In Frankfurt am Main, 1-1/2 hours away from the exclusive School of Management, posters saying "education isn't for sale" are plastered throughout the public Göthe University's often shabby corridors.

"The university has to remain free," says Marc Bohse, a business administration student there. "It's all about equality of chances."

"If you have 'elite' schools, does that mean that we are 'only' a university?" asks Göthe University student Hülya Güder.

And yet for some, Güder's story exemplifies the failure of the free university system.

The 28-year-old Frankfurt woman has been a student since 1995. Granted, she worked part time. But she admits she wasted several years because nobody counseled her.

First she tried a major in chemistry. Then she switched to history but she found out she needed Latin, which she'd never had. Counseling? There was none. Lines at professors' offices were always long and the professors unreachable. "What people really need," says Güder, "is to find out how to complete their studies as quickly as possible. [They need] somebody that somehow cares."

Against this backdrop, private schools have been introducing new, more service- oriented models of operation.

"Colleges are going to have to treat their students as customers," says Meyer Guckel of of the Foundation for the Promotion of Scientific Research in Essen, which supports research and education with private money. "Today, it's the other way round. Public institutions are happy for every student they don't get."

The state of Bavaria recently gave Munich's Technical University the go-ahead to experiment with seeking its own students who excel in its strongest disciplines and then charging students for those courses.

Wolfgang Herrmann, the dean of Munich Technical University, prides himself in having built an "entrepreneurial" institution. A sign of success: The university has raised $85 million in sponsorship money over the past five years and built up a reputation.

But despite the recent boom in private higher education experts say it's unlikely that German Harvards and Stanfords will ever replace German public universities.

The tradition is simply not strong enough. Interest in the private sector, they predict, will plateau as the public university system reforms itself.

"When public universities [offer] the privileges that the private schools now enjoy, competition will take away the private schools' advantages," says Guckel.

Page: 1 | 2