Protest

Earlier this week, there was a demonstration at the University. It was more or less a protest of the increased Studiengebühren, or tuition fees. The topic has also come up by chance in several of my classes over the last year.

The sum of the tuition fee against which many students are protesting is around €600-750 per semester, by what I know, which equates to about $800-1000.

Okay. I still know that's a lot per semester, and especially so if it used to be essentially free to go to university here. But in every discussion about it that I come across, I can never bring myself to join in the debate. Even on some scholarship, my family pays exponentially more than that for me every year. The amount that the German students pay per semester covers... maybe my meal plan at Vanderbilt... per semester.

Most students in America have to hurl themselves into decades of debt just to go to school. I do sympathize with the situation in Germany, simply because of how drastic a change it has now become for them over the years of gradual tuition increase. But sometimes, it's hard not to say something against their argument from our side's perspective.