Studying is free in Germany.

No, I know: Of course nothing is free.

Someone has to pay the professor's salary and the chemicals in the lab.

It's the state.

Or to put it more precisely: they are the ones who finance this state.

In other words, the economically successful citizens who pay taxes properly.

Rainer Hank

Freelance author in the business section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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Studying is free for students only.

An attempt to enforce tuition fees failed in this country a few years ago and was quickly conceded by the federal states.

I doubt if that's fair.

On average, people with a university degree earn 387,000 euros more over their entire working life than people who have completed an apprenticeship.

"Students are tomorrow's higher earners," says Ludger Wößmann, one of Germany's leading education economists;

he researches at the Ifo Institute and teaches at the University of Munich.

High earners can afford a more luxurious life, live better, travel more frequently and, if they do it cleverly, can convert their educational history into gains in intellectual freedom.

"Redistribution from bottom to top"

Now, one might think that the rich parents' taxes pay for the college tuition of the rich.

Finally, there is a progressive tax system.

That would be correct if the distribution of children from educationally disadvantaged and educated classes at the universities were roughly the same.

But that's just not the case.

While only 27 percent of children from non-academic families go to university, 80 percent of children from academic families go to university.

The gap has even widened in recent years.

This means that non-academics contribute to the study financing of academic children.

"The phrase that the doctor's assistant finances the doctor's daughter's studies is not so far-fetched," says Ifo researcher Wößmann.

"The study given away by the state is a redistribution from bottom to top." One is surprised that social democrats and leftists have not long since tackled this blatant social injustice.

This confirms the suspicion that the SPD has now forgotten its promise of educational advancement for the workforce.

No wonder workers' enthusiasm for social democracy is limited.

Good experience with new model

What to do?

A new edition of the debate about tuition fees can be spared.

The thing is over.

An alternative proposal has recently been passed around among educational researchers and politicians.

Its name: "subsequent tuition fees".

In contrast to the regular tuition fees, there are two differences here.

Firstly, the fees are only charged after the end of the course, when the former students earn their own income.

And they only have to be paid if this income is above a certain threshold.

Woessmann suggests starting with 1000 euros a year (or a little more).

The entire cost of studying should therefore not be refinanced.

Good experiences have been made with this model in Australia.

And while ordinary tuition fees are not held in high esteem by the general public, surveys tend to support deferred fees.