Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Germany's Higher Education System aka Why it's hard to find a seat on the 7:12 train to work

Once we get some pictures of the apartment I'll be posting those, but until then I'll write about another topic: why my morning train is so full.

Germany's old education system limited the people who could go to university to those who graduated from Gymnasium (the highest level schools) and did well enough on their Abitur to get into the program and university of their choice. Those who went to Hauptschule or Realschule could also attend university, but only after graduating from a vocational school, work for five years, and then completing upper vocational school.

However, this year, a lot has changed. The Abitur is no longer necessary, German men are not conscripted for 6 months-1 year and lower education has been decreased in length by one year. It's pretty much a perfect storm of overcrowded universities. Der Spiegel has a really interesting article about it here: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,792830,00.html.

The effect on my life is that the train to Golm is always full, even at 7:12am.

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