Universities and Colleges in Germany

Germany has more than 300 colleges and universities called Hochschulen with more than 1.9 million students and approximately 200,000 new students entering the system each year.

The modern German university system has undergone some radical changes since its inception in 1949 and many of these have occurred over the last decade. Three decades ago only 15% of students gained their academic diploma called an Abitur and which leads onto German college or university study however now that number is closer to over 45%.

Even right now there are many changes happening in the German University system with things like free college tuition and automatic acceptance to a university being under review.

Many German universities and colleges are being faced with budgetary cuts and the German government has been looking at new ways of deriving revenue to bolster the system including the changing the traditional ways of student selection as well as making students pay for their higher education.

These days almost all European countries will charge students tuition fees considered low by international standards. One of the reasons that there is so much change in the German university system is that Germany, Austria and several Scandinavian countries provide free education for their university students. This tradition is called Bildung zum Nulltariff in German.

Germany has Europe's biggest economy, has the second largest population in the Union and is a vital member of the continent's defense, economic, political organizations. Germany struggled with two devastating world wars which saw the nation occupied by the Allied countries of the UK, USA, France, and the Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War. Shortly thereafter the so called Cold War began and two new states were created in 1949 called the western Federal Republic of Germany and the eastern German Democratic Republic.

The democratic Federal Republic of Germany integrated itself as a key member of Western economic and security organizations and associations, the European Union and NATO while the Communist controlled German Democratic Republic was right at the front line of the Soviet-inspired Warsaw Pact. With the demise of the USSR and the completion of the Cold War both states were reunited in 1990 and the famous Berlin Wall was torn down. Over the last 16 years the old Western Germany has spent significant funds in order to bring the Eastern economy in line with Western levels. And finally in 1999 all the European Union countries introduced the new European currency called the Euro.