University-Systems

[Padme]

I wanted to open this thread as Austrian students have been protestin for two weeks now in Vienna, Graz, Linz etc... They have occupied the bigges lectures rooms in their Unis (Auditorium Maximum - Audimax) and organise demonstrations. They have already spoken to the minister for sciences.
German students are flooding our Unis (as in Germany there ARE restrictions and fees have to be paid)

They're fighting against tuition fees and against entrance restriction for Unis (at the moment only medicine has entrance restrictions in Austria. Normally you can enrole at any Unis you want, at any study you want. You don't even have to have certain marks: e.g. you can study mathematics although you had a "D" in mathematics in your final exams at school...)

I am FOR fees as people under a certain income level get them refundet in Austria anyway and they're not high (400€/400$ per semester)

But I'm against entrance restrictions. The exams in the 1st part of our studies are so extremely difficult (failures rates up to 95!%), so 75% of all the students quit their studies within the first few months anyway.
The difficult exams keep the level and standard high (those who are not "good enough" won't make it anyway!)
An other argument against entrance restrictions: The Bachelor-Program is not worth anything in Austria. As long as you havent finished a master-Program noone employs you. So entrance fees for the Master-Programs would mean you've wasted three years. "Okay, you can start your education, after three years we will decide whether you can FINISH your education or not!" GREAT!!!

You can find articles online (just type in "students protests in Austria")

What do you think?

What's it like in your country?

 

[Marianne]

In Greece there are no private universities, only colleges.

All universities are public and for free. For the undergraduate studies 4 years are compulsory with 6-10 classes per semester (2 semesters per year, no trimesters), depending on the major.
This means that graduates from Greek universities finish with 240 ECTS points (and not 180 like in other European universities with 3 years of studies), so they need only one year of graduate studies to complete the 300 ECTS points needed to get their master degree, even if they decide to get their master degree in a non Greek university. (4+1 instead of 3+2 for a master degree)
In order to enter the university you must finish high school and get a sufficient grade at the national exams (i will describe below).
Masters are not for free and as far as I know the requirements are the same like the rest of Europe.

Colleges are only private and are considered inferior to universities. For the bachelor degree you need 3 years and usually less classes per semester (usually 5). You don't need to finish high school or take the national exams to apply for a college.

The National Exams:
At the last year of high school you take the national exams in 9 different classes depending on the major you want to follow at the university. Math, Physics, Biology, Greek and History are compulsory for all. Depending on the major you want to follow you choose between 3 different groups of classes:
- Advanced Math, Advanced Physics, Advanced Biology, Advanced Chemistry, Economics
- Advanced Math, Advanced Physics, Programming, Business, Economics
- Advanced History, Ancient Greek, Latin, Philosophy, English/French/German/Italian
(note that all the above classes (plus others) are compulsory for everyone in high school no matter what major people what to follow, but the national exams are only in those i mentioned above)

After the exams students are given a long list of universities around Greece and they can choose as many as they want. Each university accepts a certain number of students per year, lets say 100, based only on their average grade in the national exams (there is no interview). The grade of the last student to get accepted in each department of each university determines the "base grade" for that department for that year. So for example for 2009, the last student that got accepted at the University of Athens to study medicine had average grade 19.423 (20 is the highest and no one ever had an average of 20), so the base grade for 2009 for the medicine department in Athens was 19.423

 

[mrikë]

The Austrian system is very correct, because the selective system gives opportunity to those who are capable of achieving an academic diploma by skills and knowledge, and not to those who have favored financial preconditions. You argue that 400 euros (which is circa 530 dollars) is not a high fee for Austrians, however Universities in Austria (Graz especially) are packed with foreigners for whom those fees plus the extra living costs are way too much to handle.