GERMANY. It has been a year of struggling to balance the books in the German education system, particularly in the tertiary sector. One consequence of the shortage of cash is that university heads want students to start paying fees of DM1,000 (Pounds 450) a semester, beginning next year. They also hope the pay-as-you-use system will induce students to complete degrees quicker.
Opponents of the idea, however, point out that the University of Zurich has seen enrolments drop by 20 per cent since it introduced fees.
With a deficit of DM6 billion (Pounds 2.7 billion) predicted for next year’s tertiary budget, tensions are also rising over the large sums of money being sunk into east German universities - DM2.54 billion since 1990.
With student numbers in the East continuing to decline, due to a 50 per cent drop in the region’s birth rate over the past five years, universities in the western states are demanding a bigger share of the financial pie.
The fiercely Catholic state of Bavaria continues to resist, in the name of religious freedom, an order from Germany’s high court to scrap a law compelling every classroom to have a crucifix on the wall.
Thousands took to the streets in September to protest at the Constitutional Court’s decision, comparing it to Hitler’s ban on crucifixes during the Nazi years.
The Bavarian parliament is now examining a Bill which would allow schools to decide independently whether or not they hang crosses in the classroom.
The year has also seen the status of foreign languages boosted in Germany’s abitur, the equivalent of A-levels. In future, all students taking university entrance exams must have either German or a foreign language among their four compulsory subjects.
Chemists, doctors, physicists and biologists have expressed surprise and anger at the exclusion of the natural sciences from the list of core subjects.
