Comparison education systems Germany and USA

  QCD110 21 05  2007

Contents

1.  Introduction  2

2.  Reasons that influence the push (or otherwise) for citizen to gain  

  an education internationally  2

3.  Conclusion  6

4.  References  7

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QCD110 21.05.2007

1. Introduction

Nowadays, an international education becomes more and more important. Young graduates are required to be flexible, well educated as well as international skilled. This may be the reason which lets people strive for an international education. To outline the importance Germany and USA will be compared to the reasons of gaining an education internationally. The internationality of an education system in a country can be measured in different ways, e.g. how many people studying abroad, the student’s language skills, foreign students enrolled and many more (International Educator, 2006: 47).

To demarcate multitude of influences, the focus will be on the willingness of students to study abroad. The reasons which influence this willingness can be government influence, school system/university influence and the culture.

2. Reasons that influence the push (or otherwise) for citizens to gain an education internationally

The government lays the foundation stone of the countries education system. This includes the financial support, direction of the education and the creation of clearance for students. Both, USA and Germany are countries which takes high responsibility for their education. This reflects the existence of several institutions for education support as well as a separate education policy. To have a closer look at the governments support, two organisations will be investigated and compared.

The first one is the DAAD, the German Academic Exchange Service. The DAAD is “one of the world's largest and most respected intermediary organisations in its field” (DAAD, 2006). Thought its support a lot of students have gained valuable experience abroad. The institute was found to provide scholarships to students who focused on exchange activities. The DAAD has currently about 200 programs which ensure the internationality of the German higher education.

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QCD110 21.05.2007

To high variety of programs can be summarized in five goals: Scholarships for foreigner, Scholarships for Germans, Internationalising the higher education institutions, Promoting German studies and German language abroad and Educational cooperation with developing countries. The DAAD spend more than 250 million Euros to make an international education possible (DAAD Portrait, 2006). Furthermore there are scopes of possibilities offered by DAAD to expand international academic opportunities and encourage students to go abroad. In comparison to Germany USA have also a huge number of institutions which support students to go abroad. Beside IIE (Institute of International Education), the world largest and most experienced international education and training organization (IIE, 2006), the U.S. Department of Education supports the internationalisation of education. They provide nearly 80 organisations that can help students to go abroad as well as networks and necessary informations. More than US$ 60 billion had been granted for approximately 8 million students (ED.gov, 2006).

Both countries do not differentiate much from each other. They try to provide their citizen the best opportunity for going abroad and configure the education as international as possible. This underpins the following statistic. In 2002 were nearly 56,000 German students abroad. That is three times more than in 1980. On average about 3.3 percent of the German students are annually abroad. This increased from 2.0 percent in 1980 to 3.3 percent in 2002 continually (Federal Statistical Office, 2004:22). One of the reasons might be the good information and financial (scholarships) support by the German government. An equal situation in USA points the Institute of International Education out. Also increased the total number of American students studying abroad in 2003/04 by 9.6 percent (equals about 191,000). In 1993/94 only about 76,000 students have been abroad (Open Doors, 2005).

Nevertheless, only the governments influence alone makes no citizen going abroad and no education internationally. Furthermore the country’s school system and the university influence are important as well. The German school system is very different from the ones in Anglo-Saxon countries. It provides high-performed students and makes it possible for high qualified kids to study up to the university level, regardless the family’s financial status (How To Germany, 2006). Currently Germany is undergoing to develop his school system more and more international. Purpose of this transformation is to meet the challenges of the global market. An advantage of USA compared to Germany is, that the education has a higher

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