German Universities and Colleges

I

After break, the two girls go on their conversation on the phone.

Germany has a total of 350 publicly maintained or officially recognized institutions of higher education, of which the main types to be discussed in further detail here are universittes（about 90）and universittes of applied sciences 1（about 190）.In additton, there are also many art and music academies, teacher training colleges, etc.Altogether there are about 2.4 million students, of which 10%are foreign students.

German universities（Universität）are characterized by the principle of the‘indivisibility of research and teaching’.Accordingly, German universities are not only institutions which provide education and training but also always places at which independent, pure and applied research is pursued.This principle demands that the students have to engage in strict academic work and also research a lot themselves.For example, in order to pass most courses, students have to prepare and give a paper and then also research and write a long essay（homework），in which they are required to develop their own argumentatton.There are also a lot of personal responsibilittes in planning and organizing because students largely have the freedom to decide themselves which lectures, seminars and classes they want to attend or how fast they want to study.As German universittes tend to be very theorettcal and academic, the length of studies is usually much higher than in many other countries.The average ttme needed to ffnish the tradittonal German university degrees Master of Arts（M.A.），Diploma（Diplom）or the German Civil Service Examination（Staatsexamen）is 9 or 10 semester.The two degrees take some students 13 semesters, i.e.6，5 years.The amount of classwork, homework and the ttme needed to research and write the extensive final thesis makes it very di cult to complete studies earlier.Combined with the high amount of personal responsibility involved, this has also led to an average of 25%of students dropping out of universities before graduatton.

In order to give students the opportunity to complete their studies and move on into the working world more quickly as well as in order to increase the internattonal comparability of German academic degrees, since 1999 more than 2000 internattonal B.A.and M.A.courses have been introduced at German universittes.It generally only takes between six and eight semesters to complete a B.A.and further two to four for the M.A.At the moment, B.A.and M.A.degree courses already account for about 35%of all courses taught at German universities, and till 2010 they had almost completely replaced the tradittonal degrees.

“It sounds that there are great many of differences among Chinese, German and American Education System，”says Wang Chenxin.

“Yes, University educatton in Germany is usually divided into two steps：general studies and specializatton.The part of general studies takes about four semesters, introduces students to the fundamentals of their major and teaches them the basics of scienttffc work.Affer that, specializatton begins and students are taught detailed, specialized knowledge about the discipline they have chosen to study.”

The academic year is divided into two semesters or terms：the summer semester usually runs from April 1 to September 30 and the winter semester lasts from October 1 to March 31. The class hour though is much shorter and at least one third of the academic year actually consists of breaks and time away from the lecture halls.During these months, students are scheduled to write their research papers, work on presentations and finish their homework.They may also need the time to acquire work experience through internships，says Li Yucui.

Cultural Case 1

Your quality control is not good at all. In Germany every part of the machine should be marked affer each processing procedure.You have never done it.You should be improved，said the German businessman in a business talk.Both Chinese sales manager and manufacture manager were embarrassed very much.Although they did not argue, they felt upset about it.Why?

Explanation of Cultural Case 1

The Chinese managers should not be angry about it. Germans know nothing about beating about bush.What they only know is how to get to the points.The Chinese businessmen should learn to do the same as them.