<p>hi all
yesterday I had a discussion battle between me and my math teacher,I'm a high school senior BTW.
my teacher had his education in Germany ,his major was mathematics.
I asked for his advise to help me deciding what country to go for to major in chemical or electrical engineering (not decided yet),so his point was that in Germany the universities are more strict that the US.
for example : you may attend a college in the US like Lamar in Texas and graduate while you know nothing,I have an uncle who graduated from this college as an engineer and I can say that he doesn't really know anything about engineering.
while in Germany there is nothing like this,plus they have the best engineers in the entire world.
my guess is the opposite ,I think the US was and still the best country for education.
and they have more than 200 top universities , while Germany doesn't.
there was a point which is working during studying and the tuition thing,he told me that you can work for a year in Germany after graduation and during studying in college while you can't do that in US.
I have the chance to go to both countries but I prefer US due to the easy language and the American's life style I loved since I was a kid.</p>
<p>I worked with some German firms before. They hired a lot of software engineers in Romania to work for them. Some Romanian engineers were much better than German engineers. German hardware engineers may have an edge over US hardware engineers (based on my limited experience).</p>
<p>happymomof1 raised a very important point: you’ll need a degree that’s recognized in the country that you will work in afterwards. That’s especially important for jobs that require a professional license. If you are hoping to work in a country that you are not a citizen of, also make sure that you understand the visa process. It’s much harder to get a work visa in some countries than others.</p>
<p>Regarding German universities vs American universities: the main difference is that the university curriculum is standardized in Germany but not in the US. I strongly believe that the top American universities provide a much better education to the top caliber students than universities in Germany. You’d probably learn more at MIT or Stanford than you would at TU Munich - both inside and outside of the classroom.</p>
<p>However, less selective universities in the US (like Lamar) would not be universities in Germany at all - they’d be vocational schools. A much fairer comparison would be the following: how does a civil engineer from Lamar compare to a Metallbau-Azubi in Germany? Keep in mind that any kind of post-secondary school is called a “college” or “university” in the US, even if it would just be a Berufsschule in Germany. </p>
<p>
Too many thoughts in a single sentence. Let me try to isolate the different issues:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Tuition: yes, American universities charge tuition while German universities (for the most part) do not. A student can work his/her way through college in Germany, but there’s no way to work your way through a $60,000/year education in the US. However, there are other ways to finance a US education: need-based aid or merit scholarships, for example. </p></li>
<li><p>Working in college. On a student visa (I’ll assume that you are not a US citizen), your options to pursue employment are limited. F-1 students are allowed to work on campus up to 20 hours/week while classes are in session and full-time during break. Note that we are talking about on-campus jobs: you’d be washing dishes in the dining hall or work at the library front desk for minimum wage.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>You are also allowed to pursue limited internships off-campus via “Optional Practical Training” (OPT) or “Curricular Practical Training” (CPT). Most students use this for internships during summer break. Important: as an international student, you cannot easily take easily take a semester off from college to work a job. If you fail to enroll as a full-time student, you have to leave the US. </p>
<ul>
<li>Working after graduation: if you are not a citizen or permanent resident of the US, you’ll need a work visa to work after college. That’s generally not easy to get. There’s one exception to this rule: you are allowed to use all of your OPT time that you did not use in college after graduation. If you plan your internships well, you can work in the US for a year after graduation on OPT before you need to apply for a work visa.</li>
</ul>
I’ll have more time in a few days.</p>