Ok, let me know if I get too longwinded here, but the thing about entering uni in Germany is, there's like a 98% probability that you've spent a minimum of 4h/wk learning English, for at least 8-9 years at that point. So it's not really that much of a barrier. (sidebar, the whole 'deal with it' attitude is pretty characteristic of German higher education; it's dirt cheap, and that doesn't only come out of docents' pay, but (primarily) also out of the fact that unis are less like boarding schools and more like, well, educational buffets for unsupervised adults? More on that later, maybe)
Also, bit of a historical note, Bachelor degrees were only introduced widely like, 10-15 years ago, before that it was Master-equivalent or nothing, so there's still a fairly strong culture around only going the academic route if you're serious about, well, academia, and since (depending on the field) a good chunk of the good talks/workshops/conferences/summer schools/journals are in English anyways, might as well get used to it. (And if you're really serious and plan to *stay* in academia, shuffling around the rest of Europe is obviously also encouraged especially for grad students and post-docs)
Seriously, never be sorry for giving me an opening to yell about this stuff!
(fwiw, even if it doesn't always sound like it, I'm quite fond of German academia in many ways. Not for me as a career, but still)
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Date: 2019-02-25 08:31 am (UTC)Also, bit of a historical note, Bachelor degrees were only introduced widely like, 10-15 years ago, before that it was Master-equivalent or nothing, so there's still a fairly strong culture around only going the academic route if you're serious about, well, academia, and since (depending on the field) a good chunk of the good talks/workshops/conferences/summer schools/journals are in English anyways, might as well get used to it. (And if you're really serious and plan to *stay* in academia, shuffling around the rest of Europe is obviously also encouraged especially for grad students and post-docs)
Seriously, never be sorry for giving me an opening to yell about this stuff!
(fwiw, even if it doesn't always sound like it, I'm quite fond of German academia in many ways. Not for me as a career, but still)