Huh, I thought this was basically standard in german universities. In my math degree there were no mandatory classes or homework or anything, the only thing that mattered was what grade you got at the exam at the end of the semester. There were lectures and homework, but it was totally up to you how you learned the content (and I did indeed choose basically full self-study).
This was my experience studying in the Netherlands as well. University officials were indeed on board with this, with the general assumption being that lectures and instructions and labs and such are a learning resource that you can use or not use at your discretion.
Maths at my Dutch university also has homework for quite a few of the courses, which often counts for something like 10-20% of final grade. It can usually be submitted online, so you only need to be physically present for exams. However, there are a small number of courses that are exceptions to this, and actually require attendance to some extent (e.g. a course on how to give a scientific presentation, where a large part of the course consists of students giving and commenting on each other’s presentations—not so easy to replace the learning experience with a single exam at the end).
In American universities some smaller classes would take attendance. Bigger classes worked pretty much like you described, where there are lectures and stuff but you could ignore them, and what ultimately matters are the exams.
But the “party line” is that you’re not supposed to do that. You’re supposed to go to the lectures. Ie. if you asked some university PR representative, they wouldn’t say “it’s totally up to you whether or not you want to go to lectures”. Is that how it is in German universities as well, or is the party line that it truly is up to you?
I did a bit of a weird thing because I started university while I was still in high-school, but I had many friends who never attended a single lecture, and maybe did like 15% of the homework, and nobody cared and they didn’t seem to feel bad about it.
For context, at Berkeley (where I actually finished my undergrad) more than half of my classes had mandatory labs, and maybe 30% of my grade was determined by homework grades in almost all classes, so it was a very different experience.
That is common in American universities as well, but if you asked a university administrator about it they wouldn’t endorse it. Would a university administrator for German universities say “yes, go right ahead and skip all the lectures if you want” or would they say “no, we strongly advise against that”?
For many universities, there’s a maximum courseload they’ll let you register for. You can probably get a 4-year degree in 2.5 years if you’re actually willing and able to study well enough to pass tests and the required not-only-test classes. But no matter how good you are, I don’t know any that will give you a degree in one-shot if you already can ace all the tests.
Don’t know, I literally never talked to one during my studies. My guess is they would advise against it, but be pretty clear that it’s ultimately up to you.
(American here, talking about American universities) I had resented the mandatory attendance and homework in high school, and some people told me that college would be better in that regard, but others told me that this varied and it was up to individual professors whether to enforce a mandate. This was one of the reasons I didn’t try to enter college.
When did you do your math degree? I have experience from studying physics, biology, cs, and economics in Germany at different times within about 10 years.
They all had various degrees of attendance and coursework requirements, though fr what I understand far less than US universities.
At the end a counterexample where it basically is like this, afaik & iirc.
It used to be standard, at least for courses that didn’t require lab work, because it’s difficult to test practical, hands-on experience in an exam.
Since Germany has adopted Bachelor and Master degrees, it varies a ton. There’s a lot more mandatory attendance, which also gets checked; even completely theoretical classes—mathematics, theoretical physics, economics (to name some I took at German universities) - now often not only have homework, but also mandatory attendance for the tutoring seminars dedicated to this.
Lecture attendance was, where I studied, still generally (or at least practically) optional.
My experiences are from 3 different major German universities: the RWTH Aachen (Physics), University of Bonn (Biology), and Humboldt-University of Berlin (CS with an econ minor).
I’ve heard of universities with far stricter attendance policies (generally, my lectures didn’t require attendance, the more class-like “practical sessions”—even if it was just about solving math problems—generally did). The “homework” didn’t affect the final grade, but students needed to successfully complete a certain percentage in order to be admitted to the exam.
Now to the counterexample: law.
It’s in general still structured far more traditionally.
I think there might be some papers to write (possibly instead of exams?), but generally, students just have to pass the exam for every subject to be admitted to the final exam.
Moreover, it doesn’t matter what grade you pass with, you just have to pass. The only grades that matter are the ones in the first and second state examination at the end (the first being after the regular university study, the second after some practical work in various areas of the legal field.)
I studied at Universität Stuttgart in mathematics. I was also in a bit of a weird program that probably had a bit more freedom than other programs. I started it in 2013.
Huh, I thought this was basically standard in german universities. In my math degree there were no mandatory classes or homework or anything, the only thing that mattered was what grade you got at the exam at the end of the semester. There were lectures and homework, but it was totally up to you how you learned the content (and I did indeed choose basically full self-study).
This was my experience studying in the Netherlands as well. University officials were indeed on board with this, with the general assumption being that lectures and instructions and labs and such are a learning resource that you can use or not use at your discretion.
Maths at my Dutch university also has homework for quite a few of the courses, which often counts for something like 10-20% of final grade. It can usually be submitted online, so you only need to be physically present for exams. However, there are a small number of courses that are exceptions to this, and actually require attendance to some extent (e.g. a course on how to give a scientific presentation, where a large part of the course consists of students giving and commenting on each other’s presentations—not so easy to replace the learning experience with a single exam at the end).
But this differs between Dutch universities.
In American universities some smaller classes would take attendance. Bigger classes worked pretty much like you described, where there are lectures and stuff but you could ignore them, and what ultimately matters are the exams.
But the “party line” is that you’re not supposed to do that. You’re supposed to go to the lectures. Ie. if you asked some university PR representative, they wouldn’t say “it’s totally up to you whether or not you want to go to lectures”. Is that how it is in German universities as well, or is the party line that it truly is up to you?
I did a bit of a weird thing because I started university while I was still in high-school, but I had many friends who never attended a single lecture, and maybe did like 15% of the homework, and nobody cared and they didn’t seem to feel bad about it.
For context, at Berkeley (where I actually finished my undergrad) more than half of my classes had mandatory labs, and maybe 30% of my grade was determined by homework grades in almost all classes, so it was a very different experience.
That is common in American universities as well, but if you asked a university administrator about it they wouldn’t endorse it. Would a university administrator for German universities say “yes, go right ahead and skip all the lectures if you want” or would they say “no, we strongly advise against that”?
For many universities, there’s a maximum courseload they’ll let you register for. You can probably get a 4-year degree in 2.5 years if you’re actually willing and able to study well enough to pass tests and the required not-only-test classes. But no matter how good you are, I don’t know any that will give you a degree in one-shot if you already can ace all the tests.
Don’t know, I literally never talked to one during my studies. My guess is they would advise against it, but be pretty clear that it’s ultimately up to you.
(American here, talking about American universities) I had resented the mandatory attendance and homework in high school, and some people told me that college would be better in that regard, but others told me that this varied and it was up to individual professors whether to enforce a mandate. This was one of the reasons I didn’t try to enter college.
When did you do your math degree? I have experience from studying physics, biology, cs, and economics in Germany at different times within about 10 years. They all had various degrees of attendance and coursework requirements, though fr what I understand far less than US universities.
At the end a counterexample where it basically is like this, afaik & iirc.
It used to be standard, at least for courses that didn’t require lab work, because it’s difficult to test practical, hands-on experience in an exam. Since Germany has adopted Bachelor and Master degrees, it varies a ton. There’s a lot more mandatory attendance, which also gets checked; even completely theoretical classes—mathematics, theoretical physics, economics (to name some I took at German universities) - now often not only have homework, but also mandatory attendance for the tutoring seminars dedicated to this. Lecture attendance was, where I studied, still generally (or at least practically) optional.
My experiences are from 3 different major German universities: the RWTH Aachen (Physics), University of Bonn (Biology), and Humboldt-University of Berlin (CS with an econ minor).
I’ve heard of universities with far stricter attendance policies (generally, my lectures didn’t require attendance, the more class-like “practical sessions”—even if it was just about solving math problems—generally did). The “homework” didn’t affect the final grade, but students needed to successfully complete a certain percentage in order to be admitted to the exam.
Now to the counterexample: law. It’s in general still structured far more traditionally. I think there might be some papers to write (possibly instead of exams?), but generally, students just have to pass the exam for every subject to be admitted to the final exam. Moreover, it doesn’t matter what grade you pass with, you just have to pass. The only grades that matter are the ones in the first and second state examination at the end (the first being after the regular university study, the second after some practical work in various areas of the legal field.)
I studied at Universität Stuttgart in mathematics. I was also in a bit of a weird program that probably had a bit more freedom than other programs. I started it in 2013.