Study Abroad – Today: Down Under

I’m right back from a talk about study possibilities for German students at Australian universities. It was given by Mr. Keedy who worked as a professor in Down Under. My main objection for this visit was to get more background knowledge about the Australian education system. Anyway, the talk was very interesting to me. I didn’t knew most of the details and it was interesting to listen to a talk given by someone who worked in the U.K, Germany and Australia–so he could compare all these systems quite well.

I didn’t know that the Bachelor with honours is usually more highly regarded than a master degree. I knew about the Bachelor with honours, mainly from students from U.K or Canada. I knew that most students in such countries leave universities / colleges with an Bachelor degree and only some stay for getting an addition Master degree, but I didn’t know that in Australia the B.Sc. (Honours) is more highly regarded than the M.Sc.

That’s totally complementary to the German system. During the talk I got the impression that the Coursework Master is for those people who didn’t make it to get the Honours. One doesn’t need good grades to join the Coursework Master program. It’s different to Germany. We have no Bachelor with honours here, only the typical three years Bachelor program — and that’s very new, as the German university system is changing now. Before we had only the Diplom (totally different to the Australian diploma), which is equivalent to a Master degree. One couldn’t graduate earlier That’s now changing by introducing the Anglo-Saxon Bachelor / Master system. Anyway, in contrast to the Australian system, only the good or very good students can go for a Master. Maybe this is like the Bachelor with honours. If one want to apply for the good jobs, one need a Master here. Moreover, one can’t get a PhD without having a Master (usually).

Moreover, Australian universities have an Research Master, it’s like a “second class PhD”, as Keedy said – we don’t. There’re a lot of differences actually

However, Keedy also talked about the development of the Australian university system and I was surprised that one cannot guess by the name to the kind of university – a “real” university vs. something like a polytechnic or technical college (I think he mentioned this because we have these two kinds – “Universität” (university) and “Fachhochschule”).Very interesting. He also talked about ways how to get to Australia, of course. The cheapest way seem to apply for an exchange program, but this seems to be quite hard as not that many Australian students come to Germany by an exchange program. The reason seems quite logical: when going that way, Australian students still have to pay their usual tuition fees, whereas they don’t when not using such a program. Why should you pay more for the same trip? It’s a pity for us, because when getting into such a program we don’t have to pay the Australian tuition fees .