In Germany, school, including university education, is funded by the taxpayer. This makes sense (and cents, or better a lot of Euros) if you think about how Germany creates value for its people in the global economy by selling a lot of high tech manufactured goods to other countries world wide. For example, a lot of people around the world like to drive a German-engineered car like Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, or VW. Designing and manufacturing these cars provides the funds so that Germany can import raw materials that are needed to manufacture these and other goods, and all the other things in the world that German consumers enjoy. By providing an excellent education to all talented young people Germany is able to be successful as a country.

After moving to the US, I really started to value my German education as I learned how much debt many US students take on during their higher education. Even public universities are expensive. And then there are many for-profit universities where there is an inherent conflict of interest how the money that the individual student pays gets used. There may be supersized compensation packages for university presidents, money spend to recruit the next generation of students, and money that is paid to shareholders. The value that the student receives with his education is ultimately reduced by all this significant overhead. And then there are completely fraudulent organizations like Trump University where the Commander in Thief #45 paid $25 million to settle charges against his sham university.