
German Fascination With Degrees Claims Latest Victim: Education Minister - clbrook
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/world/europe/german-education-chief-quits-in-scandal-reflecting-fascination-with-titles.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
======
doktrin
> _Many Germans believe the scandals are rooted in their abiding respect, and
> even lust, for academic accolades, including the use of Prof. before Dr. and
> occasionally Dr. DR. for those with two doctoral degrees._

> _Prof. Dr. Wanka got her doctorate in 1980, the same year as Dr. Schavan._

While the title-compounding effect did strike me as comical, this did force me
to reflect a bit on our own worship of pedigree. Anyone who's spent any time
on Angel List has undoubtedly been treated to "founders from stanford & MIT",
"started by Berkeley students", "MBA from Chicago", etc.

These are, of course, almost apples and oranges (double-doctorates vs
undergrad / masters), but credentialing is certainly alive and well here in
the US. Scott Thompson @ yahoo is a particularly recent public example.

~~~
cmarschner
Good point. For decades the education system in Germany tried to eradicate
differences between universities. For the longest time there was also no
separate bachelors degree. Getting a doctorate was therefore the only way to
distinguish yourself from the student masses. This has changed in the past
years after the "Bologna reforms" have replaced the German diploma by the
international bachelors/masters system and since the "excellence initiative"
has given "elite" predicated to some of the German universities. Ironically
this initiative was governed by the education department, headed by Mrs. Dr.
mult. Annette Schavan.

~~~
konstruktor
Let me delve into the speculation about culture a bit more: Back in the day of
the emperors/kings, titles and medals were were an extremely cheap way of
rewarding somebody without actually paying them. What this incentive system
needed to work was a society that respected those titles, so you were and and
even today are allowed to use those titles (examples:
<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichtakademischer_Titel>). This attitude was
probably transferred to academic titles at some point.

In Austria, which has even more artifacts of its imperial time, this title-
mania was followed so diligently that even the wife of the doctor was called
Frau Doctor until a few decades ago. Also, every academic title at least
equivalent to a master's degree is still used with your name in any formal
dealings (they will call somebody up as Frau Magister Maier in a waiting room
etc.). In Germany, they do this only with PhDs, so there is Herr Doktor but
not Herr Diplom Psychologe.

Judging from the mini-bios of authors on books, though, the Germans seem as
title-crazy as Austrians. The guy who cannot call himself "Diplom Psychologe
Hans Maier" on the title page of the book will almost certainly start his bio
with "Hans Maier is Diplom Psychologe ..." because this way, he is only
describing academic achievement (OK) and not using it as a title (not OK). So
people who worry about status love titles but can only actually use anything
from a PhD upwards with their names. Go figure...

~~~
fhars
Strictly speaking, in Germany you don't use the PhD (Dr.) _with_ your name,
you just use your full name. Getting a "Dr." is a name change, while getting a
diploma or masters degree is not.

~~~
netrus
Strictly speaking, it's not. You can write your PhD in your passport (only in
the long form, like "Dr. med.") in a separate field, but you don't have to,
and it won't be part of your name anyway.

Source: <http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/pa_g_1986/__4.html> [Law in German]

~~~
fhars
Then why does my German national id card have the text "Dr. Hars" (short form,
without the "rer. nat.") in the field with the label "Name/Surname/Nom"?

~~~
raphman
Maybe because it is more efficient than reserving space on the card for
something most people do not need?

<http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/pa_g_1986/__4.html>

------
aaron695
Ummmm Education Minister who (allegedly) cheated at university forced to step
down.

Don't really see that as a "Fascination With Degrees"

Might have been a interesting topic, but it's a hopeless segue.

~~~
raphman
Yes, the title is quite misleading. While there are a few people who pursue a
PhD purely for its status, this was probably not the case for Annette Schavan.

~~~
adulau
I don't know if my experiment is valid but looking at the collected business
cards (~1200) from the past years. 90% of the business cards with Ing, Prof
titles and alike are mainly from Germany. Looking at the German wikipedia page
about Academic degrees <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademischer_Grad>
compared to the other languages. I don't know if they run for its status but
at least they showed those titles on their business cards.

It might be interresting for Ken Robinson to make some seminar in Germany
about his point regarding academicism.

~~~
michaelt
I once read an opinion piece in a British engineering journal that suggested
one of the reasons Germany is such an engineering powerhouse is in Germany
'engineer' is roughly equivalent in status to 'doctor' while in the UK it's
conflated with 'mechanic/repair man' or at best 'office worker'.

------
Hermel
Yes, the Germans value degrees.

But Ms Shavan having to step back has nothing to do with that. This is not
about her degree, this is about her having cheated. The Germans are very
sensitive in this regard. A few years ago, a minister got into serious trouble
because he used the frequent flier miles obtained as a minister for a private
flight.

------
floppyspinner
This whole discussion reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano. Sadly no
such reference has been made yet. Maybe that's because not a lot of Germans
have read it. Anyway, it sheds the whole discussion in a new light. The person
in charge of education and research should not plagiarize, no doubt, but in
general, if a person proves consistently that they can do their job, isn't the
degree system that's supposed to determine who is able to do a particular job
a little too rigid and deserves to be undermined? On the other hand there's
the real hard work of those who don't cheat, and they'll demand justice. A
difficult problem.

~~~
ableal
[ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_%28novel%29> , not part of the
half dozen KV books I've read either ]

I'd also guess it's not the ability to the the job that's in question, it's
the will to do it ethically.

Would you trust the work of someone who's known to cut corners in order to
declare the job done?

~~~
xyzzy123
Sure. Sometimes it beats the alternative.

------
pilooch
The German hierarchy in academia is unbelievable. Few years back I moved from
a federal lab in California to a state lab in Germany. I felt abashed at the
extravagant praise of the head professor there.

Also, the Prof. Dr. thing on business cards used to make me laugh, until I
could grasp the whole system, and how detrimental it was for students (high
pressure, never ending hierarchy, blind worship, ...).

~~~
raphman
This hugely depends on the field of research and the individual research
groups. Medicine is traditionally very hierarchical - mathematics or computer
science not so.

Could you elaborate on the detrimental effects?

~~~
pilooch
sure, I refer to computer science btw.

Detrimental effects that I could witness: \- Prof. are secured in their large
offices, hard to get in touch with. This leads to useless work or idle
students, waiting for feedback, or picking up the wrong problem, solution or
conference. \- Full dependency on the Prof (e.g. for funding, to get a
position, ...) \- Students don't voice their concern much, as they need Prof.
support.

Don't get me wrong, overall, the system works, and the same observations could
be made elsewhere as well (e.g. France, US, ...). Although I'd say the
magnitude differs.

With colleagues, we used to make this joke that a 'deadline' in the US would
always be slowly pushed back until the project can be stamped as a success
(best for everyone, motivates teams, etc...) whereas in Germany the deadline
is so deadly that the team hits the wall and leaves blood strains on it, until
the next deadline comes up :)

~~~
PeterisP
Well, the current funding systems in many countries naturally result in Prof's
being unaccessible, and it has nothing to do with the offices. A well
respected researcher (at the time working in Germany IIRC) told me
"Professor's here don't have time to write research papers, they write grant
proposals".

------
lutusp
The Germans may lust after advanced degrees, but we Americans might not want
to call the kettle black -- it's well-established that we struggle to acquire
Ph.D. degrees even though, on average, this choice produces a _decline in
income and employment_ compared to a "professional" degree:

<http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm>

------
roel_v
"“I just think that many Germans have a police gene in their genetic makeup,”"

Lol, discussion Godwin'ed by the OP itself - the NYT, no less.

~~~
kybernetyk
Well, I'm living in Germany and I'm inclined to side with the NYT on this.

~~~
roel_v
Oh I realize all too well - I lived and worked in Germany some time ago too,
and only a few weeks into the job I was scolded for not putting dr and prof
into the field on the signup page where people could enter how they wanted to
be addressed. To be fair, the marketing guys were right on that one, me
leaving it out was my youthful arrogance - the same disdain for honorifics
that is being displayed in the article, actually.

Anyway, I wasn't so much saying that the article is wrong as that the snide
tone of the remark came across as somewhat unbecoming of a purportedly
'serious' publication as the NYT.

------
rbanffy
I think our discussion focused on the degrees themselves misses the point.
What we see here is plain dishonest conduct. Not having a PhD is acceptable.
Plagiarism is not - and shouldn't be.

------
cnvogel
I don't think that Germans have a "Title-fetish", in general they couldn't
care less. I'm working in engineering, having a Physics PhD myself, but titles
are never mentioned in daily work.

Politicians on the other hand had always tried to give themselves some
additinal credibility by bragging about their alleged academic merits, but
searching for plagiatism was not something anyone would seriously had thought
to endanger politicians careers.

I mean, it was fun to try and hunt down politicians theses but hardly would
have anyone expected that a politician could loose his mandate over them.
Furthermore these theses most often had been written in "the old days", and
were available only on special request from a few libraries where they were
collecting dust for years in some non-publicly-accessible storage room for
books no one ever borrows.

But then came Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, whose thesis (written just 2007)
started the whole debate about misgotten degrees in 2011. He had dismissed all
charges about having cheated with unprecedented arrogance. Even though
claiming to live up to higher standards, himself being a whealthy aristocrat,
he had wholesale-copy-pasted the whole work from undisclosed sources, some
even produced by the parliament's research service for him.

By additionally handling the resulting public-relations disaster pretty inapt,
he gave a unbelieveably strong boost to the plagiatism-finders, who normally
would have been ridiculed as nickpicking footnote and quotation-mark-counters.
Now they were the judges for the integrity of a large number of public
persons.

Anette Schavan is only one of many persons accused of copying a relatively few
paragraphs in her thesis, not even on the same scale as Karl-Theodor, this
theses would never have created the current public outcry if not preceeded by
Karl-Theodor's.

And she's even defended by a lot of academics that claim that this amount of
un-disclosed copying, 30 years ago, would be on a level that's would not
warrant the whole process that has now started and led to her demissal. I
mean, she probably has written that manuscript on a mechanical typewriter,
with drafts written by hand, not assisted by a software marking handling
quotations automatically!

But universities are under a high pressure to show a merciless approach in re-
evaluating these theses, and unfortunately there isn't even a limitation-
period after which given titles would be incontestable, and hence what appears
to be the current obsession with titles in Germany.

\-- References :-)

\- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-
Theodor_zu_Guttenberg#Doct...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-
Theodor_zu_Guttenberg#Doctorate_plagiarism)

\- The "Guttenplag" wiki has a graph (and statistics): 94% of pages, 64% of
lines have copies of foreign text without attribution:
<http://de.guttenplag.wikia.com/wiki/GuttenPlag_Wiki>

\- This side shows pages in red that contain foreign material without
attribution: <http://schavanplag.wordpress.com/>

~~~
maayank
From what I understand from German friends you need a certificate from an
"office management" school to do secretarial work. There are internships for
the most mundane jobs. Not to attack, but as an outsider it certainly seems to
me that Germany (as a generalization and especially outside the software
industry) has a title fetish.

~~~
Loic
It is not title fetishism, it is quality control and it is very good. This
means that when you want to have someone working for you, you can be ensured
the person as the adequate formation. I am French, having spent a couple of
years now in Germany, some in Denmark and before some times in the US, I can
tell you this is wonderful. If you need someone to fix something in your
house, you can be sure he knows about it. Not like in the US where the guy was
turning steaks at McDo before and just happen to now do plumbing for a small
company because "He did well at the interview".

This level of "quality control" is everywhere in the German society.

For the titles themselves, this comes from the general German culture, I
heavily recommend "The German Genius" by Peter Watson to understand it a bit
more:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/books/review/Ladd-t.html?p...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/books/review/Ladd-t.html?pagewanted=all)

[http://www.amazon.de/German-Genius-Renaissance-Scientific-
Re...](http://www.amazon.de/German-Genius-Renaissance-Scientific-
Revolution/dp/1416526153/)

~~~
maayank
As a customer, sometimes I need the guy who can do a cheap job on an easy
task. Sometimes I'll spend more to get someone with a more proven record (i.e.
from a rating service or an agency or recommendations) for the more critical
tasks.

As a worker, I would like the opportunity to switch careers/find my way
without having to take multi-year training courses for every possible job.

Same about products: sometimes all I need is a cheap drill from Walmart and
not an expensive Bosch one that would last me a lifetime.

I can't read the articles right now, but I've seen the book in Germany and it
did look interesting! :-)

~~~
derda
Well if you need real cheap plumbing, you can still hire some eastern European
guy and pay him cash. But quality control is your problem then and god forbid
if you house is flooded after you come back from a weekend trip...

------
jk4930
1\. Once Germany was a leading intellectual, scientific, and engineering
powerhouse. Academic titles still have some cultural significance. It might be
a kind of a relict.

2\. It's worse in Austria.

~~~
killerpopiller
they even adress you as Herr Magister, not only Dr. :D

~~~
spdy
Magister is Austria not Germany

~~~
sek
No it does exist in Germany too, my mum has one.

~~~
zura
It exists in Georgia as well, and it is equivalent of Masters degree.

Although, it is not used as title - maybe because it would sound much cooler
than Dr. :)

------
o1iver
How is it that such dishonest people become leaders in our countries? I would
expect those leading my country to at least have some integrity!

~~~
lutusp
> I would expect those leading my country to at least have some integrity!

You want people with integrity to run for public office? Isn't that a
contradiction in terms? I'm not speaking of the appearance of personal
integrity, something that can be manufactured, I'm speaking of real integrity.

"It's not what you are, but what people think you are that is important." --
Joe Kennedy

~~~
o1iver
Me too. And I would wish that those people had real integrity.

------
opminion
_“title arousal.”_

If the Germans had a fascination with degrees, they wouldn't have Mercedes
engineers without a university degree
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16159943>

~~~
kayoone
Thats a different thing. The Apprenticeship programs in germany are very
popular in the whole range of sectors. You basically train on the job in a
company for 3 years earning a minimum wage and have to go to school for about
1/3rd of that time. At the end your company might offer you a full time job.
However this kind of education is very practical, not too much theory, so the
guys at mercedes for example are more like mechanics that assemble the cars.
Its still a very good and highly regarded education, but the real engineers at
mercedes have studied Engineering and have university degree.

Same goes for IT, you can do basic apprenticeships for programming or system
administration, but its far less theoretical than studying computer science at
the university. Still many people do it, because for being a programmer its
mostly enough basic knowledge and you learn the rest on the job and with
experience anyway. But these people will probably not tacke the hardest
problems of computer science.

~~~
opminion
_the real engineers_

Ok, if the definition of _a real engineer_ is someone with a degree, then
there's no argument to have.

------
rmk2
This article seems to not mention another important fact for Schavan: If she
loses the Doctorate, she will _not have any degree whatsoever_. The Doctorate
is the only degree she ever did, she does not hold a Magister. (→
Grundständige Promotion)

The English wikipedia entry has that added by now, however, it doesn't list
any sources...so in that sense:

<http://www.heise.de/tp/blogs/8/153683> &
[http://www.wiwo.de/politik/deutschland/plagiatsaffaere-
ohne-...](http://www.wiwo.de/politik/deutschland/plagiatsaffaere-ohne-doktor-
haette-schavan-nur-noch-abitur/7255390.html)

edit: Also, leave it to a right-wing Prof. Dr. from Munich to call all Germans
crypto-fascist because of their degree fixation. Oh, the irony... →
<https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corps_Rhenania_Freiburg>

~~~
cmarschner
She will still have a honorary doctorate of 4 universities, so technically she
is still Dr.h.c.mult.

~~~
rmk2
Yes, but for any other purpose, she will not have a degree that proves her own
qualifications.

------
anovikov
Any formal system like that is bad because it's too easy to hack - and that's
what they got. Good for America that you don't care much about degrees. After
all, a day's long test task is enough to separate good candidates from bad for
everything except maybe senior management positions.

------
msvan
If someone chooses to spend several years of her life only in order to get a
few letters in front of her name, that's her problem. Meanwhile, the rest of
us can get out there and do something productive. Degree obsession is a
choice.

~~~
rbanffy
Many PhD's I know didn't work on their research for the extra letters on their
business cards, but out of a genuine devotion to further our knowledge on
their research subjects.

------
16s
They are ___academic royalty_ __, however, God did not give them royal
divinity, Universities did.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings>

------
woodpanel
_Germans place a greater premium on doctorates than Americans do as marks of
distinction and erudition. [...] According to the Web site Research in
Germany, about 25,000 Germans earn doctorates each year, the most in Europe
and about twice the per capita rate of the United States._

Visiting a university in Germany is almost free. More people having a "Diplom"
degree means that if you want to stand out you have to aim for a "Doktor". (I
use "Diplom" and "Doktor" here since the mentioned fraud-cases stem from a
time without bachelors and masters) - that's the easy explanation.

 _Here in the homeland of schadenfreude, the zeal for unmasking academic
frauds also reflects certain Teutonic traits, including a rigid adherence to
principle and a know-it-all streak._

I wouldn't subscribe to the word "fetish" but there is a certain "Teutonic
Trait" here and the acadmic fraud cases are just one symptom of something
deeper.

 _People in this society, contrary to what many of them claim, feel a deep
need for an authority to follow. [...] It's in them to worship authority and
to totally rely on it.[...] It makes sense to me that a strong and faithful
believer [...], can in his disappointment become so venomous when, as he
feels, that authority has failed him. It's this huge disappointment that turns
blind obedience into an uncontrolled need for slaughter._ \-
[http://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Hitlers-Room-American-
ebook/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Hitlers-Room-American-
ebook/dp/B005WZYWA2) (a funny but often stupid book, nonetheless I think here
the author has a point on us Germans)

A society, keen for authority, provides a reliable way for elite offspring to
fill the upper ranks of politics or public service. Our fraternities are
almost always tied to one of the two major political parties (SPD or CDU).
While beeing a great asset for students after graduation (Alumni-Network)
their main service for that offspring is to use all the dirty tricks to get
you your (law) diploma. Since these student bodies are very old and
established, they often fill the ranks of the personnel in the universities.
They might be the ones doing the evaluation of your thesis. They can provide
you with the tests beforehand and even if they can't they usually keep log of
every test written by a professor, so they can provide you at least with a
good approximation of future tests.

It doesn't wonder that there's an established market for ghostwriters
providing you those titles, since you have so many people using that "reliable
path to power" that don't seek the academic or professional acceptance at all.
Most of Germany's politicians are lawyers and most of them never seen a court
from the inside.

For me, this Title-Thing is a teutonic trait but it's not tied to genes but
tied to culture. And culture can change. This German Title-Mania is getting
less. For instance, you don't have to own a "Meister"-Title to open up certain
businesses anymore since recently. How this disposal of the "Meisterpflicht"
(allowance to open a business is tied to having a Meister-Title, by law) came
upon, though, tells about the difference between Germany and the US: It wasn't
a succesful grassroot kind of story, demanding personal/economic freedom, but
an order from the EU.

And the sentence "an order from above" sums up pretty much every German right
or freedom we were entitled to during our history. That makes us prone to
dislinkg "game-changers" because, if you spent time obeying the rules, you
won't loose on that investment by letting others take shortcuts. This
translates to less career changers than in the US, and a higher stigma if you
do. It translates to total absence of entrepreneurs or acclaimed business
people from entering a political race, because social envy gives them no cance
there. This translates to parts of our Acadamia being a thought free market of
status. We don't have an american culture of self-education. And the term
"Populärwissenschaft", scientists releasing books for the masses, is
considered an insult in German Acadamia.

~~~
drpgq
Do more Germans have Diplom degrees per capita than North Americans have
undergraduate degrees? I was under the impression that more North Americans
have undergraduate degrees than Germans Diploms, mainly because the Abitur is
the bottleneck. In Canada now it seems everyone and their dog goes to
university now.

~~~
cmarschner
It depends what types of schools you include. The "Diplom" and "Magister"
closely resembles the US master's degree, so their proliferation is lower when
comparing to _all_ degrees in other countries. However it has been replaced by
BA/BS and MA/MS between 2005 and 2010, so you can expect more BAs to enter the
labor market today. <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abitur> it states that 43%
of an age group get the Abitur, and most of them attend university according
to
[http://www.kmk.org/fileadmin/pdf/PresseUndAktuelles/2011/eag...](http://www.kmk.org/fileadmin/pdf/PresseUndAktuelles/2011/eag_2011_Lange_PM.pdf).
That document also states that some 28% of the population get a university
(undergratuate/graduate) degree today. On the other hand, more people do
apprenticeships in Germany than in other countries (without nessaraily having
an Abitur degree), and those apprenticeships are accompanied by classes and an
associate degree which can be extended to a "meister" of some sort. Some
studies are regarded as apprenticeship that would be taught at colleges in
other countries (e.g. patient care). If you add those degrees they make up
another 15% of an age group. So in total that's something like 43% which I
think would be comparable to US numbers.

------
stesch
The real scandal is that somebody studying catholic theology can become
education minister.

~~~
simonh
A real scandal would be if someone was hounded out of office or blocked from
attaining it due to their religious beliefs.

