German Students at American Universities
In 1999 almost 10,000 German students spent part or all of their studies at American universities. This high number was the result of a process of gradually intensifying German American academic relations in the twentieth century.
In the nineteenth century only a handful of German students had found their way to American institutions of higher education, but by the 1990s, the United States were the host country most frequently chosen by German students. The roots of German American student exchange programs go back to 1923, when the Heidelberger Austauschstelle (Heidelberg Exchange Center) was founded to further academic contacts between the United States and Germany. The impulse for its foundation came from a group of German students who had been invited to the United States by American students the year before. Two years later, the Heidelberger Austauschstelle was renamed the American German Student Exchange and was made a partner organization of the Institute of International Education in New York (IIE). It promoted student exchange primarily as a means to end the academic isolation Germany had suffered since World War I. Its supporters hoped that German students visiting the United States would create ties between German and American universities that would serve as a starting point for closer academic relations. From 1924 to 1925 thirteen German students were sent to the United States, a number that rose to sixty- six in 1930. Similar numbers of Americans visited Germany. Since 1925 the exchange program had been organized by the newly founded Akademischer Austauschdienst (AAD, or Academic Exchange Service), which was later renamed Deutscher Akademische Austauschdienst (DAAD, or German Academic Exchange Service). In those early years only a few German students attended American universities for the whole of their degree course. Although numbers remained small, the impact on individual students nevertheless proved sweeping. One example was Dietrich Bon- hoeffer, who spent 1930 to 1931 at the Union Theological Seminary, an experience that, as he claimed, shaped his life and convictions decisively.After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, official exchange programs continued, though on a relatively small basis. From 1933 to 1938 the DAAD sent between forty-eight and seventy-eight German students to the United States each year. During the same period, a much larger number of German students fled to the United States as refugees. This situation caused conflicts within the IIE because it cooperated with the DAAD and thus with official Germany at the same time as it organized help for refugee students. In 1939, the war put a stop to emigration as well as to official exchanges, but refugee students and scholars formed an important part of the American academic community for all the 1940s.
First steps to renew contacts were made in 1946, when a delegation of the American Council on Education visited Germany. It recommended inviting German students who were considered suitable for future leadership positions in education to American universities. Furthermore, it suggested extending the Fulbright Act, which had been ratified the same year, to Germany. The delegation’s proposals gave an important impetus to reestablishing German American academic relations after the war. At the same time, American professors who formed part of the Educational and Cultural Relations Division of the U.S. Office of Military Government in Germany played an important role in promoting contacts between universities. Their work was supported by Herman B. Wells, president of Indiana University, who served as adviser on cultural affairs to General Lucius D. Clay, military governor of the American Occupation Zone. Wells declared cultural exchange to be one of the keystones of the reeducation program, a conviction that was to guide the High Commission’s policies in the following years.
Influenced by Wells, Clay endorsed educational exchange as an important means to offer the German youth the experience of democracy. From 1948 to 1949 more than 200 German students were invited to attend U.S. institutions. Their travel costs were paid by the military government; American private and religious organizations contributed funds for their maintenance. Colleges and universities contributed by offering free board and/or tuition waivers. For most of these organizations, the primary aim of the exchange program was to strengthen democratic convictions among German students by offering them the opportunity to experience American democracy. The program was generally regarded to be a success and was received with great enthusiasm in West Germany.In 1950 the DAAD was reorganized as an organization for educational exchange. Although politicians as well as academics in both countries heartily supported exchange programs, the number of participants remained relatively low because of restricted funds. Only American organizations were able to provide the necessary funds; the Ford and Rockefeller foundations in particular played an important role in financing exchange scholarships for German and American students. The majority of German students in the United States in the 1950s as well as in later periods financed their stay by private means. Only from 1957 onward was the DAAD able to support more than 100 German students per year in the United States.
The Fulbright program, enacted in 1952, provided the basis for a significant increase in the numbers of German students at American universities. During the 1950s, about from 170 to 200 German students per year went to the United States with Fulbright scholarships, and a similar number of American students was invited to Germany. For successful applications, both the academic and personal qualifications of the applicants were important. In 1961 a survey among 650 former Fulbright grantees gave an insight into the motivations and experiences of German students in the United States: most grantees mentioned the academic possibilities as the main reason for their wish to travel to the United States.
American universities were perceived to be better equipped with both technical instruments and books. The amount of work done by American students was almost universally regarded to be higher than that of German students. Only the lesser freedom in choice regarding the curriculum was sometimes seen as a negative experience.Between 1960 and 1970 the number of German students at American universities doubled, from 1,000 to about 2,000. In 1970 roughly 20 percent of all German students studying abroad attended American institutions. However, all Europeans together formed only a small minority, about 10 percent, of all foreign students in the United States. The increasing number of German students attending American universities and colleges was mainly due to the creation of multiple ties between German and American universities: many new exchange programs were initiated on a local basis. Professors who had visited the United States at an earlier stage of their career, often through one of the exchange programs, now used their contacts to create institutional links with American universities. Still, the growing number of German students choosing U.S. universities has to be seen against the background of rapidly rising student numbers in Germany. The percentage of German students studying abroad did not grow significantly until the late 1980s. German American student mobility during the later 1960s affected the student movement of these years in several ways. Many ideas of the American student movement came to Germany via exchange students, be they American or German. Forms of protest such as sit-ins or teach-ins were imported from American universities. Petra Kelly is only one example of a German politician whose convictions had been shaped by the experience of the American civil rights movement. The counterculture of the 1960s stimulated the interest of German students in the United States, although German campuses were at the same time characterized by a prevalence of critical attitudes toward the United States.
Unwilling to import critical and left-wing political attitudes, the American government in 1966 tried to compel grantees sponsored by U.S. government funds to abstain from political activities as well as from expressing political opinions on U.S. politics. The Fulbright Commission in Bonn did not accept this infringement on students’ rights but asked grantees not to express opinions on political topics in the name of the Fulbright program.The end of the decade saw drastic reductions of American funds for educational exchanges, which caused budget problems within the Fulbright program until 1974, when the program was again put on a more secure financial basis. Still, the 1970s witnessed further expansion of German American student exchange; particularly the number of German students traveling to the United States rose. In 1971 a DAAD branch was established in New York, which added new life to the traditional ties with the IIE and created close contacts with many American universities and colleges.
The experiences and impressions of individuals, as given in surveys and interviews, were similar in the 1980s to those from earlier periods. Apart from the quality of teaching, the internationality of American universities and the experience of campus life left long-lasting impressions. Between 1975 and 1999 the number of German students in the United States rose from approximately 1,700 to almost 10,000. But still in the 1980s and 1990s, the German students at American universities were not representative of the German student population as a whole: Students from lower-middle- and working-class backgrounds chose much less often to spend a year abroad than students from upper-middle-class and upper-class backgrounds.
In 1986 the German Educational Support Law was changed to allow the use of entitlements for studying in the United States, a measure that opened the path to a year abroad to a new group of students. However, the new European exchange programs, above all the ERASMUS program, directed the interests of many students toward European countries rather than the United States.
In addition, a new American tax law, which made scholarships and tuition waivers a form of taxable income, and a reassessment of German university education by American educators produced misgivings between the German and American academic communities. Both issues were finally resolved with the mediation of the Fulbright Commission in 1989-1990.In the 1990s the reunification of Germany opened new possibilities for German American academic exchanges. In the beginning only a few East German students went to the United States, but they quickly caught up with their West German counterparts. As a consequence of repeated budget cuts in German universities since the 1990s, the United States has become an increasingly important job market for young German scholars. This has produced new fears of a “brain drain,” a fear that has since dominated the debates about university reform in Germany.
For most of the German students who have crossed the Atlantic since 1945, studying in America meant studying in the United States. Still, there has always been a small percentage of German students in Canada—about 300 per year in the 1980s. The quality of university education in Canada, attractive conditions for admission at Canadian universities, and the availability of scholarships were among the main motivations named by students for choosing Canada. But also Canada’s reputation as a “peaceable kingdom” was cited by a large proportion of students as a decisive reason for choosing Canada. In the 1980s, the democratic transition occurring across Latin America drew the attention of German students to the southern part of the American continent and exchanges with Latin American countries since have grown significantly. In 1994, 2.7 percent of German students studying abroad went to Latin America, a relatively high percentage in the light of the fact that Spanish is generally taught only as an optional third language in German secondary education. In 1999, 21.4 percent of all German students studying abroad chose the Americas: 13.8 percent went to the United States, 4.9 percent studied in Latin America, and 2.7 percent chose Canada As part of the antiterrorist measures in the United States in response to the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, U.S. visa regulations have been tightened. It thus became more difficult for German students to obtain student visas, a fact that led to a slight reduction in the number of German students in the United States. In 2002, Germany came eleventh in the list of countries sending students to the United States.
Sonja Levsen
See also American Occupation Zone; American Students at German Universities; Bonhoeffer, Dietrich; Fulbright Program; Kelly, Petra
References and Further Reading
Altbach, Philip G., and Jing Wang. Foreign Students and International Study: Bibliography and Analysis, 1984—1988. Lanham: University Press of America, 1989.
Isserstedt, Wolfgang, and Klaus Schnitzer. Internationalisierung des Studiums: Auslandische Studierende in Deutschland, deutsche Studierende im Ausland. Bonn: Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung, 2002.
Littmann, Ulrich. Partners—Distant and Close: Notes and Footnotes on Academic Mobility between Germany and the United States of America, 1923—1993. Bonn: Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, 1997.
Schultze, Rainer-Olaf, Jurgen Ender, and Martin Thunert. German Students in Canada: An Empirical Evaluation. Bochum: Studienverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer, 1989.