[s3nnyy]

More people have degrees in Europe as it does not cost money. Also, the standard of education dropped and the exams are easier to pass.

I know from experience that a B.Sc. in Computer Science at the Technical University of Munich (considered a very good school) was harder to get before 2008 than it is now.

In the killer-subjects like discrete mathematics, theoretical computer science and algorithms we had failing-rates of 80%.

I can image the German government asked for "more CS grads" and after this the professors started to introduce one problem in each exam that anyone could pass who practised a bit and / or wasn't entirely stupid. The other two to three problems were still on a high level, and if you wanted a top-grade, you still had to solve those. As a result the failing-rate for the mentioned killer-subjects dropped from 80% to 20-30%.

[js-coder]

> As a result the failing-rate for the mentioned killer-subjects is dropped from 80% to 20-30%.

Do you have any links to back that up?

I'm not studying at TUM but I'd be really surprised if there's a 80% pass rate for those subjects.

[s3nnyy]

Around 2008 Prof. Mayr stopped teaching discrete mathematics. After that in most of the midterms there was a solvable problem. Often it was something like "Use the Dijkstra's algorithm to find the shortest paths in this graph. 10 Points" (and the exam had like 32 points).

[pc86]

> the professors started to introduce one problem in each exam that anyone could pass who practised a bit and / or wasn't entirely stupid.

What is considered a passing grade at one of these schools?

At my private liberal arts college in the US it was usually (but ultimately up to professor discretion):

  00-59% - Fail (0.0 for GPA)
  60-67% - D    (1.0)
  68-69% - D+   (1.3)
  70-72% - C-   (1.7)
  73-77% - C    (2.0)
  78-79% - C+   (2.3)
  80-82% - B-   (2.7)
  83-87% - B    (3.0)
  88-89% - B+   (3.3)
  90-92% - A-   (3.7)
  93+    - A    (4.0)

You could count any class with a D or better toward graduation, but to actually graduate you needed a 2.0 or better GPA. If you did not have it you could take additional courses to bring your GPA up, but adding on 3-credit courses when you've got 120 credits built up with a sub-2.0 GPA is typically a losing proposition. Most transferred if they were sub-2.0 by the end of their Sophomore year.

I've seen other grading scales with E's in addition to/instead of F, or minor variations on the percentages. It seems popular to give Honors courses an extra point (e.g. an A- is 4.7 instead of 3.7), particularly in US High Schools.

[schwarzmx]

Works similarly in Germany, with the difference that 4.0 is the lowest passing grade and 1.0 is the highest.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_Germany

[schwarzmx]

I don't see how one professor makes the entire program.

FWIW I did my masters there and in my opinion the way they evaluate students is suboptimal anyway - but I don't know if that's a TUM thing or a German thing.

[s3nnyy]

He doesn't; I just gave the example of one course but the pattern happend for other courses, too.

[saiya-jin]

similar story of "greatest filter in whole CS 5 year path quietly removed" here, albeit ours was actually non-programming related. It was theoretical electronics, don't ask me why we had to go through that guy - actually other students, focused on electronics had much nicer guys. the guy was firing people out of school with passion (literally for a single dot missing in Fourier equations at one place, often with deep personal insults, nobody liked him, not even from professors.

yeah, my uni was pretty bad, all the useful stuff I learned and use daily came from my own learning, none from university. campus was a fun place and great experience though :)