[ido]

Don't know about the US but in Israel anything to do with programming is in such high demand and so overbooked (therefor requiring competitive grades to get in) that you get what you can.

I got into my bachelors in 2002, at the nadir of the dot-com crash (when demand for CS education was at its lowest) & my grades in high-school were just good enough to get into the Math & CS combined program (both CS or SE had higher requirements).

The only other option would have been to go to a private college rather than a state university, which would have had (at least) double the tuition and (at most) half the prestige/employability-potential of a university degree.

[k__]

Interesting. I'm from Germany and studied "Computer Science and Media" and it was rather overbooked, like Media stuff often is here.

But the regular computer science or software engineering degrees (like most technical degrees) aren't overbooked ever.

They let in everyone and throw 60% - 70% out after the first year.

[ido]

Unlike Germany, in Israel how desirable a study is is directly correlated with how much money one can make working in it...So media/art stuff is very low on the totem pole.

[k__]

Hehe.

I have the feeling most German (Millenials?) just study what they do in their free time.

Yes, there are the academic families, that tell their kids to become lawyer or medical doctor or something like that.

But most tell me I was just lucky that I liked doing computer stuff, so I could study computer science and make "mad bucks" while they liked to draw or read and had to study something like languages or fine arts.

[ido]

I have actually been living in Germany for the past 3 years, and spent 8 years in Austria before that :)

I find the non-materialistic (or at least less materialistic) mentality here preferable. But to be honest I think the only reason is that life in the German speaking countries is much easier - you can earn minimum wage or close to it and still live a decent life.

In Israel I had to earn twice as much for half the quality of life (slight exaggeration but only slight).

[k__]

I like this mentality too.

But Bafög (the german student aid) can accumulate to more than 10k€ of dept (you have to pay back half of it) and some of my friends even took credits for their (non-consecutive) master degrees or because they didn't finish their bachelors in regular time. Now they are stuck with 10k - 40k of dept and no way to pay this back in with the money they make.