Results of the online survey on the allocation of tuition fees

In December 2009 and January 2010, an online survey of all students at the Göttingen University (excluding medicine) was conducted on the subject of its tuition fees. The results were presented for the first time at the Tuition Fee Conference held on February 16, 2010.

20.6% of enrolled students participated in the survey.

The questionnaire consisted of three parts:

• Allocation options for tuition fees
  
• Transparency in the allocation of tuition fees
  
• Attitude towards tuition fees
  

In summary, students at the Georgia Augusta are very critical of the imposition of tuition fees. Almost 50% of the respondents unreservedly oppose tuition fees, however, only about 17%, approve of or predominantly approve of the levying of tuition fees.

Yet there are several sensible allocation options perceived by the respondents, for example: the expansion of high-quality and innovative teaching by employing additional teachers and adding teaching professorships, mitigating hardship through emergency grants, covering printing and copying costs, increasing the number of student workstations (learning environments) and expanding the inventory of textbooks to be borrowed.

The transparency regarding tuition fee allocation and information about how students can contribute ideas must be further improved in the future. For example, 55% of the respondents reported that they had not been informed about the allocation of tuition fees, and 68% of that number stated that they did not know where they could access such information.

The data collected will now be made available to the faculties so that they can respond better to the future allocation requests made by their students and implement the ideas listed on the questionnaires as much as possible.