A case for educational match-making

I am sometimes asked why this blog does not contain any information on particular universities, study programmes, rankings etc.The reason is simple: I do not believe in random applications but in bringing the right students together with the right courses and institutions, what I call “educational match-making”. There is a wealth of information about study options in Germany available on the net, and I do not want to further contribute to this, as many German universities are already complaining about the rising number of applications by international students who are often not qualified for the course they are applying to. This is especially true for those institutions that regularly appear high in global rankings.

For most graduate programmes at German universities no application fee is charged. As a result, these courses tend to be flooded by chance applications of candidates who are not always really serious about their expressed study intentions. Nevertheless, these documents have to be processed by the universities, congesting decision-making and leading to ever greater inflation of bureaucracy. Many applicants send out an exaggerated number of applications, sometimes spread out over several countries, in the end causing an unreasonable waste of allotted seats.

To counteract this unpleasant situation, we have established a small counselling agency, the “German Study Centre Cochin / Deutsches Studienzentrum (DSZ)”. Initially we provided free personalised couselling to all interested candidates world-wide, but this soon turned out to be impossible. Since Germany has become one of the most popular destinations for international students, the number of inquiries has increased to unmanageable proportions. Additionally, many messages that reach us have a certain flavour of “spontaneity”, i.e. arbitrariness. To be able to concentrate on serious and qualified candidates, we had to introduce moderate charges for our counselling services.

DSZ believes in merit-based education and is highly critical of the increasing commodification of knowledge. Information catering to vested interests is rarely objectice and free of biases.  We do not serve the needs of any particular institution, no matter whether government, university or private company. Our activities are financed neither by advertisements (which you will not find in this blog) nor by profit-based commissions.

Chris
germanstudycentre@gmail.com