Once upon a time a 29-year-old dude was sitting at home and thinking: "What should I do with my life? I don't have kids or even a wife. I don't even have a good job. What I do have is a few thousand euros saved up and a lot of free time."
This dude was me exactly a year ago.
My name is Vitaly. I am from Russia, but I spent a third of my conscious life living in Virginia Beach, Virginia. For reasons that I won't get into here I decided to move back to Russia. I can't say that it was an entirely ill-conceived decision. However, after a year of trying I wasn't able to find myself in the country where I didn't fit in the way I'd used to.
I never finished my degree in the university, so I came to a fairly prudent conclusion that maybe I should get an education after all. The issue with that notion was the fact that russian education is of poor quality (I can write a whole separate article on that account). Plus, the list of majors provided by the educational establishments in my hometown (population: 220K) was severely limited considering the pace of development of new technologies and fields of study. And it isn't even free any more.
The internet suggested Finland, Germany and a couple of other countries in Europe where education expenses are taken care of by the government.
My choice fell on Germany, where tuition fees equal zero, unless you want to study medicine or a couple other popular (read - well-paid in the future) fields. However, there are a few restrictions that the german government set in place which affect the process of application.
First of all, when russians graduate high school they have 10 years of mandatory education behind their backs. Germans have 12. So it becomes an obligatory condition for an applicant to have completed at least two years of college or university in Russia before applying to a german establishment. I met this condition.
Secondly, one has to continue to study what one studied back home, no matter how many years one completed. So the vast majority of career options fell away right there. But I met this condition as well by picking computational linguistics as my major (I used to study interpreting).
Here's my lousy transcript.
The third checkpoint was to provide proof of proficiency in German or English depending on which language the course is taught in. Mine was in English, so I had to take an international academic English test called TOEFL. Scored in the top 3% of all testees ever (112/120). Condition 3 met.
Now I had to gather all my papers in one heap and send it off to Universität Tübingen, which I did. Three weeks later I received a letter of acceptance. My grades in the russian university weren't very firy, so apparently, my motivational letter had quite a bit to do with the positive response from the uni.
The next and final step - visa.
Every student gets a national visa. It acts as a residence permit the way the Green Card does in the USA. But in order to be approved for one, the student must provide the german consulate with proof of medical insurance for the first few weeks of his or her stay in Germany. That was no biggie.
The biggie was - and at last I am leading to the point of this article - proof of having a substantial amount of money to cover living expenses during the first year of studies. The figure is determined by the immigration service (or whatever they call themselves) and comes out to a seemingly innocuous €720 per month. However, that times twelve equals €8640. For the US readers - that's $9500. Not just to possess but to deposit into a blocked account at Deutsche Bank, which means that you can only withdraw 1/12th of the total sum per month.
All I had was 6000 euros.
Some people in the online "get-a-free-degree-in-Germany" community said that they just provided russian bank statements or had their parents or another relative take on the expenses in notarized form. As we say in Russia - an attempt is not a torture, so I decided to test my luck.
I borrowed some cash from friends and relatives and deposited it into my bank account. After this procedure, the balance line read €9300 ($10200) - €800 more than I needed, to safeguard myself from unnecessary suspicion by the immigration fellas. I had a bank worker print out my statement and then I... went to the airport and flew to Moskow. Yeah. Everyone has to apply for a national visa in person. But since there are just a few german consulates in all of Russia, it requires travel for most applicants.
So, finally, I'm at the Moskow visa center handing my papers to the dude in the window, fingers crossed. He briefly goes through all my documents and stops at the bank statement.
Shit.
--- Sir, do you know that this document will not be sufficient as proof of acceptable financial situation or whatever, bla-bla, blocked account, bla, Deutsche Bank, bla-bla-bla...
Long story short - I returned home with a very blurry mental picture of my own future, a picture which was so totally hi-res HD 4K just a few hours before. I couldn't believe that I didn't have enough money to study at a free university.
I was upset, but not angry. I understand that nowadays free education is a privelege, and it would be unwise of the german government to give away study spots to just anybody. And while I am certain I would find a way to finance my own existence while in Germany (international students are legally allowed to work up to 20 hours a week), a number of things might go wrong that would compell me to drop out because I failed to obtain the means to pay my rent and so on. That way the government's pick that was me would be a giant waste of resources. And in that respect I feel nothing but admiration and wonderment as to how a nation came to be so consistent and orderly.
I am not giving up on my quest for knowledge. One way or another, in Germany or on Coruscant, I will receive free education of excellent quality.
Thank you for reading.