Germany scraps university tuition fees, says charging students is "socially unjust"

Students in Germany can now acquire an education without paying fees from up until the tertiary as the country scraps tuition fees for all universities, Dazed reports.

Senator for Science and Research in Hamburg, Dorothee Stapelfeldt, told the Times that it was 'unjust' to charge students.

"Tuition fees are socially unjust," Stapelfeldt said.

"It is a core task of politics to ensure that young women and men can study with a high quality standard free of charge in Germany."

She added that it also excludes a section of the society from getting education.

"They particularly discourage young people who do not have a traditional academic family background from taking up studies."

Only eight years ago, a constitutional court's decision that moderate fees combined with loans did not violate the country’s commitment to universal higher allowed German universities to legally charge fees.

But all that is history now and Hamburg University Vice President, Dr Holger Fischer, said free education is a tradition.

"There is a tradition here that education is free from beginning to end, and that is very difficult to change," Fischer said.

Nigerian students, plagued by ever increasing tuition fees in their various universities, will greet this news wistfully.