AND YOU THINK WE'VE GOT IT BAD

The New York budget talks have caused some fear among university employees -- perhaps fear is too strong, and "vague sense of unease" would be more precise. But we've got it good compared to the universities in Berlin, which, according to this Berliner Zeitung article, have already made some drastic cuts and are considering more. The Humboldt University in central Berlin is considering not taking any first semester students (presumably transfers would be o.k.); the Free University in Dahlem is considering giving up the administration of the Botanical Garden, and both the FU and the Technical University are considering severely tightening entrance requirements. The idea behind these (and other) proposed reforms is to cut the number of students in Berlin from 85,000 among three main universities, to around 65,000. Raising tuition is another possibility (probably that's what will get NY out of its immediate university funding problems), but Germans are notoriously resistant to the idea.