Did tuition fees in Germany constrain students’ budgets? New evidence from a natural experiment

IZA Journal of European Labor Studies

Table 8 Overview of tuition fees in Germany

Federal state	Level of fees (in EUR)	Date of decision	Introduced	Abolished
Baden-Wuerttemberg	500	December 15, 2005	Summer term 2007	Summer term 2012
Bavaria	Up to 500	May 18, 2006	Summer term 2007	Winter term 2013/2014
Hamburg	375	June 28, 2006	Summer term 2007	Winter term 2012/2013
Hessen	500	October 05, 2006	Winter term 2007/2008	Winter term 2008/2009
Lower Saxony	500	December 09, 2005	Winter term 2006/2007	Winter term 2014/2015
North Rhine-Westphalia	Up to 500	March 16, 2006	Winter term 2006/2007	Winter term 2011/2012
Saarland	500	July 12, 2006	Winter term 2007/2008	Summer term 2010

Note: In Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, only first-year students had to pay tuition fees from the winter term 2006/2007, while older students had to pay from the summer term 2007. No tuition fees were charged in Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen (only once in the winter term 2006/2007 for students who did not have their main residence in Bremen and for students who had studied for longer than 15 semesters), Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, and Thuringia. “Date of decision”: date on which the parliament of the federal state passed the law that says that tuition fees have to be charged; “Introduced”: first term in which students had to pay tuition fees; “Abolished”: first term in which students did not have to pay tuition fees anymore