Yes, the Germans really dominated most fields of science in Europe up to the second world war; this is something else I remember from Vienna, which perhaps I should have pointed up more, the sense of one of the world’s great intellectual moments having gone irretrievably – specifically because the people who made it got killed, exiled or censored.

Also, I don’t know how it works in humanities, but most European publications in maths are in English nowadays. It’s like how a few hundred years ago, Western European scholars all published in Latin. I read plenty of articles written by Germans, sometimes in German. But usually I don’t even need to use any language skills, because German mathematicians generally publish their work in English (not a translation – the original publication is in English, even if it’s published in Mathematische Zeitschrift or whatever). I don’t think this is stifling expression so much as enhancing communication. After all, it’s desirable to know a few different languages (and to think in them – I agree with Thorsten here that Anglophones are sometimes a bit ‘bornés’ on this score), but no-one can be expected to draw together research published in dozens of different languages all over the world. Much mathematics is in any case produced not by individuals, but by teams of 2-4 people, often of different nationalities – and in that case the language they talk to each other in is nearly always English.

As for talking about the ‘Anglo’ system, this term doesn’t make sense because the UK and US systems are very different. Even as far as it is possible to generalise about US institutions, it usually doesn’t apply to the UK, and vice versa. For instance, undergraduates in the US tend to do a broad spread of subjects, whereas the UK is just the opposite: we specialise early and tend to pursue very narrow research topics (sometimes too narrow IMO). The Australian, NZ and Canadian systems are different again. Talking about them as if they are all the same is as meaningless as talking about ‘the continental education system’.

Maybe humanities are fundamentally different, I don’t know; I can only speak about what I have experience of.

Chris, as to whether your German MA will be competitive in America, I think it depends entirely on the field and on what kind of league you’re competing in. Is an MA in BWL from Bielefeld competitive with an MBA from Harvard? Is an MA in international relations from Munich competitive with one from the Nitze School at Hopkins? Marginally closer, but still no.

The difference, quite apart from arguments about content, is that a German MA is a first degree, generally without much of a professional network attached. An American MA is a second degree (except for the ‘terminal’ MA given as a consolation prize for not completing a PhD course, which is a whole different kettle of fish) that often aims at a particular profession and comes with entry points into regional or national professional networks.

It’s also a bit self-defeating to talk about American higher education as if it were all of one piece. (Harvard and Bunker Hill Community College are both tertiary institutions in Massachusetts, but lumping them together will not get you far in most analyses.) German universities used to pretend there was greater similarity, but that turned out to be self-defeating in a different way.