Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Susanne Peschel, an economics student at Goethe University in Frankfurt, is furious that she can no longer get her education for free.

``I would approve if we would get better supervision and better conditions,'' the 30-year-old said, squatting on the floor of a lecture hall because she couldn't find a seat even after arriving 45 minutes early. ``I regard my education as an investment, but to pay for these studying conditions?''

A push to match the quality of higher education in the U.S. and U.K. is driving colleges that taught the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx to charge tuition for the first time in almost 40 years. The effort to pass on some costs is drawing heat from students and politicians in Germany, the last of Western Europe's big countries to overhaul university financing.

Students are balking at paying for what they say are overcrowded classrooms, and poorly equipped libraries and laboratories. Opposition politicians say universities should be free and accessible to people from low-income families.

``The gap in college funding should be covered by reallocating public funds,'' instead of demanding money from students, said Michael Siebel, an opposition Social Democratic Party member of the Hesse state parliament.

A study last year ranked only five German universities among the top 100 worldwide, compared with more than 50 U.S. schools. The annual University of Shanghai survey measures indicators such as research quality and awards won by employees and alumni. In the past 16 years, 23 researchers at U.S. institutions have won Nobel Prizes in medicine. German schools have won three.

Better Equipped

The last German attempt to revamp higher education came after youths revolted in the 1960s, protesting that Nazi-era professors were still teaching. They demanded a debate on the country's ``brown'' past and called for the creation of student councils.

Students in Germany paid for their classes until October 1970, when states unanimously abolished fees to make higher education available to more people. The U.K. introduced undergraduate fees in 1998. Italy and Spain also charge university students.

In seven of Germany's 16 states, university students now must pay as much as 1,000 euros ($1,300) a year. In contrast, tuition and fees in the U.S. average $10,700 annually at public universities and $25,000 at private universities, according to Federal Student Aid, the student-loan office of the U.S. Education Department.

Goethe University spent about 10,126 euros, or $13,200, per student in 2006, compared with $149,686 at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, according to information on their Web sites.

`Out of Order'

``Other universities are clearly better equipped, for example when you look at the U.S.,'' said Udo Corts, Hesse's minister for higher education. ``We want to, and have to, offer an education that is competitive. Students are looking at where they get the best education, and equipment plays a role.''

State governments rather than the federal government fund tertiary education, and they're struggling to keep up with the rising costs of maintaining facilities and upgrading equipment.

``Half of the computers in our medical library are constantly out of order, the books are out of date and copies are so scarce that students end up buying the books themselves,'' said Zbigniew Rakus, a 24-year-old medical student at Goethe University. Classes are packed with more than twice the number of students recommended by his department, he said.

Not Nationwide

Still, not all schools across the country are charging for instruction. All the states that have imposed fees are controlled by Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union and its coalition partner, the Free Democratic Union.

Berlin, where economist Max Weber studied for a time, is controlled by the SPD and the smaller socialist party, Linkspartei.PDS, and has no plans to charge students.

The state of Hesse, which includes Frankfurt, will start charging students in October. The CDU expects the levy to raise as much as 135 million euros a year, adding to the 1.2 billion euros of public funding for colleges.

In North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany's most populous state and one of those that imposed fees last October, first-year enrollment dropped 5.3 percent from a year earlier. The state includes the University of Bonn, which philosophers Marx and Nietzsche attended in the 19th century.

``I oppose tuition because it alienates students from gaining tertiary education and Germany can't afford that,'' said Bernhard Nagel, an economic law professor at Kassel University.

Different Path

Children from poorer families may take up vocational training rather than go into debt for an education, he said.

About 21 percent of Germans had earned a first college degree in 2004, compared with 46 percent in Australia, 45 percent in Poland, and 34 percent in the U.S., according to a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development published in September.

Goethe University student Peschel said she hopes she can complete her course work before tuition and fees are required in October.

``I hope to write my thesis in the summer break,'' Peschel said. ``If I need to pay for my last term, I certainly will. I invested so much in my studies.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Stefanie Haxel in Frankfurt at shaxel@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: February 18, 2007 18:00 EST