The contribution or tuition matter

From a legal point of view, the €500 per semester that you had to pay for studies at TUM from 2007 to 2013, unless you fell under the exemption criteria, were fees. There are also degree programs at TUM for which fees are charged. However, these are far more than €500. The fees are intended to make the degree program self-financing. Therefore, their amount is also based on the costs of the respective fee-paying degree program. According to the law, however, the fees are intended to improve the overall study and teaching situation.

Why, then, have contributions and fees for a degree program so often been grouped together under the term "tuition funds" from both students and politicians?

The term "tuition" was the political term for the tuition funds. On the one hand, this was to better express the fact that this money was not a voluntary additional benefit, but in fact an obligatory payment, but on the other hand, that contrary to the legal regulation, the money was not only additional, but in many places the so-called "basic equipment" was directly financed with it. The term "tuition" was therefore used primarily in public to make one's own position clear.