The "Weekly World News" is not typically held up as a reliable source of information, New Stateswoman.

20 months x 4 = 80 = more than 6 1/2 years. Was it REALLY that long a course? A typical Bachelors + Masters combo is four years...

And in fact as you get relatively long summers at uni, the first year doesn't start so early, and the last one doesn't end so late, 20 months start-to-end sounds rather like he did it in 2 normal academic years. So, half the time? Unless it was going to be an 8-year deal?

All the same, craziness.

But, the uni still had to front up itself for his tuition, the facilities he used, the exam materials, the examiners' time, etc. The amount they were out probably wasn't equal to the remaining time left out of his course, but then, if what unis charge in Germany is anything like that in the UK, €3000 doesn't even cover an extra year to at least fill out the Bachelors' pot. Certainly that's not a lot of cash when divided over 7 remaining semesters. They were probably just asking for the fees for the fourth which may have been left outstanding. (2 semesters a year... you can't fit 3 of them into 20 months! That's 4 semesters with "only" a 2-month holiday each year...)

I think we're maybe not being availed of the full story here.

And yes, in the interests of full disclosure, I do work in a college, no we don't have anything that could even be considered a profit margin (over a couple decades we managed to build up a £20m slush pot, which is now all being sunk back into badly needed campus expansion and renovation plans), and students will do anything to try and twist out of paying their fair share... and when they do, it kicks back on the available budget to serve the rest of them.

(I was at uni in the UK 2000-2003. My per-year tuition fees were £3500... which is, what, almost €5000? Account for inflation, and there's your €3000 per semester that he's probably trying to twist out of by not quite having completed the fourth one. Back in the early noughties, leaving the course before you'd finished the full semester was known as "dropping out" and you weren't typically entitled to much, if any kind of refund. The institution wasn't going to be able to fill your place on the course, may not have found a new tenant to take your room if you'd been in halls, but would still have most of the associated bills to pay... You can't skip maintenance or cleaning just on that one small bit of the building and so pay the cleaners and workmen slightly less, and you can't lay off 1/300th of a lecturer or sell off/stop maintaining 1/300th of the teaching kit because one of the 300 students they may lecture to on any one day has left...)

Look up Planet Nibiru, heading this way - imminent. Worry less about fees and think how to survive.