BRITISH protesters who attacked Prince Charles's car last December failed to stop a rise in university fees. Perhaps they should have taken off their clothes instead, as a group of art students in Hamburg did earlier this year. The city-state's newly elected government, formed by the Social Democratic Party (SPD), will abolish tuition fees in 2012. Hamburg is one of several German states in which new, usually left-leaning governments are bringing back free university education. Of the seven states that introduced tuition fees after the constitutional court allowed them in 2005, just two—Lower Saxony and Bavaria—plan to continue. A half-hearted experiment is fizzling out.

This is an odd way for Germany to push its universities into the top tier. No German institution is among the leaders in global rankings, and money is part of the problem. The United States spends nearly twice as much per student as Germany does. Two-thirds of American universities' revenues come from private sources, compared with just 15% in Germany. The federal government is pumping in money through programmes like the “excellence initiative”, which promotes mainly research at a few select universities. But it so far has done little to improve teaching, which is what students tend to care about. Meanwhile states are cutting basic financing, notes Margret Wintermantel, head of the German Rectors' Conference.

At tertiary institutions the average professor handles 53 students, and that will rise. By shortening secondary-school study by a year, states have created a bulge of new entrants; the end of military conscription in July will add more. The extra government help universities are getting won't be enough, says Mrs Wintermantel.

Universities embraced fees as a way to improve teaching conditions. The burden on students looks light. In most states they pay €500 ($720) per term—nothing like the mortgage-sized sums levied on American, and soon British, students. Fees produced €1.2 billion for German universities in 2008, a modest but useful sum compared with their total spending of €36 billion. They spend it predictably, on smaller classes, better-equipped laboratories, longer library hours and the like, usually in consultation with students.

This did not convince left-of-centre parties, which think education should be free from kindergarten to colloquium. Fees, they allege, deter potential students, especially from poor families. The money is often wasted, for example on billiard tables, barbecues and, in one case, defibrillators.

Such objections are mostly nonsense, says Ulrich Müller of CHE, a think-tank. Students can defer payments and states offer loans on easy terms. A study of western states by HIS, a state-run consultancy, found that school-leavers in states that charge tuition are no less likely to attend university than those in non-tuition states. Graduates' extra earnings will pay for the fees many times over. Mr Müller argues that fees encourage students to think harder about what they want to study and universities to treat them with more respect. The misspending complaints are based on a few lurid press reports, he says.

To no avail. SPD-led North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state, and rich Baden-Württemberg, now run by a Green-SPD coalition, plan to join Hamburg in abolishing tuition fees. All pledge to replace the lost revenue, but such promises have been broken before. Hamburg's naked art students may rue their victory.