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On September 24 2011 02:08 Kinetik_Inferno wrote:
I don't think anybody can deny that the American school system is shit, particularly not after seeing Waiting for Superman. That movie's just depressing.
On a more 'on-topic note,' what everyone else is saying pretty much hits the nail straight on the head. Universities and Colleges (are they the exact same thing?) charge pretty hefty tuition, and really good ones get positive feedback which gives them more prestige (like vetinari said).
I think another huge factor is that the students are often times making amazing discoveries. In high school and everything below, the schools are purely teaching and making friends with your peers while doing so. In places like UCLA, Harvard, MIT, and the real genius-y places, the students oftentimes outshine their teachers. And even if they don't, you still hear about researchers from x university making amazing y discovery.
Uni & college are more or less the same. The terms are used interchangeably, but i think that technically a school's a university when it offers multiple schools that you can get degrees from (like MD, School of business, school of...biology?) and and official colleges are a little bit smaller and have fewer options.
but like i said, at least casually, the terms are used interchangeably. in fact, almost no one (at least where i'm from) says they go to university, we all say we went to college at _______
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On September 24 2011 02:02 trainRiderJ wrote:
Universities have to compete with other universities all over the world to get students. Even publicly funded universities enjoy a large amount of freedom in how they conduct their business, and are really only accountable to the government on a macro level (i.e. are you going bankrupt or not).
Our primary and secondary public school system has none of this competition. Kids go to the school closest to where they live, and school funding is based on simple attendance and whether or not kids can demonstrate the most basic of reading and math skills.
All you pointed out the difference between people wanting to go to school and people not really having that choice.
On September 24 2011 02:07 Myles wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2011 02:04 skyR wrote:On September 24 2011 02:01 SnapCall wrote:On September 24 2011 01:55 semantics wrote:On September 24 2011 01:48 giuocob wrote:
Universities are private. America has been the site of many, many scientific and academic discoveries in its history, far more than any other country. These people drive universities and make them exceptional.
Most high schools and below are public. It is well known that most anything the American government touches turns to shit, and public schooling is no exception. They aren't all, most aren't private... Stop spouting shit out your ass UCLA,UC Berkley,University of Virginia,University of Michigan - Ann Arbor ;George Tech,UCSD,UC Davis,UCSB,UC Irvine,Penn state,Texas A&M,Virginia Tech. I'm sure given time i could think up more. so what does public mean? are those free/ close to free to attend? i always thought american universities are good cause they are so expensive. Public means its funded by the public, ex. tax payer's money / government. True, but they still cost a good amount of money, especially if you are not from the state they are located.
Well the only federal universities are like west point ie military, subsiding education is done via the state and so if you're out of state you haven't been paying for it.
On September 24 2011 02:06 paralleluniverse wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2011 02:01 SnapCall wrote:On September 24 2011 01:55 semantics wrote:On September 24 2011 01:48 giuocob wrote:
Universities are private. America has been the site of many, many scientific and academic discoveries in its history, far more than any other country. These people drive universities and make them exceptional.
Most high schools and below are public. It is well known that most anything the American government touches turns to shit, and public schooling is no exception. They aren't all, most aren't private... Stop spouting shit out your ass UCLA,UC Berkley,University of Virginia,University of Michigan - Ann Arbor ;George Tech,UCSD,UC Davis,UCSB,UC Irvine,Penn state,Texas A&M,Virginia Tech. I'm sure given time i could think up more. so what does public mean? are those free/ close to free to attend? i always thought american universities are good cause they are so expensive. Are there government loans for the cost of going to university in the US? In Australia, all students are able to get government loans for the tuition fees, which are automatically taken out of tax when you get a job later on. So essentially, all universities are free (or at least it feels that way). Is there any similar program for US universities?
FAFSA i suppose would be it, not really free unless you attend a state college and are in a lower income bracket at which point between grants, scholarships etc you can essentially make it free. But not at university but hell government student loans are so low interest it doesn't hurt too much esp if you land a job to pay it off in due time(ie don't become a teacher XD)
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On September 24 2011 01:45 paralleluniverse wrote:
I'm not from America, but I've heard a lot about how much the American public school system sucks, both from Americans and others.
However, this has always struck me as paradoxical, because America has the best universities in the world -- by far. Nearly all of the top ranked universities are American. No other country is even *remotely* close.
How is it possible for America to, allegedly, have such horribly bad and ineffective schools, while having the best universities in the world?
To add to this, countries like Singapore, China, Korea, and most Asian countries, are generally consider to have the best schools in the world, with the highest level of school achievements measured by standardized language, math, and science scores, yet none of these countries have a university worth a damn, I think none these even have a university ranked in the top 20.
Anyone want to shred some light on this seeming paradox?
The simple reason is, in nearly every country but the United States of America, school is where you go to learn what you need to study and get into college. That is to say, primary and secondary schools are only stepping stones to higher education.
In the USA K-12 primary and secondary schooling's main focus is NOT purely academic. In fact, a student who JUST gets straight A's and lacks a social life and club activity participation is considered a failure by this system. Most USA primary/secondary education systems are focused on creating individuals who can cooperate with others in their community to create a harmonious civil society. America is the home to progressive schooling, and so that's what it focuses on.
The main problem with this is that school becomes a sort of evil microcosm of Lord of the Flies bullshit.... which is pretty much inevitable when you throw together children and tell them to form society.... but hell, it works better than any school system in the world (arguably, of course) at creating individuals that simply mesh well with society. Basically it's the thinking that multifaceted learning is more important than factual learning or even critical thinking, because no matter how intelligent an individual is, without the social prowess and team play that must be otherwise learned is pointless. (Thusly American education is required until the end of highschool/dropping out of highschool, and is mostly free, because the student is an investment to the civility of society as a whole)
University on the other hand has the VAST majority of it's resources placed onto cultivating that already multifacted mind into a single subject... and USA universities have the most freedom of any universities in the world, subjects are highly varied and majors are completely unimportant when it comes to Undergrad until Junior year. Grad schools are even MORE laser sight focused. Why? Because the ONLY goal is thoroughly enriching a mind and creating the best specimen of that science possible. (Universities loosely base tuition costs off of academic achievement because a successful student means an influential alumnus that allow them to become MORE cost efficient... as a business)
Yes, I minor in educational philosophy >.<
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When you have a statistical ground as large as America, certain statistical anomalies, especially unfiltered ones like this, are bound to occur. In reality, there really is no paradox, but mere variation and pluralization.
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On September 24 2011 01:55 semantics wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2011 01:48 giuocob wrote:
Universities are private. America has been the site of many, many scientific and academic discoveries in its history, far more than any other country. These people drive universities and make them exceptional.
Most high schools and below are public. It is well known that most anything the American government touches turns to shit, and public schooling is no exception. They aren't all, most aren't private... Stop spouting shit out your ass UCLA,UC Berkley,University of Virginia,University of Michigan - Ann Arbor ;George Tech,UCSD,UC Davis,UCSB,UC Irvine,Penn state,Texas A&M,Virginia Tech, west point(which is as public as it gets) I'm sure given time i could think up more.
This is a discussion about good universities. Please stay on topic.
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United States22883 Posts
On September 24 2011 02:07 TYJ.Aoy wrote:
This isn't a paradox at all, MIT, Harvard, Stanford and many others are made by a ton of bright foreigners(that were invited, most don't pay anything at all) that brought all those nobels and what not to the universities names.
Not really true at all.
There's a lot of international students, depending on the school and major/program, but you're portraying it as if it's only them succeeding which is completely false.
Statistics about the American public school system only represent the average, and when the issue is top universities, generally 'the average' doesn't apply. The scope of America's grade school quality is enormous, and probably greater than any other first world country.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
research universities and basic education follow different rules.
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On September 24 2011 02:10 reneg wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2011 02:06 paralleluniverse wrote:On September 24 2011 02:01 SnapCall wrote:On September 24 2011 01:55 semantics wrote:On September 24 2011 01:48 giuocob wrote:
Universities are private. America has been the site of many, many scientific and academic discoveries in its history, far more than any other country. These people drive universities and make them exceptional.
Most high schools and below are public. It is well known that most anything the American government touches turns to shit, and public schooling is no exception. They aren't all, most aren't private... Stop spouting shit out your ass UCLA,UC Berkley,University of Virginia,University of Michigan - Ann Arbor ;George Tech,UCSD,UC Davis,UCSB,UC Irvine,Penn state,Texas A&M,Virginia Tech. I'm sure given time i could think up more. so what does public mean? are those free/ close to free to attend? i always thought american universities are good cause they are so expensive. Are there government loans for the cost of going to university in the US? In Australia, all students are able to get government loans for the tuition fees, which are automatically taken out of tax when you get a job later on. So essentially, all universities are free (or at least it feels that way). Is there any similar program for US universities? You're able to get student loans either from the government, or from banks etc. They're usually 0% while you're attending the school, and for a little time after, as long as you're paying them back. but if you drag your feet for a really long time paying them back / whatever, you'll start to get charged interest. The universities are definitely not free, and at no point do they feel free, i know a lot of kids right now who are struggling with the debt that is levied upon them by their student loans, i was well off enough that i didn't need to take any out, but it's definitely something that you feel. There are also a TON of tiny little scholarships (for anything from 50.00 - 20,000 dollars), that'll help pay for things like food and books to full tuition and all kinds of things. you just have to look really hard for some of them. local churches etc often provide little ones to help buy books, and if you stack a couple of those together, you can get a big burden of your tuition paid off by scholarships
In addition, unlike in australia, where you don't have to pay back HECS unless you are making decent money, you have to pay the interest no matter what. In addition, student loans in the US are at commercial interest rates, unlike HECS, which is merely indexed to inflation. The universities, especially the good ones, are also far more expensive than ours.
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On September 24 2011 02:13 Myles wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2011 02:04 reneg wrote:On September 24 2011 01:59 paralleluniverse wrote:On September 24 2011 01:54 meadbert wrote:
American Universities are really International Universities located in America. There are a ton of students from other countries.
My hall Freshman year had 9 kids including kids from Peru, Taiwan, Thailand and Pakistan.
In grad school the diversity only increases. That's an interesting note. I didn't know there were so many international students. I knew a few each year that i was at UNC, it wasn't quite an overwhelming amount, but there'd always be at least like, one or two guys on the hall who'd be an exch student from somewhere else. I feel like part of the issue though is that kids in high school don't receive a ton of positive feedback to perform well. They either show up to class and coast through, or they basically get the vibe that studying is "lame" and shouldn't bother with it. A lot of parents for our generation had less than stellar school experiences, so if kids bring home a bunch of Cs and a D, the parents don't get upset, because they figure, "i got similar grades and turned out just fine." so there sometimes isn't quite as much of a pressure from the parents / society to turn things around. The schools that have kids flunking out and not passing aren't ever the same parents who get up in arms at PTA meetings about how the US is terrible at school. For example: The wake county (County i grew up in in NC) system is (relatively) good for public schooling. I went to a decent public school and went to Carolina for university. Our parents at the school would always complain about how north carolina was like, 48th in the nation in education. I had a few friends at some other schools in counties who were performing worse, and their parents literally did not care. Sure, it's anecdotal evidence, based on a microscopic sample size, but i feel like there's something you can pull from that, even if only a little bit. I feel this is true as well. The major problem with lower education in the US is that the majority of our society doesn't value it. We spend more money on education per capita than many other nations, and in the end it comes down to the fact that most kids don't care about learning.
And to be honest, i feel like a lot of it (unfortunately) comes from segregation back in the early-mid 1900s. since schools were basically turned down into schools for blacks, and schools for whites.
i know in wake county we recently had a huge to-do, because our school board just voted to go back to neighborhood schools (as opposed to actively trying to mix schools from various socio-economic backgrounds), and just send all kids to the school that's closest to them. While it kind of makes sense, it also lets everything fall into clearly defined, these are the good schools with rich kids, and these are the poor kids.
The poorer kids will tend to get poorer funding, less attention, and thus, be less of a draw for teachers, eventually putting the whole school down below the richer schools.
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Dear OP:
American schools used to be about educating children, now they are about churning out docile workers.
That is all.
Tech schools and doctors are still fine, but half the time you end up in a nonproductive service job or as a mailman with your degree. Tuition has been steadily increasing far beyond the rate of inflation; many Americans are fooled into taking out student loans that they end up never being able to repay.
I'd say it all started going downhill in 1963 after a certain court case threw creation out of school and introduced New Age textbooks and United Nations curriculum to our schools.
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Simple. We braindrain all the best students from everywhere else.
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The American school system has many problems, but in general is still pretty great. The reason we don't test in the top 5 or 10 or whatever is because we test everyone, where other systems do not.
It is also plagued by a decline in morality and parenting and english speaking students, which ruins the learning experience of many kids and drives costs up.
It is also plagued by teachers unions who make it virtually impossible to fire a bad teacher once they get tenure.
I would say that the majority of schools are pretty good Maybe 10-20% have severe problems.
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Its the same as having a rich as hell sports team like the yankees that buy up all the best players.
Well endowed universities can gobble up all the intellectuals. As I understand it, outside of the US, colleges are mostly public and free.
But outside of the oldest and wealthiest universities, I would say the quality of education doesn't vary all that wildly. Its a for-profit market, so there is a lot of hype and advertising surrounding most American schools.
The question you have to ask yourself (unless your dream is to learn economics from the head of the federal reserve or something) is if you are willing to lease yourself into debt slavery for 20 years for the privilege of having a higher "prestige" level on your resume coming out of college. No thanks. Go to public university. CUNY is awesome.
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On September 24 2011 02:20 Coraz wrote:
Dear OP:
American schools used to be about educating children, now they are about churning out docile workers.
That is all.
Tech schools and doctors are still fine, but half the time you end up in a nonproductive service job or as a mailman with your degree. Tuition has been steadily increasing far beyond the rate of inflation; many Americans are fooled into taking out student loans that they end up never being able to repay.
I'd say it all started going downhill in 1963 after a certain court case threw creation out of school and introduced New Age textbooks and United Nations curriculum to our schools.
Hrmm, i feel like that might be an overly simplistic view about what's going on.
Which court case are you talking about in particular? I'm afraid i haven't memorized what took place when (and don't know a whole ton to begin with :-/)
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On September 24 2011 02:15 ShatterZer0 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2011 01:45 paralleluniverse wrote:
I'm not from America, but I've heard a lot about how much the American public school system sucks, both from Americans and others.
However, this has always struck me as paradoxical, because America has the best universities in the world -- by far. Nearly all of the top ranked universities are American. No other country is even *remotely* close.
How is it possible for America to, allegedly, have such horribly bad and ineffective schools, while having the best universities in the world?
To add to this, countries like Singapore, China, Korea, and most Asian countries, are generally consider to have the best schools in the world, with the highest level of school achievements measured by standardized language, math, and science scores, yet none of these countries have a university worth a damn, I think none these even have a university ranked in the top 20.
Anyone want to shred some light on this seeming paradox? The simple reason is, in nearly every country but the United States of America, school is where you go to learn what you need to study and get into college. That is to say, primary and secondary schools are only stepping stones to higher education. In the USA K-12 primary and secondary schooling's main focus is NOT purely academic. In fact, a student who JUST gets straight A's and lacks a social life and club activity participation is considered a failure by this system. Most USA primary/secondary education systems are focused on creating individuals who can cooperate with others in their community to create a harmonious civil society. America is the home to progressive schooling, and so that's what it focuses on. The main problem with this is that school becomes a sort of evil microcosm of Lord of the Flies bullshit.... which is pretty much inevitable when you throw together children and tell them to form society.... but hell, it works better than any school system in the world (arguably, of course) at creating individuals that simply mesh well with society. Basically it's the thinking that multifaceted learning is more important than factual learning or even critical thinking, because no matter how intelligent an individual is, without the social prowess and team play that must be otherwise learned is pointless. (Thusly American education is required until the end of highschool/dropping out of highschool, and is mostly free, because the student is an investment to the civility of society as a whole) University on the other hand has the VAST majority of it's resources placed onto cultivating that already multifacted mind into a single subject... and USA universities have the most freedom of any universities in the world, subjects are highly varied and majors are completely unimportant when it comes to Undergrad until Junior year. Grad schools are even MORE laser sight focused. Why? Because the ONLY goal is thoroughly enriching a mind and creating the best specimen of that science possible. (Universities loosely base tuition costs off of academic achievement because a successful student means an influential alumnus that allow them to become MORE cost efficient... as a business) Yes, I minor in educational philosophy >.<
In not so convoluted terms you're pointing out the difference in that in american schools the student's opinion/voice has value versus in other countries esp asian countries only the teacher is looked upon for knowledge. As in asians schools you wont see too much of group projects or student presentations to the class but rather just lectures?
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Can someone maybe explain how this rankings form and which things they take into account to "score" a university. Is it research or teaching or money or a combination of this things + something i haven't thought of (if someone knows i'd also be interested in how exactly research is measured because there i can't imagine a good system).
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first off I give 0 credibility to international ranking of schools, schools and countries cheat and there is no governing body to keep this clean.
In america there is a great disparity between good schools and bad school though. Most large cities have trouble funding the enormous amount of public schools(politicians would rather stuff their own pocketbooks than educate children) and the quality of those school's suffer. However rich suburbs are plagued with overpaid under-worked staffers and those schools are seen as very good.(talking about k-12) Since the majority of people live in large cities, the majority of these statistics are going to be from those, not as well run inner-city school systems.(it's not unheard of for poor inner city school systems to have sub 50% graduation rate, while rich suburb rates are often 99%+)
The problem with the Us system is the great disparity between the rich and the poor, I graduated in 2005, and the high school i went to was in a rich suburb, we had 50 inch plasma screen tvs around the hallways that just said the date and the time, and the score of last weeks football game. As well as plasma screens in 80% of the classrooms(our computer art class receives 30 brand new top of the line Apple Pro Desktop computers every other year, the old ones are given to the middle schools after they have been used for 2 years). That was in 2002-05, I cringe to think of the things they have found to waste money on now a days. Meanwhile one of our competitor schools downtown has a insect/rodent problem and often has to be shut down so exterminator crews can come in and make the school safe for children to go to,(these schools are 15 miles apart as a bird flies) as well as they have a huge problem with teacher:student ratios, downtown, 35+ students per teacher/class, my school had a 20 students per class rule. The cost of going to these school is no different, the only difference is where you live in proximity to the school zones, its disgusting imo.
Now as per universities, It's more of an america just has more prestigious schools than any-other country. If you look at some of the top universities in the US:
MIT
Stanford
Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Columbia
CAL-Tech
Duke
U of Chicago
PENN
UW-Madison
Northwestern
Brown
John Hopkins
Cornell
Berkely
(sorry if i missed your school there are so many)
Many of these schools have upwards of 20% international students (most schools have atleast 7% international students with these numbers rising about every 10 years)some, and most have many international Professors as well. This makes them not just American Schools, but International universities imo. These schools have huge alum bases with millions if not billions of money flowing into them every-year. At this point in the international education scene, its pretty hard for an upstart school in say china, or europe to compete with an institution that is worth billions of dollars and has a hundred years of good reviews.
One thing to note though, This high prestige has actually made it harder for most americans to get into their own schools. (http://politisite.com/2011/09/16/university-of-wisconsin-madison-admissions-favor-blacks-and-hispanics-over-whites-and-asian/) is a report at my local school that white students are being turned away for black/hispanic/international students. My cousin was class president at his high school and had a 3.8 gpa with a decent 28 act score, he was turned away by UW-Madison(he later got in after going to a smaller UW school for a year), although its very common for minority students with 3.0+ gpas to be accepted, im assuming this is happening at other prestigious universities as well. It's possible that this is a trend in american culture where we are simply selling our spots at prestigious schools to rich foreigners with big pocketbooks, maybe instead of manufacturing products, now america manufactures universities.
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On September 24 2011 02:17 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2011 02:07 TYJ.Aoy wrote:
This isn't a paradox at all, MIT, Harvard, Stanford and many others are made by a ton of bright foreigners(that were invited, most don't pay anything at all) that brought all those nobels and what not to the universities names. Not really true at all. There's a lot of international students, depending on the school and major/program, but you're portraying it as if it's only them succeeding which is completely false. Statistics about the American public school system only represent the average, and when the issue is top universities, generally 'the average' doesn't apply. The scope of America's grade school quality is enormous, and probably greater than any other first world country.
Not to mention the GPA and drop out rates of foreign exchange students are horrendous compared to those of domestic students...
As a "Korean National" I could EASILY get into a top 20 undergrad University with almost NO effort. I know this VERY VERY well, seeing as I have cousins and friends who are complete idiots and get into IVY Universities.... One of them got a 1620/2400 on his SAT's and got into the foreign exchange system of Harvard... You might think, well if his English is good enough for him to just take the SAT's and get a 1600 when it's not his first language he's probably pretty damn smart.... Think again, he's lived in the USA for 9 years and is completely fluent (though has an odd accent) in English... He just never got anything but a travel and visit visa, so is technically not a permanent resident or citizen... You can even pay off Harvard Alums in Korea for a fee to get recommendations... It's not uncommon.
Don't spread purposeless misinformation because you have some weird complex that makes you think Americans are all stupid...
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Having the best universities doesn't make the education system good just like having the best plane doesn't make an airline the best and having the best hospital doesn't make it the best health system.
Harvard and Yale are great but the average school sucks.
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Ive always heard that at least at the undergraduate level that there really isn't a difference between US schools and other countries. Graduate studies/Research is where the US universities really take it up a notch (due to more money + rep of schools bring better researchers etc).
That being said, there are plenty of bright minds who are from other countries who are educated here then take up academic positions in their own countries, which strengthens their school as they get brilliant minds educated at these places. Sure not all of them go back to their home country but a decent amount do and that helps their own universities, which is good.
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EPT
