|
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.
Yeah. You basically end up with an algebra II class of 30 kids, but only 5-10 actually want to learn Algebra II. The rest are there because the state mandates it.
In college, the only reason a kid is in multi-variable calculus is because he wants to actually learn it.
|
United States22883 Posts
On September 24 2011 02:23 reneg wrote:Show nested quote +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 :-/)
He's a creationist idiot who doesn't want evolution taught in schools, wants in-school prayers and thinks the government should be stabbed in the heart.
I just saved both you and him a subsequent reply. How's that for American efficiency?
|
I've always had issues with rankings and surveys bashing American pre-university education. On average we're not very good but our range is huge. Absurdly so, take the average public school in camden and compare it with the a public school in say, milburn (rich part of new jersey) and you'll see they're light years apart.
That said, our higher education machine is larger and better established than any other in the world and we draw from the world the most resources. People touting international students are off base although we do draw many excellent international students. We draw the top researchers in every field from all over the world: my math logic professor is Hungarian, stat analysis is Egyptian, theory of probability is Russian and my diff/eq is French. All of the best minds come here and teach (sometimes poorly but brilliance is brilliance).
Last note, it has nothing to do with public vs private universities.
|
On September 24 2011 02:24 semantics wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2011 02:15 ShatterZer0 wrote: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?
While i can't speak for Asian countries, he's absolutely right about the trying to produce well rounded students, and not just kids with good grades.
I went through my first couple of years of high school and got decent grades, not straight As or anything, but all As and Bs. And then halfway through junior year i was doing research on applying to colleges, and suddenly realized that ALL of them wanted extra curricular activities. up until that point, i hadn't been particularly active at school, when it was over, i'd go home and hang out with my friends / do whatever
And so now there were a number of us that were stuck in a position where we joined / founded a bunch of clubs at school, just so we could have a bunch of stuff like that on our high school resumes, and be able to apply and get into college.
There's a huge emphasis on "well rounded educations" in america. meaning you take initiative and show leadership and do all this other stuff that won't come into play a lot of the time.
Not sure how it is in other places though
|
If you look at the school system as if it was starcraft 2. (why not its teamliquid) most kids will be between Bronze and Platinum league in terms on intelligence, but there are some that will be grandmaster.. it's the grandmaster kids that go to these top schools. Since america has a large population, a lot of diversity between intelligence level will exist. Averaged out, yeah it'll probably be low due to all the lower league'ers but the very top will be way and above those people it'll almost be as if they are different species.
|
Here's my best educated guess on the matter (see what I did there?):
The best universities in America are privatized (ivy league and such) and charge HUGE amounts of tuition. This obviously allows them to hire more qualified staff, build better facilities, etc. Your typical State university, though high on the lists of "most fun/sexiest", are hardly on equal grounds concerning prestige or quality.
At the same time, I don't think it's fair to assume the US has all the best universities, and I suspect the US itself is responsible for declaring their universities as "the best". China is really developing some high-quality institutions lately, and the very top schools in the world are found in the UK (Oxford, Cambridge), or around Europe (think France culinary schools or Italian fashion schools).
As for the discrepancy between US universities and public schools, I'm sure a great deal of it comes from the fact that a good deal of ivy league folk attended private school. Once you introduce the concept of free market to an education system, schools that rely on tuition fees to survive are more likely to invest in bettering themselves than publicly funded schools (whose budgets are slashed repeatedly to curb government spending).
My thoughts anyways...
EDIT: In response to the post above: I wouldn't equate attendance at a prestigious university with intelligence. The link is better made to wealth... anyone can go to Harvard with enough money. Hell, Bush went there.
|
United States22883 Posts
On September 24 2011 02:25 Djzapz wrote:
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.
Uh... the average American university is excellent.
This debate is a bit tiring and people reading far too much into context-less, general statistics.
The American public grade school system has a lot of problems, but there is not a single system. No Child Left Behind fucked things up a bit, but at the base level, education is a state issue and the federal government doesn't have a major role in it, its operations or its funding. For anyone looking to have an insightful discussion about the topic, you need to look at it on the state/county and local level. See what some counties are doing right, what others are doing wrong and what external factors differentiate those counties.
Simply comparing America to X country doesn't work, because America's education system doesn't work that way. Improvements in Massachusetts are completely unrelated to failures in California.
|
I'm currently a first year student at UCLA, and I've got to say, the educational system in America in elementary school is taught mostly by teachers whose highest degree may be either a high school diploma (if they've been teaching for a long time) or a bachelor's degree (who are most of the newer teachers nowadays).
That said, there are few elementary school teachers that boast a master's or doctorate's degree. Of course, this does not necessarily convey the effectiveness all teachers, as with any exception, since a teacher with a bachelor's degree with a better care for children can be better than a teacher with a doctorate's degree who may be a pain in the ass for kids.
But, without a doubt, there is a correlation between higher education degrees and overall success in teaching.
Colleges will receive all the teachers/professors with high degrees, naturally, while the rest sprinkles on to elementary schools and high schools.
The problem lies not in high school education, but in elementary school education. In elementary school, most children will rely on others, and this is not a vice or a bad trait, but it is one that can develop into overdependency. We need to fix the way that we teach children about competition, to have them hunger for more competition, and to care about a rigorous education.
Too many of my peers in high school were settling for barely passing grades and marks, just to be able to eventually get out of school. Not many of them think of what to do after school, and that is where they end up failing. The idea of "school sucks" is prevalent within American media and I'd say that most kids are picking up on that way of thinking from the first couple of years that they step into school.
here's a short tl;dr for those who haven't bothered reading this post.
American education is off balance because of the flawed design of elementary school. By the time most kids enter high school, they have the mentality that school sucks, and are not willing to strive for more. All in all, I'd say only 20% of students try (which is a sad number) and makes it into colleges, while the rest fail.
|
So ANU is the no.1 (except this year, no.2) uni in australia and top 30 in the world. But as it turns out, ANU is not so popular. People prefer usyd,unsw,uts and mquni as the best 4 (also known as the big 4 in aus) unis in australia. So maybe the uni ranks don't matter too much. Maybe there is some other factor other than ranks that determines how good a uni really is. Maybe.
|
On September 24 2011 02:01 inlagdsil wrote:
This is my guess, but I'm not American:
It has to do with what it means for schools to be "bad". It doesn't mean that all schools are bad, just the majority. A minority of people with a lot of money go to the minority of very good schools and then have better chances of getting to (and affording) Ivy League colleges . If you don't have a lot of money, I think it's hard to get a good education.
EDIT: I may be wrong about expensive private schools. But I think that the better schools are often in more affluent areas, which would have the same effect.
This might have been how it was fifty years ago, but you can't really say that anymore. Top schools usually have fantastic financial aid. Ex- I go to Yale for $3,000 a year, including room and board, just because my parents are broke (i.e 3000 w/o any type of academic scholarship). It's literally cheaper for me than going to a public school back home.
I think its more about the feedback loop. High end schools only accept students who have the potential to bring them even more prestige and / or more donations. That can be because the will inherit money (I go to class with the heir to the mars corporation) or they are good leaders (kerry +2 bushes + lots of other politicians) or hardworking or smart.Most of them don't even really run off of tuition too much anymore, it costs the my university $150,000 per student, but even the richest student only pays $60,000 a year.
America has had some huge economic booms in the past 100 years, and many of the primary drivers of those booms came from Ivy league schools. They then donate literally billions of dollars back to the University (Yale raised $3.84 billion in the past 5 years from donations. In a recession.). The top university's in America are swimming in money, and this is reflected in the quality of professors and students.
tl;dr-- a century of being the richest country in the world means top american university's have enough money from donations to attract the most potentially successful students, and get more donations.
|
On September 24 2011 02:25 TheGiftedApe wrote:
(sorry if i missed your school there are so many)
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.
Ummm affirmative action ring a bell?
How about Native Americans? If you do below half decent as an American native you can get into a University like Brown in a heartbeat and never pay a penny!
Not that I'd complain... such affirmative action is MUCH easier to combat in Grad school, when it actually counts, anyways.
Americans have it hard getting into their own schools because they are the msot advanced universities in the whole damn world... which is why there's such a disparity between your run of the mill community college and multibillion dollar names like Princeton or Harvvard >.<
For American students to get into such universities so easily would be like asking American kids to ALL be so damn smart that the competition has no chance... and we're only human. What makes me kinda angry is that affirmative action doesn't affect Asians... simply because Asian families are more likely to stress studying... wtf is up with that?
|
On September 24 2011 02:30 Rob28 wrote:
Here's my best educated guess on the matter (see what I did there?):
The best universities in America are privatized (ivy league and such) and charge HUGE amounts of tuition. This obviously allows them to hire more qualified staff, build better facilities, etc. Your typical State university, though high on the lists of "most fun/sexiest", are hardly on equal grounds concerning prestige or quality.
At the same time, I don't think it's fair to assume the US has all the best universities, and I suspect the US itself is responsible for declaring their universities as "the best". China is really developing some high-quality institutions lately, and the very top schools in the world are found in the UK (Oxford, Cambridge), or around Europe (think France culinary schools or Italian fashion schools).
As for the discrepancy between US universities and public schools, I'm sure a great deal of it comes from the fact that a good deal of ivy league folk attended private school. Once you introduce the concept of free market to an education system, schools that rely on tuition fees to survive are more likely to invest in bettering themselves than publicly funded schools (whose budgets are slashed repeatedly to curb government spending).
My thoughts anyways...
Eh I disagree with some of your points, mainly because plenty of "Public" universities are very good schools. Look up the term "Public Ivy League" for a list of highly ranked public institutions. Also tuition is hardly the biggest source of income for a school. Its research grants and endowments from public and private sources where they get a lot of money. Harvard just has a much richer group of alumni then most schools and Harvard is ranked #1 in the world.
|
On September 24 2011 02:34 Slaughter wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2011 02:30 Rob28 wrote:
Here's my best educated guess on the matter (see what I did there?):
The best universities in America are privatized (ivy league and such) and charge HUGE amounts of tuition. This obviously allows them to hire more qualified staff, build better facilities, etc. Your typical State university, though high on the lists of "most fun/sexiest", are hardly on equal grounds concerning prestige or quality.
At the same time, I don't think it's fair to assume the US has all the best universities, and I suspect the US itself is responsible for declaring their universities as "the best". China is really developing some high-quality institutions lately, and the very top schools in the world are found in the UK (Oxford, Cambridge), or around Europe (think France culinary schools or Italian fashion schools).
As for the discrepancy between US universities and public schools, I'm sure a great deal of it comes from the fact that a good deal of ivy league folk attended private school. Once you introduce the concept of free market to an education system, schools that rely on tuition fees to survive are more likely to invest in bettering themselves than publicly funded schools (whose budgets are slashed repeatedly to curb government spending).
My thoughts anyways... Eh I disagree with some of your points, mainly because plenty of "Public" universities are very good schools. Look up the term "Public Ivy League" for a list of highly ranked public institutions. Also tuition is hardly the biggest source of income for a school. Its research grants and endowments from public and private sources where they get a lot of money. Harvard just has a much richer group of alumni then most schools and Harvard is ranked #1 in the world.
Thanks for basically taking the point in this, i was halfway through a response then decided it wasn't worth it, but since you said something, i agree
UVA, UNC, UCLA, all prime examples of EXTREMELY good public universities. There are also many schools that get highly rated as "party schools" but part of that is just because of the size.
Ohio state has something like 40,000 undergrads, and is always highly rated as a "party school." the thing about that, is the school's so huge, that yea, you'll always be able to find a party, but they also have exceptional schools inside the university, and a degree from OSU is relatively well esteemed. It's not like you're getting toilette paper as your diploma or something if you graduate from a public university.
|
On September 24 2011 02:24 semantics wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2011 02:15 ShatterZer0 wrote: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?
In Korea, school clubs are pure formality. American schooling is based upon creating individuals who can work in a team... because a team of relatively intelligent individuals almost always trumps a single cultivated individual when thrown straight into society.
The point is... American school are trying to create productive people... most other nation's schools are trying to create kids who can pass college entrance exams.
Also... where was it convoluted?
|
TBH, America only had leading universities after WWII. Some of the most talented Europeans (Einstein, Godel, Neumann, etc) came here and just completely raised the bar of American universities and their influence remains today.
European universities like Gottingen were way better than any American college in the early 20th century until the max exodus of their talent to American happened.
And we still see this happen today (although it's due to financial reasons now, and not due to war).
|
On September 24 2011 02:37 svi wrote:
TBH, America only had leading universities after WWII. Some of the most talented Europeans (Einstein, Godel, Neumann, etc) came here and just completely raised the bar of American universities and their influence remains today.
European universities like Gottingen were way better than any American college in the early 20th century until the max exodus of their talent to American happened.
And we still see this happen today (although it's due to financial reasons now, and not due to war).
America invested in macro and tech xDDD
|
I'm going to give a viewpoint of someone who went from the Philippines to the US. The traditional Asian model of education works very well for imparting the fundamentals of math, reading and writing to young kids. It's good from pre-school to elementary to part of high school. It's way better than the US style for teaching the basics.
However, it pretty much fails for college education and is even worse for graduate education. Many Asian universities are too similar in style to high school. American universities are simply better at educating people on the cusp of adulthood and beyond.
US universities also get a lot of international students. The university I graduated from has a huge contingent of Asian students and a significant amount of students from Europe as well. There's a diversity of ideas and viewpoints you just cannot get anywhere else. Foreign students generally get no financial aid from the university as well so they end up subsidizing some of the American students.
The top US universities are pretty much international. Last I heard, UC Irvine, for example, is around 70% Asians and Asian Americans.
|
On September 24 2011 02:37 reneg wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2011 02:34 Slaughter wrote:On September 24 2011 02:30 Rob28 wrote:
Here's my best educated guess on the matter (see what I did there?):
The best universities in America are privatized (ivy league and such) and charge HUGE amounts of tuition. This obviously allows them to hire more qualified staff, build better facilities, etc. Your typical State university, though high on the lists of "most fun/sexiest", are hardly on equal grounds concerning prestige or quality.
At the same time, I don't think it's fair to assume the US has all the best universities, and I suspect the US itself is responsible for declaring their universities as "the best". China is really developing some high-quality institutions lately, and the very top schools in the world are found in the UK (Oxford, Cambridge), or around Europe (think France culinary schools or Italian fashion schools).
As for the discrepancy between US universities and public schools, I'm sure a great deal of it comes from the fact that a good deal of ivy league folk attended private school. Once you introduce the concept of free market to an education system, schools that rely on tuition fees to survive are more likely to invest in bettering themselves than publicly funded schools (whose budgets are slashed repeatedly to curb government spending).
My thoughts anyways... Eh I disagree with some of your points, mainly because plenty of "Public" universities are very good schools. Look up the term "Public Ivy League" for a list of highly ranked public institutions. Also tuition is hardly the biggest source of income for a school. Its research grants and endowments from public and private sources where they get a lot of money. Harvard just has a much richer group of alumni then most schools and Harvard is ranked #1 in the world. Thanks for basically taking the point in this, i was halfway through a response then decided it wasn't worth it, but since you said something, i agree UVA, UNC, UCLA, all prime examples of EXTREMELY good public universities. There are also many schools that get highly rated as "party schools" but part of that is just because of the size. Ohio state has something like 40,000 undergrads, and is always highly rated as a "party school." the thing about that, is the school's so huge, that yea, you'll always be able to find a party, but they also have exceptional schools inside the university, and a degree from OSU is relatively well esteemed. It's not like you're getting toilette paper as your diploma or something if you graduate from a public university.
Yea its funny like you said for OSU, or most of the big ten schools have huge undergraduate numbers so they are labeled as party schools by some and written off but most big ten schools have excellent programs at the undergraduate level and some really really good post graduate programs. Lol I remember when I was young a lady friend of my mother said that Uni of Michigan and Michigan State (the two best schools in Michigan) were party schools and were not good. While I agree there is def a lot of partying at those two places they also offer a lot of good academics. Thats why they are awesome.
|
On September 24 2011 02:40 andrewlt wrote:
I'm going to give a viewpoint of someone who went from the Philippines to the US. The traditional Asian model of education works very well for imparting the fundamentals of math, reading and writing to young kids. It's good from pre-school to elementary to part of high school. It's way better than the US style for teaching the basics.
However, it pretty much fails for college education and is even worse for graduate education. Many Asian universities are too similar in style to high school. American universities are simply better at educating people on the cusp of adulthood and beyond.
US universities also get a lot of international students. The university I graduated from has a huge contingent of Asian students and a significant amount of students from Europe as well. There's a diversity of ideas and viewpoints you just cannot get anywhere else. Foreign students generally get no financial aid from the university as well so they end up subsidizing some of the American students.
The top US universities are pretty much international. Last I heard, UC Irvine, for example, is around 70% Asians and Asian Americans.
I feel like a lot of the lower education issues are also sometimes teachers who don't care enough, or aren't paid enough, or don't get enough support, or whatever, and sometimes pass the buck on a kid, and just move him into the next grade level.
Every now and then you'll hear some story about a kid who's in 10th grade, but never really learned how to read or write. It's absolutely depressing, but each year the kid's teachers would basically pass the buck, or there'd be a remedial class that was far enough back that they could just dump him into that, and he'd move on in grade level, and just repeat that one class or something.
It's the saddest thing
|
On September 24 2011 02:42 Slaughter wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2011 02:37 reneg wrote:On September 24 2011 02:34 Slaughter wrote:On September 24 2011 02:30 Rob28 wrote:
Here's my best educated guess on the matter (see what I did there?):
The best universities in America are privatized (ivy league and such) and charge HUGE amounts of tuition. This obviously allows them to hire more qualified staff, build better facilities, etc. Your typical State university, though high on the lists of "most fun/sexiest", are hardly on equal grounds concerning prestige or quality.
At the same time, I don't think it's fair to assume the US has all the best universities, and I suspect the US itself is responsible for declaring their universities as "the best". China is really developing some high-quality institutions lately, and the very top schools in the world are found in the UK (Oxford, Cambridge), or around Europe (think France culinary schools or Italian fashion schools).
As for the discrepancy between US universities and public schools, I'm sure a great deal of it comes from the fact that a good deal of ivy league folk attended private school. Once you introduce the concept of free market to an education system, schools that rely on tuition fees to survive are more likely to invest in bettering themselves than publicly funded schools (whose budgets are slashed repeatedly to curb government spending).
My thoughts anyways... Eh I disagree with some of your points, mainly because plenty of "Public" universities are very good schools. Look up the term "Public Ivy League" for a list of highly ranked public institutions. Also tuition is hardly the biggest source of income for a school. Its research grants and endowments from public and private sources where they get a lot of money. Harvard just has a much richer group of alumni then most schools and Harvard is ranked #1 in the world. Thanks for basically taking the point in this, i was halfway through a response then decided it wasn't worth it, but since you said something, i agree UVA, UNC, UCLA, all prime examples of EXTREMELY good public universities. There are also many schools that get highly rated as "party schools" but part of that is just because of the size. Ohio state has something like 40,000 undergrads, and is always highly rated as a "party school." the thing about that, is the school's so huge, that yea, you'll always be able to find a party, but they also have exceptional schools inside the university, and a degree from OSU is relatively well esteemed. It's not like you're getting toilette paper as your diploma or something if you graduate from a public university. Yea its funny like you said for OSU, or most of the big ten schools have huge undergraduate numbers so they are labeled as party schools by some and written off but most big ten schools have excellent programs at the undergraduate level and some really really good post graduate programs. Lol I remember when I was young a lady friend of my mother said that Uni of Michigan and Michigan State (the two best schools in Michigan) were party schools and were not good. While I agree there is def a lot of partying at those two places they also offer a lot of good academics. Thats why they are awesome.
Exactly. I feel like once a university reaches a certain size, yes, there will always be a "party" element, just because it's huge. At UNC, we're not terribly well known for being a party school, but if i wanted to find something going on, it was definitely not a hard thing to do.
And we had half as many kids as OSU.
so i feel like people are too quick to label schools "party schools" or "academic only (i.e. not party)" and then those labels just kind of stick. a lot of kids in ohio see "oh man, osu is a party school, let's go there" and it kind of reinforces the party label, EVEN THOUGH it has stellar academics.
but to get back a little more on topic, it's difficult to judge the primary/secondary and post secondary education worlds in the US, since they're SO different, it's like night and day.
I just feel like a lot of work needs to be done in general (my GF is a teacher, and so i hear a lot about these various things / issues)
Edit: Sorry for double post
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
