Call for an EU-wide pupil- and studentstrike

[Roland]

"By tertiary, do you mean undergraduate/graduate? If so, no I wouldn't agree, but right now I'm basing my opinion on anecdotal evidence and educated guesses."

Anything past highschool that offers some sort of degree. IIRC from a study a couple years ago, there are about 200 law schools in the US, of which something like 70 offer full degrees (would have to check what the exact difference was) and about 20 are attractive for foreign students. The ivy league schools may well be much overhyped, but there are also substantial differences in funding, faculty etc.

"You would think that there would be a large quality difference, but I have every reason to believe that my education was nearly as good as an education at Harvard, even though Harvard cost more."

Ever since a Harvard subdiv hired one guy as assistant prof we rejected here for total and utter incompetence, I'D urge you to question the "nearly".

[DanS]

The folks I've met from Harvard have been competent and hard working. I would think that your experience is an outlyer. In fact, this seems to be the main difference between the top tier and lower schools. They are the smartest of the bunch, they get a quality education, and they work hard.

In most other schools, the education is quite similar (it's the same system after all). Just not all students are the smartest. Whether you get a good education seems to come down to how much effort you put into it. Effort makes up for smarts quite a bit.

Re the law schools, I don't think those are the best numbers to follow. Rather, I would look at the number of graduates in those top 20 programs. I would also think about considering the top 50 programs...

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/beyond/gradrank/gdlawnf.htm

[Roland]

"The folks I've met from Harvard have been competent and hard working. I would think that your experience is an outlyer."

Probably. But I'm also highly sceptical about grade inflation and a 1 % drop out rate (well I think it varies from 1-5 % among the top schools). I can't imagine how you can have such low drop out rates no matter how good the preselection. And admission is also hardly objective. Or how did dubya get into Yale....

"Re the law schools, I don't think those are the best numbers to follow. Rather, I would look at the number of graduates in those top 20 programs. I would also think about considering the top 50 programs..."

No matter what you thinkof the US News rankings they show substantial differences among the top 50, and I wonder what nr 173 would look....

[DanS]

The 1% dropout rate doesn't surprise me. These people are getting their tickets punched at well regarged institutions and their degrees are bankable. You would have to be daft to drop out.

The admissions at the top tier schools has changed quite a bit over the years. They have swung toward a merit-based approach, because their rankings depend on it (well, at least the test scores). Of course, you have to build your endowment, so there has to be some lee-way.

[Roland]

"You would have to be daft to drop out."

In other words, you don't have to be good to pass ?

[DanS]

If you put in the effort, you will not fail in American universities. There is only a small weeding-out period in the freshman year in the largest public universities and absolutely none in most private universities. Quite another thing than grade inflation, though.

I would argue that failing people is a result of the lack of resources, while education is given away at well below cost (or free, or whatever). You have to distribute limited resources in a fair manner, so you design courses to make that job easier.

[Richard Bruns]

Consider this:

Earlier in the century, a high school degree meant something. If you graduated high school, that meant you were an intelligent and motivated person. You would probably be able to get a good job.

I know this because I have seen the tests they took. When I was a senior in high school, I would not have been able to pass the eighth grade entrance examination. Let me repeat that. Someone at the top of his high school class in 1998 could not have passed an eighth grade entrance examination from 1930.

This means that my high school education means less than a seventh grade education from 1930. The public schools wasted over five years of my life; they were not capable in thirteen years of bring me to the educational level of a seventh grader from earlier in the century.

In other words, we used to have a totally free educational system that guaraneed a good job for anyone who passed. Why? Because they failed the losers. Only the smart people could pass high school, so employers knew that a high school graduate was smart and motivated.

But then someone decided that more people should be able to graduate from high school. So they lowered the standards and made the course work easier. As a result, the lives of students are wasted and the quality of education is decreased. Now a high school degree means nothing. Whereas in the 1930's you could get a good education without going to college, now you have to pay for education beyond high school if you are to have any hope of getting a good job.

And now it would appear that the same thing is happening to colleges. Think about it; if everyone gets a college education, what will it be worth? Will we have a situation where a college degree is worth as much as a high school degree is today, and people will have to pay for graduate school if they hope to get a god job?

Some would say that this is already happening.

I do not think a college education should be free for everyone. If the public school system was in any way competent, high school would provide enough of a liberal and technical education to guarantee a good job, the way it used to.

On a more personal note, I pay nothing for my college education. I got a full four-year academic merit scholarship. In fact, when you factor in my job as an RA, I am making a profit while I go to university. My parents don't have to pay a penny, and I will have no debts.

This thread seems to have strayed into the merits of public versus private education. I won't dwell on that, except to say that the state education system is a monopoly backed up by the police. They take your money by force and then compel you to attend their crappy schools. The only way to escape is to home-school or pay a lot of money. Thus the poor are trapped in bad schools while the rich are able to get a better education elsewhere.

We need to introduce competition, and school vouchers are the best way possible to do this. Consider that the state pays about $14,000 a year to educate a kid in the dismal public schools. If they reduce taxes by $12,000 a family and give all families a $10,000 voucher to use to pay for a good $8,000 private school, everyone wins. (Except the teachers unions and bureaucrats)

[Timexwatch]

And now it would appear that the same thing is happening to colleges. Think about it; if everyone gets a college education, what will it be worth? Will we have a situation where a college degree is worth as much as a high school degree is today, and people will have to pay for graduate school if they hope to get a god job?

Of course. Unless I go to grad school, a PoliSci degree will basically get me hired as a state worker, and not much else...

[Roland]

"If you put in the effort, you will not fail in American universities. There is only a small weeding-out period in the freshman year in the largest public universities and absolutely none in most private universities. Quite another thing than grade inflation, though."

If it means no "F"s, it's quite related. Written exams here are graded from 1 (A) to 5 (E/F). We usually have 0-10 % 1s, and 30-50 % 5s.

"I would argue that failing people is a result of the lack of resources"

In part, but there is also a component of personal failure. Some people just won't get it. Sure if we were to hammer the stuff into their heads day and night until it works, maybe. But that's hardly the point of an academic education.
Now the difference may be in that little word "academic", because our FHs have a similar virtually no drop-outs record.

[Sikander]

I agree with Richard Bruns, this country (USA) used to provide a quality education in 8 years, and an excellent one in 12 years. Even rural districts provided a good education. Both of my parents grew up on farms, and both got gaduate degrees. My father is a Professor, and my mother was a physician. Now school is mainly a babysitting service for working parents. It cannot afford to kick anyone out because it's now illegal for children to be left at home alone or work, and a high percentage of families have no parent who remains home during the day.

The effect of this is that the less talented students have no reason to fear a mediocre or poor performance, while talented students are bored with a curriculum suited for dummies and everyone suffers from disruptions caused by the unmotivated. This in turn effects the University system, where most students arrive in a condition where it is necessary to give them remedial training in one or more areas. What a huge waste!

I think that either private schools or a complete revamping of the public schools is in order, and either approach could work to update our schools to both the current society as it stands and better serve the public that pays for education one way or another. One reason that I tend to lean toward vouchers and at least a portion of education being funnelled into private schools is that between the bureacracy of the current system and the teacher's unions there is a lot of resistance to change.

One thing that has to happen is that there needs to be a tracking system whereby students are divided by both raw ability and their level of motivation. A larger system might even be able to further subdivide students based upon their preferred learning styles. The problem with tracking students is that it doesn't tend to work as well in a public school system where most of the districts and schools are large. Another problem is the portability of education. Americans are probably the most internally mobile of peoples, and having a standard or set of standard educational styles is critical so that the children can pick up where they left off if mom gets transferred to Iowa. We do a very poor job of this now. Even though education is done in an industrial fashion it doesn't even take advantage of things like standardization that are the bread and butter advantages of a large scale.

I would argue that more and smaller schools are a better model. The key would be 'branding', whether this applied to an actual private company's educational product, or merely a standardised and known type of educational product produced by a charter or even an old style public school. This would allow children to attend the type of school that best fits their needs and the needs of society (the customer after all), and it would allow a portabilty that would minimize any disruption caused by a move. Additionally colleges and universities would have a handle on what to expect from students produced by various types of schools. Finally each of these educational styles would be to some extent in competition with one another, which one would hope would reward success and vanquish failure to the extent possible.

Any switch would require good planning and about a generation to accomplish. It would also probably require some money, which I would take from higher education. I would get rid of about half of the Universities in the U.S. and replace them with:

A) A decent high school education that means at least as much as a current 4 year degree from a diploma mill does now.

B) An improved adult education system which better serves a working public (like good community colleges do now) with both technical training and intellectual enrichment courses without the unnecessary structure and high cost that Universities tend to have. There is no reason to force students through years 13-17 of their educations before they ever set foot in the workplace. A lot of people end up getting degrees in areas they hate actually working in (a friend of mine got a Phd in Physical Chemistry, worked for two years and headed off to law school!). What an enormous waste. Better to get out there, get some work experience and use that expensive education at a time and for a purpose that makes the most sense, which is not necessarily when you are 18.