4 ms·

Posts like this -- without any actual data/standards -- annoy me. I suspect that she perceives the quality of college education to be worse because she perceive

Posts like this -- without any actual data/standards -- annoy me. I suspect that she perceives the quality of college education to be worse because she perceives the quality of college graduates to be worse. This may even be true. However, if this is the case, I don't think it's realistic to expect the standard of college graduates to be on par with what they were a generation ago or whenever she went to college, simply because there are so many more of them now, and college students are no longer mostly people who have self selected as unusually interested in learning/furthering their education and, for the most part, affluent.

hugh3 15y ago
I hope the author is reading this. I'd love to see the look on her face when she sees you guessing that she went to college "a generation ago", when the post starts with a big picture of her. She graduated in 2006.
blahblahblah 15y ago
I agree. She's way off base. If you search for worldwide rankings of universities, although answers vary depending on the source, higher education in the United States is universally well-regarded and the only other country that can really be considered to be a competitor for the #1 slot in overall quality of higher education is the United Kingdom. If we're "failing to educate" then the rest of the world is also failing. "The U.S. gets a lot of bad press for the failures of its education system, and some of the supporting data is frightening. A study by the Department of Education found that 30 million adults in the U.S. are functionally illiterate. Another Department of Ed report ranks the U.S. at 35 out of 57 countries for mathematics literacy among 15-year-olds. But when it comes to higher education, no one on Earth does better than the U.S., according to a new study by Times Higher Education (THE), a London magazine that tracks the higher ed market. Its 2010-'11 annual World University Rankings is dominated by U.S. schools. They hold 72 places among the world's top 200, including all the top five. Great Britain is a distant second, with 29 universities making the cut." (from Forbes http://www.forbes.com/2010/09/16/world-best-universities-ranking-leadership-careers-education.html http://www.forbes.com/2010/09/16/world-best-universities-ran...)
- foamdino 15y ago
  I suspect (and I've heard tell, but I have no data to support this), that the UK universities cannot afford the same salaries as their US counterparts. If your a prof and you have two offers (let's stay technical as it's HN): 1 Cambridge - £90,000/year (~$160,000) and you can go and watch the boat race (yay) 2 MIT (or caltech, berkley, princeton etc etc) - $400,000/year and you can live somewhere where it doesn't rain for 10 months of the year Now which would you choose? NB - figures pulled out of my ass, but I suspect that the ratio is probably accurate enough (ie US unis can afford to pay 2* UK). One of my professors talked about the day he hoped the UK system would allow universities to become private institutions (they're quasi-private now in that 'foreign' students are charged a lot more than 'home/EU' students where the fees are capped)

hugh3 15y ago

I hope the author is reading this. I'd love to see the look on her face when she sees you guessing that she went to college "a generation ago", when the post starts with a big picture of her. She graduated in 2006.

blahblahblah 15y ago

I agree. She's way off base. If you search for worldwide rankings of universities, although answers vary depending on the source, higher education in the United States is universally well-regarded and the only other country that can really be considered to be a competitor for the #1 slot in overall quality of higher education is the United Kingdom. If we're "failing to educate" then the rest of the world is also failing. "The U.S. gets a lot of bad press for the failures of its education system, and some of the supporting data is frightening. A study by the Department of Education found that 30 million adults in the U.S. are functionally illiterate. Another Department of Ed report ranks the U.S. at 35 out of 57 countries for mathematics literacy among 15-year-olds. But when it comes to higher education, no one on Earth does better than the U.S., according to a new study by Times Higher Education (THE), a London magazine that tracks the higher ed market. Its 2010-'11 annual World University Rankings is dominated by U.S. schools. They hold 72 places among the world's top 200, including all the top five. Great Britain is a distant second, with 29 universities making the cut." (from Forbes http://www.forbes.com/2010/09/16/world-best-universities-ranking-leadership-careers-education.html http://www.forbes.com/2010/09/16/world-best-universities-ran...)

foamdino 15y ago
I suspect (and I've heard tell, but I have no data to support this), that the UK universities cannot afford the same salaries as their US counterparts. If your a prof and you have two offers (let's stay technical as it's HN): 1 Cambridge - £90,000/year (~$160,000) and you can go and watch the boat race (yay) 2 MIT (or caltech, berkley, princeton etc etc) - $400,000/year and you can live somewhere where it doesn't rain for 10 months of the year Now which would you choose? NB - figures pulled out of my ass, but I suspect that the ratio is probably accurate enough (ie US unis can afford to pay 2* UK). One of my professors talked about the day he hoped the UK system would allow universities to become private institutions (they're quasi-private now in that 'foreign' students are charged a lot more than 'home/EU' students where the fees are capped)