4 ms·
but free, ammaright?
by aksss 4y ago
but free, ammaright?
- rad_gruchalski 4y agoI don’t understand your question. What do you mean by “but free”?
- chihuahua 4y agoI think the parent comment can be interpreted as "German universities are bad, but free" (the students don't pay tuition fees, or only a trivial amount)
- MrBuddyCasino 4y agoLack of market forces leading to mediocrity I suppose?
- jfim 4y agoOr lack of a profit motive leading to not trying to game metrics as much. If an entity is ranked by some metric, and the better they are that metric, the more profitable they are, then they have an incentive to game it as much as possible.
- WalterBright 4y agoMetrics are gamed in every organization.
- jfim 4y agoSure, but I would assume that the priorities for a private university are different than a public one. A private university might optimize for profitability and university ranking, while a public one might optimize for providing the most accessible and highest quality education while staying within budgetary guidelines. It's like saying that American universities are the best on the "amount spent on American football facilities per student" ranking. It's true, but the other universities might not be competing on that particular metric and focusing on other ones.
- WalterBright 4y ago> while a public one might optimize for providing the most accessible and highest quality education while staying within budgetary guidelines. That doesn't seem like what they're optimizing for. Public institutions tend to optimize for maximum budget, maximum head count, and maximum power.
- TMWNN 4y agoaksss is being sarcastic. When universities are compared across nations, a frequent retort to the preeminence of the top US universities is "But universities in [insert European country here] are free!". aksss's point is that, as MrBuddyCasino indicated, you tend to get what you pay for.
- foepys 4y agoUS metrics based on research programs for how good a university is don't apply to Europe. Comparisons based on those are worthless and the fact it is still being done frequently can be attributed to either incompetence or malice.
- arghnoname 4y agoYes, it's so obviously a completely ridiculous metric that it has to be willful at this point. It doesn't seem like anyone tries to measure how well educated the undergraduates are in terms of skills acquired, etc, by how many papers a totally different population occupying a similar space pump out instead. It shouldn't need to be said, but no amount of Nobel prizes in the world is going to make one whit of difference for introductory calculus instruction. When the prime research centers are decoupled from the universities and these silly little metrics, it's no wonder that European universities are "bad."
- Yoric 4y agoI don't know. I come from a European university. When I was faced with US or UK students (I've been both an academic and a professional dev), I was scared by how little many of them actually knew. They were much better than us at communicating, much more self-assured, but were lacking other key skills. :shrug: That's one of the things that are really hard to compare, I guess.