U.S. college degrees: still the best among world top universities?

[Svnla]

Interesting read: http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100602/ts_csm/304688

If we continue the current trend, we will not be the top dog anymore.

 

[chusteczka]

We are not the "top dog" now in education.

Poland has the highest education per person than any other country.

In America, we teach one semester of physics in high school and 3-4 semesters of physics in college for those in math or scientific majors. In Poland, they are taught Physics each semester from middle school on through university.

American's get their education all at once in college then forget the material shortly after. Europeans receive their education over a longer time span, thereby allowing the material to sink in to be understood rather than memorized.

Additionally, we all know that Asians are better at math but what we do not know is it is most likely due to their language for their numbering system. Also, their rice-farming work ethic is far stronger than our emo-stricken and pop-culture spoiled kids.

 

[slayer202]

We are not the "top dog" now in education.

Poland has the highest education per person than any other country.

In America, we teach one semester of physics in high school and 3-4 semesters of physics in college for those in math or scientific majors. In Poland, they are taught Physics each semester from middle school on through university.

American's get their education all at once in college then forget the material shortly after. Europeans receive their education over a longer time span, thereby allowing the material to sink in to be understood rather than memorized.

Additionally, we all know that Asians are better at math but what we do not know is it is most likely due to their language for their numbering system. Also, their rice-farming work ethic is far stronger than our emo-stricken and pop-culture spoiled kids.

please tell me this is supposed to be funny lollllll

 

[Hacp]

America has too many graduates, not too little. The rise in price is due to increase in demand(mainly due to federal loans).

 

[Slew Foot]

American youth are lazy and entitled. Its not he quality of the schools thats the problem, its the work ethic of the students.


<----- Med school professor

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Ehhh. Asian education makes US education look dumb. Quite honestly, people learn fast. I mean if you look at the kids who skipped pre-algebra in middle school and were taking Calculus BC their soph and junior years, it was mainly Asians. What was my Physics AP class like? Asian.

What was my major like in college? Asian +2 white people +2 Indian.

I attended some commencements this past month and who were the kids graduating from undergrad business school going to Big 4 accounting? Asians. What about the Econ jerks going into Big 4? Asians. Med school? Masses of Asians.

I'm serious. Asians are just overcrowding the top institutions. Look at the racial breakdown at MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, your top 3 engineering schools.

please tell me this is supposed to be funny lollllll

This is quite true though. You can get through HS without taking physics from what I experienced. Many people took "AP Bio" or "Chem" to avoid taking physics. My Physics class was no joke. I struggled more in high school than in my Cal engineering physics classes. But to say that high school physics was the first REAL exposure to things like kinematics equations is pretty pitiful compared to what European kids and Asian kids get in their home countries.

The American education system is sad. Why do you think those Asian kids come to the US and their parents beat them to SAT prep and to get 4.0s. True it may not be beneficial in raising kids this way, but the question is why does it happen? I think you know the answer.

 

[Matthiasa]

Way to long for what it's saying.
And the examples are bad, a person not qualified to teach elsewhere in the US, stating that our universities are starting to lag, yet those that can come here often do, and that foreign students make up a majority of doctorate level stuff. That wouldn&#8217;t happen if the quality wasn&#8217;t still there.

Overall ranking on the article... fail.

 

[mcmilljb]

This story is full of FAIL.

He had stellar credentials &#8211; an undergraduate degree in history and literature from Harvard and a Stanford doctorate in comparative literature; he'd published in academic journals, coedited an anthology, and organized conferences.

The warnings are stark: The US had better focus on its higher education or it is going to lose its technological and scientific edge and risk its economic future.

Seriously? That guy is not part of the reason America has a "technological and scientific edge." He has the credentials of a liberal arts student. They are not in high demand right now. So I am not surprised he had a hard time finding a job. Substitute a science degree for any of his degrees, and he would have a much better chance at finding a job right now.

We need to cut out all the wasted money spent on excessive liberal art students. Plus people need quit thinking they need to take Biology 101 and English 101 and other introductory courses at major universities. No one cares where you take them! All they care is you learned something useful. But you probably did not because most introductory courses rehash what you learned in high school. Want your child or yourself to save a bunch of money while going to college ? Go to cheap public community/technical colleges for the classes no one cares about. Most have agreements with the bigger schools for automatic acceptance if you get a 2 year degree. Sure it's not as much fun as an expensive school, but neither is having a shit ton of debt for your liberal arts degree and not working in your "field" for minimum wage.

 

[TuxDave]

Additionally, we all know that Asians are better at math but what we do not know is it is most likely due to their language for their numbering system.

Lemme guess, you just finished reading "Outliers" too. 😛

 

[mcmilljb]

American youth are lazy and entitled. Its not he quality of the schools thats the problem, its the work ethic of the students.


<----- Med school professor

What courses do you teach?

 

[Key West]

There's a perceived prestige vs actual quality.

If you visit Asia or Europe holding a none top tier degree from US, they'll love you. I personally know a Chinese intl student who got her MBA in Umass, went back to HK and got an awesome job.

I also know a French housemate who got his Harvard Extension degree, went back to France and became a director. They don't know the diff between a real Harvard degree that requires admission vs a secondary Harvard-branded degree.

 

[Gibson486]

America has made the financial institution what they should not be: for profit institutions. Most degrees are not hard to get anymore and several colleges are giving degrees in BS, not only in the higher education (really, a master in Engineering entrepreneurship?), but they are handing them out in the same vein as more prestigious degrees (see engineering entrepreneurship).

Part of the problem is also the attitude towards education. University used to be done to gain knowledge, now it is done to gain a job and to further your job potential. People who get their masters get them because they "need to get to further their career", not because they want to. As a result, you get a bunch of paper pushers who just meet the minimum standards to get the degree so they can get that management position. Once they leave school, everything they learned becomes a pile of crap because they do not retain it, nor do they want to.

 

[Powermoloch]

My lil bro got into physics AP on 9th grade lol. 2nd on His math team for his highschool...and yes he is asian.

Sadly i'm good at math and science too :/

It's all about ethics, hard work reaps great rewards.

 

[chusteczka]

Lemme guess, you just finished reading "Outliers" too. 😛

haha, yes, last year ... 😳

Since then, I have looked for an Asian to confirm this but have been unable to so far. It would be great if an Asian on this forum would confirm this concept.

 

[Kirby]

Asians do well because their parents beat the shit of them and shame them if they don't.

 

[astralusion]

haha, yes, last year ... 😳

Since then, I have looked for an Asian to confirm this but have been unable to so far. It would be great if an Asian on this forum would confirm this concept.

I think that you could make this argument if it were only first and second generation Asian kids who outperformed others on average. However, at least from my experience, it's not. Do first and second gens do really well? Yes, but so do Asian-americans who don't know a lick of chinese/japanese, etc

 

[chusteczka]

There's a perceived prestige vs actual quality.

If you visit Asia or Europe holding a none top tier degree from US, they'll love you. I personally know a Chinese intl student who got her MBA in Umass, went back to HK and got an awesome job.

It is true that most any American business degree is well regarded through the world. Math and science, we are on par with the world but not necessarily better or worse. Concerning the humanities, I have no idea but would expect France and Italy to maintain highest reputation.

 

[Key West]

It is true that most any American business degree is well regarded through the world. Math and science, we are on par with the world but not necessarily better or worse. Concerning the humanities, I have no idea but would expect France and Italy to maintain highest reputation.

Reputation? I don't imagine any Asians knowing let alone respecint any French or Italian universities.

But everyone in the world knows and loves Harvard, Yale, etc.

 

[JS80]

I like US education. In Asia you have overeducated college graduates as cashiers.

 

[herm0016]

thread in a nut shell: anyone who is not an engineer is stupid, and Americans are stupid. did i miss anything?

Americans have different talents:

my senior design professor, who has taught all over the world ( japan, China, India, Germany, USA) told us that foreign engineering students are more book smart than Americans in general, but American educated engineers are much much more creative in how they solve problems than the foreign educated students. American students still come up with the most new, innovative approaches to problems and this is why they are more desirable for many positions.

DLeRium:

We need people to explain what the engineers and scientist are doing, The Technical writers.
I would rather have the Bio and Chem majors so that they can design new drugs to combat sickness and infections.

Bio and Chem are just as important as physics.

Just because the class title does not say physics does not mean you are not learning the principals of physics... everything is physics! i had 4.5 years of physics classes, and only one was labeled as such, others include dynamics, statics, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, heat transfer........ in high school we had physical science, chemistry, biology and physics. in middle school we learned many principals of physics that were used in all of those other classes, teaching us the laws of physics without saying it explicitly.

the world would sure be boring if not a single person was taught how to write a newspaper article or to manage the construction of a building or act in a movie or play.

I love reading books. who do you think writes them? not engineers. Even our Engineering Text books would suck if only engineers wrote them.

Remember many of the greatest artists in history were also well regarded as engineers. art and engineering go hand in hand and today we are teaching our engineers to do everything by the book, like it was taught. we are teaching people to kill the creative, artistic side of their brains. Intuition is just as important as being able to rattle off a bunch of equations and do some math. Involving all of your brain to build a solution to a problem is way better than just being able to calculate what the solution needs to do.

 

[sjwaste]

Reputation? I don't imagine any Asians knowing let alone respecint any French or Italian universities.

But everyone in the world knows and loves Harvard, Yale, etc.

You'd be surprised. Just because no one in the US knows about French or Italian universities, doesn't mean the rest of the world doesn't. As far as the arts and humanities go, they were practically invented in those countries - and that's what the GP was referring to.

 

[DrPizza]

my senior design professor, who has taught all over the world ( japan, China, India, Germany, USA) told us that foreign engineering students are more book smart than Americans in general, but American educated engineers are much much more creative in how they solve problems than the foreign educated students. American students still come up with the most new, innovative approaches to problems and this is why they are more desirable for many positions.

That point was covered on a recent NPR story. They were interviewing a couple of profs who worked with PhD candidates. They said that 10 years ago, what you stated above was quite true, but that in recent years, they're seeing that these foreign students are now even with American students. Foreign education systems are growing in leaps and bounds. Other countries have finally figured out that the way to a prosperous future is through education, and they're investing in that education.

 

[Chaotic42]

I'm trying to remember what I was taught before high school. Was it just the same stuff over and over with slightly more detail and thinking each year?

It seems like once a kid can add, subtract, multiply, and divide, algebra should be next, but I remember there being people in pre-algebra in 10th grade.