Higher Education

[jim stone]

Well, we go to stay up to speed. The field keeps changing. We go where new ideas are breaking.
Also we need to run with a fast pack to run as fast as we can.

Also we try to go to nice or interesting places to live. Before I retired I taught in Innsbruck, also
for a year in India.

Some of the best universities are not very happy places. At Harvard the students were self-driven to
be the brightest and the best. People were extraordinarily bright but they often had no lives,
they were grinding away, no social skills. Sometimes universities are like great machines
crushing the intellectual juice out of people. But they crackle with energy.

On the other hand universities can be pretty nice
places. But I would gladly go back to any of them.

I do think you should arrange to go to the best you can.
You do get a better education.

Of course what most matters is what your life will be like after you leave university,
cause that's where you will spend most of your years. So it's a good idea
to go to the university that best prepares you for the best position
you can get in the field of your choice. In the USA a university's
prestige can make a big difference in that regard. Especially at
the professional or graduate level.

[Henke]

Ah, it all starts to make sense now. I was confused about how much the american college resembled the swedish gymnasium, even though the gymnasium is the level below the university here. If I understand this correctly, most americans will go on from highschool to get an "undergraduate" education at a university and then maybe continue towards higher education. This is where it differs- our universities don't have undergraduate educations. When we go to the university we don't engage in general studies during the first years and then major in something, we do that in the gymnasium. I'm studying my first semester at the university now, and I only study law. I'll do that for 4.5 years divided into different courses and nothing else and then I'll get the degree. It's similar with other courses. I always figured the gymnasium was not highschool (as it's sometimes translated). If I understand this correctly it's basically the first 3 years of college, maybe at a slightly lower level.

Too bad it's only your educational system which is this complex and not your
whisk(e)y

[jim stone]

I see. Here we have grade school, the first six grades, followed by three years of junior high school,
followed by four years of highschool. For most Americans that used to be all the education
they received, but after WWII most everybody began to go on to four years of college
or university. This was because the returning troops received free tuition to go to
college. At the end of this you get a bachelors degree.

Then, if you wish, you do graduate work, leading to a professional degree, a masters degree
or a doctorate. That can take another five or six years or even more.

I speak no German and when I taught philosophy in Innsbruck (the Jesuit Theology Faculty of the U of Innsbruck)
there was some concern that I wouldn't be understood in English. However it turned out that
the students understood English very well and that high school students in Austria write English
better than most graduates of American universities.

The University level education I saw in Austria was less good than in the USA, at least in philosophy,
but the students were much better educated over all because what preceded was so much
better than what we have here.

After it became routine in the USA for everybody to go to University, the universities hired lots of faculty,
built lots of buildings. They were getting a lot of money from the government, so that we
could compete with the Soviets (Sputnik scared us half to death).

That money largely dried up, finally, and so student tuition was crucial. Meanwhile students (after
the wave of returning soldiers went through) were entering
university without adequate preparation who weren't much interested in education; they were there
because they didn't know what else to do. As the universities had to keep students who couldn't
do the work, just to stay funded, or start firing faculty and closing down buildings, the universities dumbed down
to keep enrollment up. So university education in many (not the best
but many) universities became much less good than it was before WWII.

Meanwhile many states had 'open enrollment,' which required state universities to accept any
high school graduate, no matter how poor the grades. This was meant to let minorities
into the universities who otherwise would not get in. So many universities were
inundated with illiterates, as the high schools and grade schools for minorities (which had been segregated
for a century), weren't teaching much. At my university we lost half the freshman
class the first year, every year. And there were vast programs in remedial education,
which didn't help. Too late.

Meanwhile the marginal students who survived often went into education,
one of the less demanding programs. Graduating an undemanding program
(in a dumbed-down university) functionally illiterate, they were hired to teach in high schools and grade schools,
where they were protected by powerful unions. So education spiraled downward,
with increasing less well prepared students entering universities that could
not afford to turn them away. Not everywhere and not at the best schools,
but in many universities. At my university a large minority of graduating
seniors couldn't write a grammatical English sentence.

So where we are good, we are very good, and where we are not so good,
I think we are generally a lot less good than Western Europe.

[Denny]

I see. Here we have grade school, the first six grades, followed by three years of junior high school, followed by four years of highschool.

ah....that gets ya 13 years outta 12 Jim

Yer confusing buildings with levels
I grew up in a 6-3-3 system. That's Elementary-Jr. high-High....however the 3rd year of Jr. high counts as freshman high school

[BigDavy]

Hi Jim

Your Darwinian process sounds like what happened when I started university (Strathclyde - Theoretical Physics in 1973). You got thrown in at the deep end and sunk or swam depending on how much you were willing to work - my first year had a 64 percent drop out rate and all the survivors of that year graduated.

David

[jim stone]

I see. Here we have grade school, the first six grades, followed by three years of junior high school, followed by four years of highschool.

ah....that gets ya 13 years outta 12 Jim

Yer confusing buildings with levels
I grew up in a 6-3-3 system. That's Elementary-Jr. high-High....however the 3rd year of Jr. high counts as freshman high school

Thanks for the correction. It's been awhile. Graduated 51 years ago. Sheesh!

[jim stone]

Hi Jim

Your Darwinian process sounds like what happened when I started university (Strathclyde - Theoretical Physics in 1973). You got thrown in at the deep end and sunk or swam depending on how much you were willing to work - my first year had a 64 percent drop out rate and all the survivors of that year graduated.

David

The reason our students were leaving at such an alarming rate, up to 60 percent the freshmen year,
wasn't that they wouldn't work but that they could only write their name. The first exam
would come back with the just the student's name on it. Nobody had ever taught
them anything. I don't know the stats for ensuing years but we continued to
lose large numbers. We did try to save them, lots of remedial teaching, but
it didn't work.

Meanwhile the graduating seniors in education of a local university took a teacher competency
test. All 16 failed. The NAACP said the test was racially biased against African Americans,
so the local paper printed it on
the front page. It consisted in paragraphs about, say, the French revolution, followed
by multiple choice questions about what the paragraph had said. Anybody who could read
at a high school level could answer the questions. The students graduated
anyway (the test wasn't part of the program) and went to teach in local
schools. Their writing was likely to be worse than their reading.
Once in there is no getting them out cause the unions won't allow
testing of teachers.

This wasn't as much a 'sink or swim' scenario as a tragedy pure and simple.

I think students in the UK and generally in Europe are streamed into vocational
and university tracks. In the USA everybody goes to university. The result
is very bad indeed for universities that aren't sufficiently well-endowed
to be able to afford to turn away students who can't do university
level work. Requirements are eliminated, standards drop,
exams are all multiple choice with the right answer telegraphed,
teachers tell students there is no need to come to class.
People leave the university writing less well than
when they entered. But the university collects
their tuition.

Many students work full time jobs to pay tuition to a university
that isn't educating them, not knowing that they
aren't getting educated. There is a large system
of junior colleges (two year colleges) which teach
almost nothing.

Generally when everybody goes into some institution that means to educate them
or improve them, it drags down the institution more than it uplifts them.
In Thailand most young men become monks for a year or two.
Just what everyone does. About the worst thing that could
have happened to monasticism. Monks smoking cigarettes,
monks with ghetto blasters, monks consorting with
prostitutes....

Higher Education in the USA can be extraordinarily good,
but also it can be just very sad.

[Denny]

I see. Here we have grade school, the first six grades, followed by three years of junior high school, followed by four years of highschool.

ah....that gets ya 13 years outta 12 Jim

Yer confusing buildings with levels
I grew up in a 6-3-3 system. That's Elementary-Jr. high-High....however the 3rd year of Jr. high counts as freshman high school

Thanks for the correction. It's been awhile. Graduated 51 years ago. Sheesh!

so the last decade has been rough?