But my point is that most state universities, including high ranking flagships, work very close to that way for instate students. It seems to me the relevant comparison is between state flagships in the US and the government run universities in Canada and Australia. If you compare to the state flagships in state and not top-25 privates, I don’t think the differences are enormous.
[qote] @SculptorDad wrote
I am sorry for making a general judgement with only a very superficial information.
Still, on average, or in general it seems Canadian public school system is still far superior than US’s. For example, how many illiterate high school graduates Canada produce?
[/quote]
No worries SculptorDad, nothing seems to get parents more hot and bothered than a discussion about education lol. We’ve been fortunate with our kids because they are currently in specialty/enriched programs within the public school system (what many parents are fighting against as it is seen as un-equitable). Even so, I still pay for after school tutoring twice a week for my youngest to mitigate the damage of a disastrous middle school experience. Other parents try to “game” the system by putting their kids in French Immersion, which has in many cases become an enrichment program (though that was not it’s intended purpose). There are intense battles by some parents to get their kids into FI programs since there are not enough spaces to meet demand and some school boards have gone to a lottery system to try and make it more equitable. Parents choose the program not so much because they want their kids to learn French but because they want them out of the regular integrated classroom. Kids with learning or behavioural issues aren’t usually found in FI classes.
With regards to literacy, in general Canada does very well. It’s the math scores that are the concern (which is why so many parents pay for tutoring).
From what I have read from various sources, what one can generalize is that there is less variability in the quality of education within Canada’s public school system vs the US. Teachers are compensated very well and credentials are strictly regulated. There is some issue with trying to get rid of bad apples due to the strength of the teachers’ unions but generally there is a greater supply of eligible teachers than positions available and teacher’s don’t get to choose what schools they are assigned to within a given board. That tends to level the playing field with regards to the quality of the teachers. There is a standardized curriculum that is set by each province for public schools and most private schools follow the same guidelines. School boards are also funded at the provincial level, not according to city or neighbourhood, making that more equitable as well, though the schools in more affluent areas are certainly able to supplement their budgets with additional fundraising. What we don’t have, without moving to the private school system, are equivalents to the highly enriched academically rigorous schools that exist in the US and parents here have less control over what schools their children attend. What variability in academic performance does exist across various schools can in large part be attributed to the socioeconomic background of the students and not the quality of the education itself. It’s these factors that school boards try to actively overcome.
BTW, you should have heard the furor over an intended visit by Betsy Devos where she was supposed to be touring some schools in Toronto. Eventually the visit got cancelled (due to scheduling issues it was claimed). I think she would have received a rather frosty reception. Parents in Canada want choices for their kids, but most are opposed to a voucher system.
There are two wrinkles in Canadian elementary and secondary educaion. In Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan there are public Catholic schools, an alien concept to Americans. Also in most provinces private schools, both religious and secular, are subsidized by the government to the tune of 40% to 60% of the cost of attendance.
In California, it is not actually that hard to get into a UC. But, because of the hierarchy of perception, most aim for UCB or UCLA, making those campuses very difficult to get into. Less selective ones like UCR or UCM as seen as a “consolation prize”.
The impression I get is that there is much less of a perception hierarchy among Toronto, UBC, and McGill, so that the top-end students across Canada are not all trying to get into the same one. Is that actually the case?
@ucbalumnus Canadians do not “go away” to university to the extent that Americans do. Hence McGill, Toronto and UBC have large commuter populations. Concordia is a consolation prize for McGill hopefuls, York/Ryerson for UToronto hopefuls, Simon Fraser for UBC hopefuls, UQAM for UMontréal hopefuls.
I have that impression too (most students from the local area). This is why I compare it to US state flagships. Most are primarily filled with students from that state. Some differences in that few are in major cities like those three Canadian universities are. And you have the effect of some kids in California preferring Michigan over less prestigious UCs for eaxmple, for which there probably isn’t a Canadian equivalent.
But I think the original statement that in state admission into state schools is mostly straightforward is still true.
My nieces went to public school in central Toronto. I was not impressed with their education. Their neighborhood, and hence their school, was very culturally and economically diverse. Lots of UT faculty and administration families (including them), lots of immigrants. They both did French Immersion, which probably worked somewhat the way @gwnorth described. But what it didn’t do was teach them French, or do a very good job teaching them anything else. I remember being pretty scandalized at their poor reading skills around 4th grade.
By high school, they had great grades and were at the top of their class, but they were very nonacademic, and had pretty limited academic ambitions. One went to McGill, but disliked it and wound up transferring to Western for a variety of reasons, chief among them a boyfriend and membership in a circus troupe in Toronto that actually produced meaningful income. The other went to Toronto and did fine, followed by a semi-professional masters at McGill. The second one actually did her last semester of high school at a school in a wealthy neighborhood, and she was shocked at how different the classes and the students were, how much more competitive, fast-paced, driven.
It’s funny: I am very close to both of them and to their parents. I love all of them to death. They are wonderful people. But I have never discussed their education with them or with their parents. It feels like a little bit of a third rail. Their mother is a world-class academic, someone who receives a major honor every other year or so, their father a very blue-collar refrigeration systems tech. Both parents are very proud of how egalitarian the Canadian system is, but I know their mother has to have had a tough time with their non/anti-intellectualism and middling ambition.
Re #87
Having limited academic ambitions relative to other professional ambitions is not all that unusual even among top end students. Consider all of the Harvard and Princeton grads going into banking and consulting.
I grew up in Canada and went to college in the US. Also have high school aged children. My personal observations are that there are probably more similarities than differences in terms of overall education quality between the US and Canada. My own high school experience in Canada was solid but not exceptional. Compared to my daughter who will graduate this year with 8 AP’s and 2 DE’s, I’d be surprised if her high school experience did not compare favorably to what she would have available in Canada. Her school is good but not great and it really is normal for most kids eyeing up the UC’s and other good options to take a reasonably rigorous schedule. So in my experience, I think Canadian schools are just fine but not any better than many US options.
I would also add that there are lots of other good college options in Canada over and above the few that always get mentioned - UofT, McGill, UBC. Like the US, most kids in Canada stay in Province. Ontario for example has some excellent choices including UofT, Waterloo, Queens, Western, York, McMaster, etc, and most kids in Ontario are likely to choose one of these over McGill or UBC.
Finally, I do agree with @DadTwoGirls that US college admissions is far more stressful than Canada. Take McGill for example - admissions based on the “Top 5” or “Top 6” qualifying high school classes depending on what province the applicant resides. This approach would certainly remove some stress if the US had this approach.
@TomSrOfBoston, most of my Canadian relatives went to school in their city (Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Toronto) or province except for McGill. We have relatives from Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto who went to McGill. Everyone else stayed home.
@ucbalumnus, good that you are distinguishing between academic ambition and ambition in the world. One doesn’t have to want to be the best student ever or best PhD student ever to want to have influence in the world. In my cohort of undergraduate buddies, I’ve got a now retired PE guy, a now retired Fortune 100 CEO, a university president, two folks with high appointed positions in DC (one preceding Trump, one arguably independent), a leading cancer scientist, the head of a charity, a World Bank economist, as well as the usual cohort of doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. Many were excellent students but by no means all. Banking (i-banking I assume you mean as no one is going into banking any more) and management consulting can be steps to some of those positions and largely reflect an appetite for money and not necessarily an interest in more significant work. As a former academic who left to start a consulting firm, I find the intellectual challenges of what I do are comparable to those of being an academic (and I still write, though I am less interested in pleasing the academic purists).
@JHS, one of the things that seems different about the upper reaches of the US system (HYPMS) and the Canadian system is that above and beyond a good education (which they give but so do many schools) but they give two additional things: horizons and networks. I was trying to explain to a very bright nephew the difference between Harvard and McGill when he was in HS. An extremely ambitious kid at McGill like him might leave McGill saying “I want to be the best in Canada at what I do.” The same kid at HYPMS would say “I want to be the best in the world at what I do.” I also described the difference between being surrounded by a higher proportion of really bright folks. Finally, the networks are obvious (see above). He later got a degree at Oxford and said that he didn’t understand what I was saying until he started at Oxford and saw the differences with McGill.
@shawbridge I agree with those who equate Toronto and McGill to high-quality U.S. flagships. I think you can go to Michigan or Wisconsin or North Carolina and come out wanting to be the best in the world at what you do, or at least among the best. (You probably have to go to Harvard to have the hubris to want to be THE best.) My daughter’s high school best friend went to McGill and had a dream experience; when she applied to PhD programs, she pretty much ran the table of top programs in her field. (And later learned that being one of the best in the world at what you do still doesn’t guarantee you a job that doesn’t involve moving someplace you don’t want to move.) A friend of my other kid went to Toronto and was accepted directly out of college into a top-5 PhD program. My nieces’ college friends include a number of impressive, high-achieving men and women.
My sister-in-law is demonstrably one of the best people in the world in her specialty, and except for occasional sabbaticals she’s been at Toronto since she was 21. (She turned down MIT to follow her draft-dodging then-husband there, but it wasn’t that big of a quality difference between the departments.)
At the same time, McGill and Toronto educate a broad range of students; there are plenty of people there who just want their tickets punched so they can get a decent job that’s not too demanding.
My issue was more with my nieces’ K-12 experience in their Toronto public schools. It was certainly better than the (terrible) median public school experience for students where I live, but not at all up to the standard of the academic magnet schools they would likely have attended if they were here, or like the public schools their mother went to in Ithaca and suburban Ohio that prepared her to grow up to be a famous scholar.
I recently posted a thread regarding my older son DS’19’s options for university here in Canada. For him I wish we had the same range of good quality universities that you have in the US. I agree that U of T, UBC, McGill are equivalent to a state flagship. You could probably include Western and Queens in that category as well. That we have no equivalents to HYPSM et. al. is a given. What we also don’t have however are highly selective smaller LAC’s or research U’s. We have a few schools that might be considered more along the lines of an LAC, but they certainly are not selective. All our top schools, wonderful though their international reputations might be, are very large institutions, and their reputations rest on their graduate programs, not their undergraduate ones. We don’t have any excellent smaller schools which would be my preference for DS’19. On the other hand, I’m very grateful for the straightforward and fairly transparent process for admission to our post-secondary schools. We don’t have to worry about SAT’s or ACT’s and when to write them or how often, and whether we should submit all grades. There are no requirements for having “the most rigorous” schedule or stand apart EC’s, great letters of recommendation, or numerous application essays. There is no consideration for EA/ED/SCEA etc. in making application decisions and “need” has no bearing on application or admissions. There are very few hooks (the only real one being being of Indigenous ancestry). I’m also very grateful for how relatively affordable school is here compared to the US. I have no idea how most people afford to send their kids to college in the US, though it seems much more common to be able to get substantial merit awards. For the majority of students in Canada the most they can hope for is a 1 time award of a couple of thousand dollars in merit scholarship.
@gwnorth Unfortunately “small” is not valued in Canadian higher education. My son who is a McGill alum told me that when he entered in 1995 full time enrolment was 18,500. In 2017 it has grown to 31,300 full time students. This is due to government pressure and the funding formula. If McGill had been able to keep enrolment at 1995 levels it would be very selective. Maybe not HYPSM selective but comparable to say Tufts or Northwestern. But that would generate cries of “elitism” which is bad word in Canada.