<p>I may as well weigh in, since I posted a comment on the Crimson website...</p>
<p>I think that some of the complaints made by the two students were legitimate. The library system IS old and needs to be overhauled, and the computing facilities ARE old-fashioned. </p>
<p>But essentially, what these students seem to be complaining about is the fact that Oxford isn't Harvard. The system of teaching and learning is different to what they were used to, but why didn't they research this first? It is interesting that neither of these girls mention their colleges at all, since the college is the social and academic base of a student's life at Oxford. </p>
<p>I was actually shocked by the fact that these girls expected to be treated 'better' because they'd won a Rhodes scholarship. It smacks of an arrogance and sense of entitlement that is antithetical to everything academia stands for. </p>
<p>(Grrr. Sorry if I come across as angry, but I think that these two girls have done their fellow Harvard students no favours in writing this op-ed.)</p>
<p>Can someone direct me to a constructive site that discusses the pros and cons of Oxbridge. It is preferable that the site be operated not by Americans but by the British.
( By the way in asking for this I am in no way expecting it to be like College Confidential, I am simply looking for a comprehensive scope of information)</p>
<p>I'm very sorry about that bandit_TX. It was an innocent mistake. Looking back, it seems to be hedoya who I was quoting. I'll see if I can get the post edited.</p>
<p>EDIT: How exactly do I edit a post that is so old? The option seems to be removed.</p>
<p>"This article discloses how ignorant and incompetent Americans are. I will be attending Oxford next year, and I am so glad I did not opt for an idiotic education at Harvard. Oxford undergrad >> Harvard undergrad.
Honestly, in Europe we know about the shortcomings of American: only speak one language, narrow-minded attitude, imperialistic ideology, and freaking puritan attitude. Yet this article just proves my point further. I hope I will not be meeting spoiled brats like the two ill-educated people who authered this articel.</p>
<p>Honestly, if your president is as idiotic as students from the supposedly best university in the world, that means I am staying away from the states."</p>
<p>Veritable proof that bookish intelligence does not translate into common sense and rational thought. As a Harvard undergrad, I place our "competing" institutions on the same playing field; indeed, I think most secular universities are sufficient for attaining a higher education. The way you incorrectly blanket entire populations as "ignorant" speaks more about your world view than it does of mine.</p>
<p>I won't weigh in on the merits of the article, but I'm itching to study abroad at Oxford next year. They have resources I could never have here, including the largest collection of Minoan antiquities outside Greece.</p>
<p>
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By teaching, I do not mean only pedagogical experience; this is secondary. I mean especially field knowledge. A prof cannot be expected to teach only what s/he has done research on and written about. This is why American graduate students take Ph.D. qualifying exams, usually at the end of their second year, to test their knowledge of their general field (s). Then only can they begin to think about their dissertation topic. By this time, the typical UK Ph.D. student is nearly finished writing the dissertation.
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<p>PhD programs in the UK nowadays are not as unstructured as you might think. For example, students pursuing a PhD in engineering at Cambridge are now expected to take classes (at least two lecture modules) and pass the respective final written exams in their first year in the program. At the end of the first year, they also undergo a formal performance evaluation, which includes turning in a research report and going through an oral exam. If performance is deemed unsatisfactory, the PhD student may be evicted from the program or downgraded to master's student status. Progress is formally assessed again at the end of the second year, at which point a student is expected to be ready to submit at least a conference paper for publication. Furthermore, the final oral exam for the PhD degree in the UK ("Viva Voce") is a much bigger deal than the "thesis defense" in the US. To begin with, the student's advisor is not allowed to be an examiner and, on top of that, examiners usually ask for several ** major ** changes in the thesis before accepting it and may even ocasionally fail the candidate or , alternatively, recommend him/her for a master's degree only.</p>
<p>Finally, on the broader issue of research quality, I cannot comment on all fields, but at least in the area where I work (Bayesian methods for signal processing), Cambridge engineering is IMHO the top department in the world. BTW, I'm not currently and never have been affiliated with the University of Cambridge.</p>
<p><a href="marite%20wrote:">quote</a> As the holder of an M.A. from Harvard, I can mention the faculty and the library facilities for starters; the greater financial support given to students.
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<p>Harvard has few departments with direct admission to MA-only programs (i.e., excluding professional masters such as MBA, MPH, M.Arch, courtesy masters en route to a PhD, and AB+MA bachelor's degrees), so your information is perhaps out of date. Such programs are what one should compare with at Oxford. Both in the United States generally, and at such masters-only arrangements as exist at Harvard, almost any such program has no funding for anything, it is a program where the student pays to take courses and get an MA certification. The only situation I know of where a masters-only student can get funding at Harvard is if it directly is in line with a professor's research program, so that he will use funds under his control, as in sponsored summer fieldwork in a place or subject close to prof's research. Otherwise it is hit-or-miss depending on what funds are left over after the professors, PhD students, and undergraduates are taken care of. </p>
<p>What is more, the issue implicitly raised by the Crimson editorial was not "is Oxford as good as Harvard in every respect", but rather "is Oxford substandard" (relative to most comparable MA programs at American universities, for example). The answer is clearly NO, as far as I can tell, especially when comparing full funding on a Rhodes to no funding for US masters degrees.</p>
<p>The claims about teaching by apathetic postdocs are also absurd; this happens just as much at Harvard, not to mention the teaching by perhaps enthusiastic, but not always qualified, undergraduates.</p>