<p>The two are very different. The Americans believe that having liberal arts students are likely to become more successful in the future.
But I heard that in Europe, students only study what is relevant to their concentrations.</p>
<p>How true is it?</p>
<p>I understand that the education system here and there are very different. Students enter two years of college (I count them as HS junior and senior year here), and then 3-4 years of University study.</p>
<p>I favor over the American's because it's more interdisciplinary, rather than monotonic. But it seems pretty cool to just do one thing only, if the account is true.</p>
<p>What do you guys think? How has liberal arts affect your engineering study?</p>
<p>If you go to the study abroad forums there are some threads about applying into various elite colleges in england. The whole thing that Europeans specialize sooner is accurate. Look through those threads… They explainj how you need to have some seriously good scores (and multiple) in whatever your goin into. As to how that affects an engineering education I’m not sure. But I imagine it can only help. I mean who doesn’t like a well rounded person?</p>
<p>I favour the European model on account that many are offering 3-year bachelor degree equivalents and they eschew the silly general education requirements. When business and industry want people who can analyse Shakespeare, I may concede the validity of such frivolities, but until then.</p>
<p>I also like the European model better than the U.S. one. In Europe for instance, law is an undergraduate degree vs. a graduate degree in the U.S. so you can become an attorney in 4 years instead of 7.</p>
<p>You’re asking in a forum dedicated to a pre-professional major so I assume you know you’re going to get a one-sided response. Engineers tend to be more practical so most would rather not take courses not needed for their intended goal (presumably to get a job in the engineering field).</p>
<p>Then again, I’m somewhat glad I was forced to take courses outside of my major because it opened me up to a field I became interested in. I’ve taken on to reading about urban sociology and urban planning on my own after college (my bookshelf is starting to run out of room actually). I’ve also become somewhat involved in the urban planning process locally as a citizen.</p>
<p>I prefer the European system. To me, the general education requirements seem like an extension of high school. A student just gets sprinkled with a little bit of every discipline without delving into it further. Many students just fulfill the requirements and forget the information they learned anyway. After all, if an engineering student is not interested in art forcing him take an art class as a general requirement will not make him more interested in it and remember all that information. Additionally, the price of college is getting higher so if schools could cut out the general education requirements, families would save a lot of money. </p>
<p>However, I am fine with a few mandatory writing classes. Writing is an important skill used in all professions.</p>
<p>I attended high school in England from 1972-75, so my information is dated, but I understand the English system hasn’t changed that significantly. There are exams at age 16, called Ordinary (“O”) Levels back then, now called General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams. Students took a wide variety of O Levels in 5 to 7, and sometimes as many as 9 subjects. I’m not sure how many they do for the GCSC exams now, but expect it’s similar. Those who want to go to university move on to take Advance (“A”) Level exams at age 18 after 2 more years of study. The A Level course of study in volves a more limited selection of areas of study, usually 3 or 4, and is done in the in the school sixth form, at a sixth form college or at a further education college after leaving secondary school. The term “college” in England is used in this context, but also to refer to sub-entities within a university (such as Balliol College at Oxford University), just to confuse matters. University students in England generally study just one subject area for 3 years leading to a Bachelor’s Degree. My own experience was that the earlier narrowing down of the field of study works for those who know what they want to do at age 18, but not so much for those who don’t. I came back to the US for college (university) so can’t speak to the English university system.</p>
<p>I grew up in German speaking countries and started University in 1982, so my information is a little ‘dated’. Their ‘High School’ education is much broader and more demanding than the US system; students actually get kicked out for non-/low-performance. (Remember, there’s a dual education system, in my time, only about 12% went to the ‘Gymnasium’ as preparation for University, all others made an apprenticeship. I hear that this rate has now increased to about 20%.) The High School offered way less flexibility than here in the US, and everyone HAD to take core-classes that made up about 70% of the schedule (Math, German, 2 foreign languages, Econ, Geography, Phys, Chem, History, etc).</p>
<p>Due to the broad education in Gymnasium (that’s grades 7 - 13), the Universities could focus on the actual subject. I studied Chemistry at the ETH in Zürich and had only Math, Physics & Chemistry in the first year, and in the following years exclusively Chemistry. I would rate my ‘Diploma’ to be a little more than a Ms degree. We had 30-35 hrs per week …, including 15-20 hrs of lab every week with a (synthetic) thesis at the end. </p>
<p>Personally, I am usually disappointed when I talk to a freshly graduated BS Chemist here in the US - they have learned actually very little Chemistry, and their degree is by no means comparable to a degree from German speaking Universities. </p>
<p>Students who switched majors usually lost one year - and people switched only in the first year …</p>