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I would argue that this is a fallacy. Indeed, there are a few US Universities up on the academic standard (U of Chicago, MIT...) but that's 20-25 schools out of 3500 colleges.
On an average postsecondary education in the US is really bad.
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I disagree. I think that, on average, US engineering degrees are quite good. The quality of the other degrees (except Math + Science) is of no real consequence - because those degrees do not influence wealth generation.</p>
<p>"I would argue that this is a fallacy. Indeed, there are a few US Universities up on the academic standard (U of Chicago, MIT...) but that's 20-25 schools out of 3500 colleges.
On an average postsecondary education in the US is really bad."</p>
<p>Whoever said that is ignoring the facts. Undergraduate education in the US is <em>at least</em> on par with anything in Europe, and certainly not inferior to that in other parts of the world. In many ways, engineering education in the US is vastly superior, as it stresses soft skills to an extent that would cause most haughty European intellectuals laugh themselves into hernias. Europe is behind the times, and people in America AND Europe know it - the people who make it their business to know it, anyway. The public remains woefully ignorant.</p>
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Spoke with a bunch of German engineering exchange students. A single exam at the end of a class? No homework? Laughable. I can't imagine how one actually learns the material.
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<p>I had a Serbian friend in Graduate School at Carnegie Mellon (ECE) who had earned his Dipl-Ing in Germany (Bochum). We took 4 classes together in the US (Stochastic Processes; Estimation, Detection and Identification; Pattern Recognition Theory, and Digital Signal Processing) and I can tell you he was by far the best student in the class. His background knowledge in the area of statistical signal processing and math in general (linear algebra, etc.) seemed to be far ahead of the US students. In fact, results from his Diplomarbeit (graduation thesis) on subspace tracking had already been published as a full paper in the IEEE Transactions back when he was still in Germany. BTW, by the time we took our PhD qualifying exams, both this Serbian guy and I (also an international) passed the exam while two of our officemates, both of whom had got their bachelor's and master's degrees in the US, failed and had to take the quals again (they passed the second time and could stay in the program).</p>
<p>I know it's just anecdotal evidence, but I thought I should mention it anyway.</p>
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<p>Spoke with a bunch of German engineering exchange students. A single exam at the end of a class? No homework? Laughable. I can't imagine how one actually learns the material.</p>
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<p>since when do you need homework and tests to learn. Just read the book/</p>
<p>"since when do you need homework and tests to learn. Just read the book/"</p>
<p>You don't need them, but they help immensely and increase effectiveness and retention. There's no point in arguing until you've looked up the term I've echoed here several times: elaborative rehearsal.</p>
<p>"Now, teaching isn't the worst job around, but it's by no means the best. Besides, the job of secondary school teachers in the US isn't to teach rigorous material, but to expose students to subjects and train them in the fundamentals." First, that's exactly what irritates me in the US. Most of the "fundamentals" should be taught in middle school. In high school (which last 3 yrs vs 4 yrs in the US) you are taught in depth subject of your certain specialization (science, language, or technical). Secondary education is what is so bad in the US. In my classes, I have the impression I have turnt back to middle school in France (I'm currently in a HS in the US). The teachers seem so shallow in their knowledge, and that's what holds you back from getting a great advance.
Also, have you ever asked yourself why the US is one of the only country where there is no real baccalaureate for graduation at HS? (they have an astonishingly easy SAT that does not even test calculus, or extensive writing skills)
Hey, and in France, engineering (at least in the "Grande Ecole") is damn good and hard to get into also. It's a two step process where you get first into an intensive math/physical science 2yrs, and pass an exam. If you get a very high percentile you get into the engineering school where you study engineering degree for 3 yrs. That is the LOWEST degree for engineering you could get (5 yrs), and is an equivalent of a master.</p>
<p>"Also, in many developed countries, high school lasts longer than it does in the US" False, it's shorter.</p>
<p>"The same holds for medical school. Because of a greater secondary education, premed years in France last 1 yr (versus the 4 yrs in the US). Students start directly with organic chemistry, biochemistry, biophysic and other courses in their FIRST year of premed."
Do they take the same courses? Are the courses covered in comparable breadth and depth? Is the level of rigor the same? Is the instruction as adequate? Is the retention in the same ball park? What is perceived educational effectiveness like?"
Actually the level is harder.</p>
<p>"His background knowledge in the area of statistical signal processing and math in general (linear algebra, etc.) seemed to be far ahead of the US students"
Not surprising. Foreign countries get a real head start straight from HS in math and physical science.<br>
For those who don't believe it, I would urge them to take the 8th grade math problems in vietnam. If they can solve those problems, they can brag about their education. So far, no 10th grader in my H S has managed to do this.</p>
<p>"Is the quality of instruction the same, or just the subject matter?"
As it is pointed out above, it is both. You yourself have to admit secondary education in the US is not taken seriously
"Is the treatment more or less rigorous?" A LOT more rigourous (personal experience. English essays in France were graded MUCH harder than essays I now write in the US.) Grade inflation in the US is just an enormous problem</p>
<p>"Do you have any learning comprehension figures?" No but if you compare the standard requirement for graduation in US HS, it's dismal. The depth and level of critical thinking required is in one word, BAD. I never had a multiple choice question while in France. Everything involved writing skills. A french student will be much more encouraged to show insight and maturity than an american student who could only show that he bubbled in the right letter.
A person graduating from HS in France is a lot more cultured and well rounded, since he is exposed to a lot of critical thinking in his economics, political science, philosophy, literature courses. </p>
<p>"How are the secondary education systems of those countries structured - similarly to the US's secondary education system? Are the systems even comparable, or do they operate on different philosophies?"
The structure (at least in France and Vietnam) is very similar but the philosophy is a LOT different. In the US, speed and quantity is more valued than quality. We are more pressured to "fill" the essay page instead of showing insight. We are more pressured to write "fast food essays" as I call it. An example is the SAT essay (25 minutes) vs the baccalaureate essay in France (the philosophy essay takes 6 hours to complete) </p>
<p>"Are you qualified to make such assertions?" Very much, I am in a US high school, went to an international school in France, have a Vietnamese family who studied in Russia, Vietnam and France.</p>
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Id rather give my business to a American Business over any Bodega or international business. Because I know that , the extra cost is not because the product is more expensive, its more expensive because the owner needs to survive
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<p>If your attitude is that Americans should not buy foreign products, then the converse is equally true - foreigners should not American products. So what happens to all those Americans who make their living selling to foreigners?</p>
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When you say this, do you mean that the employment prospect for an engineer (ChemE specifically) would be more advantageous than, say, the employment prospect of a bio major wanting to teach high school, or a postdoc to seek for a tenure-track position at a 4 year university?
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<p>Exactly. That's because an engineering graduate can also go teach high school (i.e. in math or science) if he wants to. An engineer grad can also ultimately obtain a PhD (and not necessarily in engineering, but perhaps in a completely different field) and then try to become a tenured academic. For example, Vernon Smith earned his BS in EE from Caltech, and then later earned a PhD in economics from Harvard, and ultimately ended up winning the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002. </p>
<p>Hence, one could say that an engineering degree provides a superset of the possibilitoes of other degrees. Those with engineering degrees can do what those with most other bachelor's degrees can do, but the reverse is not true. Again, I stress the point that you are not required to work as an engineer if you have an engineering degree. Plenty decide to pursue other ventures. What the degree does is give you a wide range of choices. </p>
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1.Is that true? I just suppose that because engineering programs (ABET accredited) are the most challenging ones, so hard work usually pays off. I just don't know how much advantage an engineering degree will give.
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<p>Careful with the accreditation motif. Just because a program is not accredited does not mean it is unrigorous. Some extremely rigorous and highly respected engineering degrees are not ABET-accredited. For example, bioengineering at Berkeley is not accredited. Neither is materials science & engineering at Berkeley or Stanford. </p>
<p>ABET accreditation matters only in certain fields, notably CivE, and to a lesser extent ME, ChemE, and perhaps EE. Newer fields, like bioengineering and MSE, are not certified by any of the states, which renders accreditation effectively meaningless. There is no such thing as a state-certified Professional BioEngineer. Hence, it doesn't really matter whether your bioengineering degree is accredited or not. There are some no-name schools that offer ABET-accredited bioengineering programs, but I would not choose one of them over Berkeley just because of the accreditation. </p>
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don't know about "the Internet" per se, but I was under the impression that the World Wide Web was actually invented by European scientists (Briton Tim Berners-Lee and Belgian Robert Cailluau ) while working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. </p>
<p>I must be wrong though. Every American knows Al Gore invented the Internet (as he once claimed !).
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<p>Uh, no, the Internet was actually indeed invented by Americans. The Internet (known as the Arpanet back then) began life in the 1960's as a project within DARPA in the Department of Defense, and the original Arpanet connected 4 schools (Stanford, University of Utah, UCLA, UCSB). </p>
<p>The WWW was indeed started by Tim Berners-Lee - but as an overlay of the Internet, and specifically, as a way to communicate HTML (Web) pages over the Internet. But the Internet is not, and has never been, just about the Web. Some of the original uses of the Internet (Arpanet) were for remote time-sharing of computer systems. But the 'killer app' of the Internet/Arpanet was obviously (and probably still is) email. Email existed separately from, and was invented years before, the WWW. Another extremely popular use of the Internet even today is obviously the remote sharing of files, i.e. today's (usually illegal) sharing of audio and video clips. Again, that has nothing to do with the WWW.</p>
<p>"Also, in many developed countries, high school lasts longer than it does in the US" False, it's shorter.</p>
<p>I know for a fact that in Italy Liceo lasts 5 years. I was under the impression that secondary education also lasted 5 years in Germany. How many years does one have to attend school, in total, in France, Spain, etc? I'm guessing it's more than the K-12 of American high schools.</p>
<p>Furthermore, I apologize as it seems I have misunderstood. I thought we were discussing post-secondary education (college) for a minute, in my previous posts. I concede that secondary (high school) education in the US is vastly inferior to that in Europe, at least, academically speaking. Sorry for the confusion.</p>
<p>Yeah, I also apologize for my intemperate posts, but that's because I am fed up with all my american peers and counselors who underestimate foreign education ( and screw up my french transcript).</p>
<p>"However, I would argue that grad school in the US is a total different thing." I posted this, meaning that in no way do I underestimate the graduate level in the US (a reason why there are so many US nobel prize winners). We may well have a point in common.</p>
<p>PS: in France high school last 3 yrs.</p>
<p>in Pakistan we have secondary school in 9 and 10. Intermediate level is in 11th and 12 grade. At this stage we learn Calculus 1 and 2, organic chemistry + inorganic chemistry , and pretty much the freshman year of college physics! but what use???? we have to cram all that stuff within a 3 month period, no wonder 70% is an A grade..........</p>
<p>Quote:
Yeah, I also apologize for my intemperate posts, but that's because I am fed up with all my american peers and counselors who underestimate foreign education ( and screw up my french transcript).</p>
<p>We are brother i guess, i have the same problem, my transcripts were ruined by the counselor. They didnt even qualify me for merit aid! unbelievable. I requested them to reevaluate. lets see what happens now..</p>
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Also, let's not forget, sooner or later Chinese workers will also demand higher wages. It won't be nearly as high as American workers but it will give companies something to think about.
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<p>If it happens,some lower level industries will move to vietnam,thailand or some other developing countries.</p>
<p>"( and screw up my french transcript)."</p>
<p>I hear you. Second in my graduating class, at the most prestigious liceo in Bologna, they gave me a 3.5 GPA. Pfft.</p>
<p>Still, I wonder if the problem's not on our end. Maybe we should just inflate grades a little, and then the US would understand, and, effectively, nothing would change.</p>