Top US private schools are cheaper for many British students than is Oxbridge

College Search & Selection
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<p>beyphy,</p>

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<p>The point that I’m making is that prestige is a distraction. Focus on the quality only. There are universities that are quality that aren’t as prestigious.</p>

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<p>Of course. But that speaks only to a relative difference, not to an absolute one.</p>

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<p>It’s called the Socratic method. In this case, I’m intentionally not answering your question so that you’ll admit that your point of contention doesn’t tell the whole story. There are other factors that go into quality and how we determine such quality. I describe some of them in post #18 in reply to sefago.</p>

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<p>Uh, why do privates spend more? You’re just assuming. There are some 2,400 four-year universities in this country, and 3/4 of them are private. The public schools overwhelmingly spend more than most of those private schools. So why is it that private schools necessarily spend more money?</p>

<p>The answer is, of course, that the top privates - the ones who are judged to be ‘the best’ - spend more, and that’s precisely why they’re judged to be the best: because they spend more. Those expenditures allow them to improve their quality. But being private =/= spending more (the reality is quite the opposite). </p>

<p>StarryEyes101,</p>

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<p>A few points: one, the QS rankings are produced by a British organization and intentionally favor UK universities. For example, the measures include % of international students and % of international faculty. While these only make up 10% of the total, it allows Cambridge to edge out top US privates: because the UK has such a small population, it draws mostly on international faculty/students. In fact, I can’t even find online data that says what % are from the UK only; Cambridge only gives data for students from the EU and calls the rest ‘international.’ In contrast, the US has such a large - and competitive - population that most faculty and students are not international. Thus they do poorly in this score, and while this score is still small, it’s enough to knock them a place or two (or more) behind Oxbridge.</p>

<p>As for the tutorial system, it is not, as you say, ‘one-on-one.’ Their tutorials are up to 4-5 students (can’t remember what the stated max is). But it doesn’t matter in relation to HYPSM, who have a better student:faculty ratio and offer a little-discussed advantage: independent study. At Stanford, for example, students can ask a prof to do independent study, which they get credit for and which requires significant reading, researching, and writing. Not the same structure as a tutorial, but this whole ‘tutorial system’ is not an advantage over HYPSM. They have their own system implemented to take care of the needs of students who want one-on-one interaction with professors, and it’s provided plentifully.</p>

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<p>This is a claim. Support it. Until you provide it with sufficient support, i’m going to reject it. (my standards aren’t too high; an example should suffice) </p>

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<p>the point of the socratic method is to inspire reflection in the reader/interlocutor (e.g. Euthyphro realizing that he’s bringing charges of impiety against his father when he has no idea of what piety is.) Additionally, the socratic method is used in regards to claims, not to questions. So no, you did not use the socratic method. I’d still be happy if you’d like to answer my original question though.</p>

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<p>Sure, i’ll agree with this. But are you arguing that SHYPM offers these overwhelmingly to their students while oxbridge doesn’t to the detriment of their students? if so, then support it with evidence; if not, then why is it relevent?</p>

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<p>perhaps when taken in total. But give me an example of any public university that has a budget of $4b. Private universities spend more money on instruction and research per student. So even while privates take in significantly less money than publics do (which isn’t that surprising since, as you noted, they only make up 25% of universities) they still spend more money per student.</p>

<p>[INFOGRAPHIC:</a> How Do Universities Spend Their Money? | Course Hero](<a href=“http://www.coursehero.com/blog/2011/05/03/infographic-how-do-universities-spend-their-money/]INFOGRAPHIC:”>http://www.coursehero.com/blog/2011/05/03/infographic-how-do-universities-spend-their-money/)</p>

<p>But we aren’t comparing all publics to all privates; we’re comparing same tier public universities to same tier private universities. And of these, i think my claim still holds. I could be wrong here, but if i am support your refutation.</p>

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<p>This is a textbook case of false cause if i’ve ever seen it. The amount of money spent on a given university has no bearing on whether it’s judged to be the best. UW-M might spend more money than Caltech on research, that doesn’t mean it’s better than caltech (or imply that the universities are in the same tier)</p>

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<p>phantasmagoric - “I don’t know how this is relevant.”</p>

<p>My point is relevant because I said that the undergraduate experience of Oxbridge and the Ivys is often vastly different due to the specialisation of the UK programmes, not to mention the differences in secondary school education. Therefore, I don’t think that you can really accurately compare Oxbridge to HYP. Had you read my post properly, you would have understood my point.</p>

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<p>beyphy,</p>

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<p>Rice University. Swarthmore. Occidental. So many others.</p>

<p>Of course, it depends on what you mean by ‘prestigious,’ and everyone has a different definition/perception.</p>

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<p>Well it’s not my fault if you don’t engage. ;)</p>

<p>I did answer your question re: the advantages, several times. Here’s another one: having better researchers and more money means students have access to better and more varied facilities - and not just research-related facilities. Cambridge, for example, has less than 4 million GSF of campus facilities; Yale has about 13 million, Stanford about 15 million, Harvard about 18 million, etc.</p>

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<p>I’m not saying that Oxbridge doesn’t. Just that HYPSM offer more.</p>

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<p>You’re just proving my point. The top private universities spend more. That’s why they’re considered the top. They pay the professors more, so they end up with the best professors; they attract faculty and students alike with new buildings; they offer innumerable perks to both, from technology-enabled classrooms to nice gyms; they hire extensive staff to support the university (e.g. Harvard and Stanford have roughly 2x the number of staff as Cambridge, not including medical staff or faculty/researchers/postdocs). They can do this because they can afford to. To be clear (since you seem to like to jump to conclusions), I’m not saying that Oxbridge can’t do this - just that those with more money can do the above more consistently.</p>

<p>By the way, UCLA has a budget of nearly $5 billion. Of course, operating budget doesn’t tell the whole story - you need to consider how the financial resources are spread out (the size of the university).</p>

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<p>Pointing out anomalies does not prove that it has no bearing, which is definitely an overstatement on your part. I’ve qualified my statement regarding quality and money - hence why I’ve used ‘correlate,’ although the statement you’re replying to was intentionally simplified. Either way, you can’t straw-man the argument by ignoring the obvious considerations of size (especially when you were just using the per-capita consideration for publics vs. privates above). As always, though, per-capita measures don’t tell all either; you have to consider both raw and per-capita.</p>

<p>londondad,</p>

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<p>I did read your post properly, and I judged it to be irrelevant. As I stated in several posts above (did you read those?), a university’s quality is measured by far more than simply their education (strict definition, as you seem to be using). And I never once argued that Oxbridge didn’t prove the same quality education, anyway.</p>

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<p>like londondad said,</p>

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<p>they’re completely different and which one is better depends solely on a student’s priorities. I don’t understand what any of you are trying to prove in this debate. no one is better than the other</p>

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<p>Well from my experience I doubt they are as incomparable as I hear online regardless of the claim on specialization and different high school systems. I have experienced both the US and UK systems of higher education and can qualitatively state that the major differences arise due to differences in student body and indeed funding. </p>

<p>The specialization bit is irrelevant- I was tutoring students in a class once in the UK with “specialized students” who had done A-levels and had less understanding with regards to key concepts than sophomores at top US universities. The specialization bit is kind of overblown, sometimes a lot of the advanced sounding classes most students take really end up covering basic stuff that you learn in US colleges too.</p>

<p>Yes this debate is probably going nowhere but I would say Oxbridge are in a very very different class from most UK universities in terms of undergraduate education. The gap between the oxbridge and other uk universities is a bit huge, its not like in the US where the gap between say Columbia and Harvard is quite small and really just overblown by high school kids.</p>

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<p>Occidental has a president as an alumni; smarthmore has long been one of the top lacs for many years. The only one not really at odds is Rice, although it says on their wiki page that they had JFK as a visiting professor. I’d say that’s pretty prestigious. I’ve seen your examples, and i disagree with them, but prestige is a vague word anyway, so i’m dropping this point.</p>

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<p>You’re naive if you think all professors care about is pay and facilities. Would you really pack up all of the things for you and your family and move to a completely different state just because one university paid you more money? it’s unlikely. </p>

<p>Stories like this are pretty rare, and the only really big instance i can think of it happening is with those 3 professors from UCSD who moved to rice. And even that was probably a good move since UCSD looks like it’s getting his pretty hard (they had to close down two libraries)</p>

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<p>according to the wiki’s page on both the University of California in addition to UCLA’s, UCLA has a budget of around ~3-3.5b. Why it’s so high than the next one, UCSF which only has a budget of 2.5b, i have no idea.</p>

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<p>you used the word ‘correlate’ yes, but directly before that, you didn’t. you didn’t say “Strong faculty correlate with more prestige, better facilities, better departments/programs, better funding for initiatives, and the like.” but “means” hence implying that the former is the cause of the latter. You can’t try to innocently claim to be making correlations when just before you made a causal statement (not directly of course but it’s there nonetheless)</p>

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<p>you keep making causal claims about resources and quality. You remind me of the economist who believes that money correlates with happiness, which would imply that the richest are the happiest ( a false premise since numerous studies have shown this to be untrue)</p>

<p>You made a claim that more spending = more quality. I gave an example of a university which spends a lot of money, but wouldn’t be considered quality over one that doesn’t spend as much. How is this a strawman? you must be confused on exactly what a strawman is. </p>

<p>Fear not, you’re posts are ripe with strawmen, so all you need to do is reread yours and you’ll understand exactly what a strawman is, and hence, not accuse someone of doing it prematurely next time. And, as long as we’re talking about logical fallacies, keep an eye out for weak analogies, suppressed evidence, and non sequitors as well; they won’t be too hard to find in your posts ;)</p>

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<p>You’re naive if you don’t. Why is it that universities are so concerned about endowed professorships? Why is it that UC Berkeley just used the last bit of its money to give professors raises, and said that the reason is that they absolutely have to keep hold of faculty? Why is it that #2 on the list of priorities for Berkeley’s [Challenge</a> for the Future](<a href=“http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/accountability/documents/accountabilityprofile09_ucb.pdf]Challenge”>http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/accountability/documents/accountabilityprofile09_ucb.pdf) is faculty pay? Why is it that one of the most important contentions about UCs is that their average faculty pay is far below private peers like HYPSM? (Note, also, point #4 at the end.)</p>

<p>This isn’t even a contested point: it’s a basic idea that every university president, trustee, and professor acknowledges. The pay is important to attract and retain professors. Facilities - from research labs to simple office space, all in new buildings - attract professors. There are two things that every major university strives to improve: the physical plant (facilities) and faculty quality. I could give you a thousand articles supporting this. How much do you keep up with university politics?</p>

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<p>Absolutely untrue. I continually read stories about UCs losing faculty - as they say ‘an exodus of faculty’ - and the main reason cited is always salary. That then leads into a discussion about UC funding, why they need more state funding to maintain the quality of the faculty, etc. It’s a completely boring story (though valid) that’s told over and over again. Why you’re contesting this, I don’t know. There’s really nothing more obvious and widely-accepted in academia.</p>

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<p>That was from years ago. [An</a> updated figure](<a href=“http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2010/01/ucla-budget-must-prioritize-education]An”>http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2010/01/ucla-budget-must-prioritize-education)</p>

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<p>Saying the same word over and over again sounds like a broken record. The statement that you quoted was intentionally simplified, the boiled-down argument, without qualifications - to make a summative point.</p>

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<p>Because your straw man was based on the premise of size. You cited UMich - a huge public university (one of the largest universities in the US) - with Caltech, the smallest top-20 private university, possibly the smallest top-50 university (haven’t checked about the others). You then attempted to make a point out of this in the hopes that it would refute my argument. But as I said, per-capita measures are also useful; you need to take into account both raw (e.g. operating budget) and per-capita (e.g. spending per student or per faculty member) measures. Both give you a strong picture of the spending of the university. That spending - dependent on both - correlates almost perfectly with perceived quality of the university, validated through both rankings and surveys of prestige.</p>

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<p>Please, point out where I’ve attempted a straw man argument, and I’ll be happy to clarify.</p>

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<p>phantasmagoric, i had a long, and well-written reply written earlier, but apparently the college confidential webpage expired and deleted it all. So i’ll try to sum up my main points.</p>

<p>*Berkeley increasing its faculty pay isn’t surprising. If you look at the AAUP, this year berkeley isn’t in the top 25 (as it has been for several many other years; although UCLA is) This certainly hasn’t gone unnoticed and it probably is making great political problems for berkeley.</p>

<p>*I’m not contesting that all universities want to increase their facilities or their quality faculty. What i’m contesting is that these things are what draw in the ‘best’ professors. A point you still haven’t provided evidence for.</p>

<p>*i made a mistake in calling stories like that ‘rare.’ I meant rare for “elite universities” (i.e. top 25 by USNWR) although i could still be wrong about this. Although after some research i saw that the so called ‘coup’ by rice on UCSD, taking 3 prestigious professors at once, was rare. but there were various factors that went into this such as texas major funding of the cancer treatment, and higher quality facilities, but it was also probably the result of what seems to be the deterioration of UCSD.</p>

<p>*first of all, the fallacy i “commited” still isn’t a straw man. since i responded to your original argument rather than making and defeating a new one. At worst it’s the fallacy of suppressed evidence (although even this, i believe, is intentional. Mine, if i commited it, was certainly not) Additionally, we can sit here and argue about what criteria is fair to allow and which isn’t, but at the end i don’t see why it’s fair to allow some criteria and not others. while i didn’t compare Michigan with Caltech, but Wisconsin, lets say that i did. Michigan’s endowment is like 4x’s caltechs. Does that mean it’s more prestigious or constantly steals faculty from caltech? Probably not considering that caltech offers similar levels of prestige, same/higher quality facilities, and probably more pay (Michigan isn’t in the AAUP top 25 this year either.)</p>

<p>*saying the ‘University of California’ is misleading. Especially when considering that only two of the schools, out of the 9 UG institutions, are in the top 25, and hence, elite universities. I do concede your point though. as a whole, UC has probably lost a ton of prestigious faculties, as a whole, but i don’t think berkeley or LA have come to any losses as close as SD. And since we’re talking about prestigious universities (for the sake of argument, can we agree top 30 on USNWR? This will include Michigan, NYU, and NC) i don’t think it’s fair to talk about UC as a whole.</p>

<p>*as far as your use of the word ‘correlate’ goes, i’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, but it was nonetheless confusing. Word of advice: make sure your explicit which claims you’re trying to make causal and which claims your trying to say are merely correlations.</p>

<p>*lastly, you cited operations and per capita spending. I wasn’t trying to play some game here and be deceptive (and my apologies if it came out that way) do you have some resource online where such data is available? i’d like to take a look at it.</p>

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<p>“Top US private schools are cheaper for many British students than is Oxbridge”</p>

<p>It’s an interesting thread title, seeing that the top British schools are cheaper for many US students than the (not necessarily top) US privates. It’s fascinating; it appears to be true in both directions.</p>

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<p>Phantas, I cannot speak for Oxford, but at Cambridge, the tutorial is mostly conducted on a one-on-one basis. There’s more than enough support system the university employs that sometimes it already becomes irritating to some students. I personally feel that the one-on-one tutorial, while helpful, was unnecessary sometimes. And, while I personally believe that Cambridge shouldn’t be number one in the world as that title belongs only to Harvard, there is no evidence that the likes of Princeton and Yale are superior to Cambridge as a whole.</p>

<p>As to Cambridge’s facilities, I never thought they’re lacking or inferior. I never heard anyone at Cambridge complain about the lack of facilities. I think Camrbidge’s facilities are awesome. The university’s architecture serves as a model to many American universities, including the Ivy’s.</p>

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<p>Are Penn and Duke better than Camrbidge and Oxford too if you look at things like research expenditure, availability of grants, variety of labs funded on campus, etc. etc.? I don’t know why phantasmagoric is limiting his comparison to HYPSM vis-a-vis Oxbridge since many of his points apply to all the top 12 private schools in the United States such as generous grants available to fund student research projects and clubs as well as the availability of Independent Study as a junior or a senior.</p>

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<p>I also have experience with both systems. And I have to disagree with you. A-levels teach the subject up to what US students learn their first year of college. In the US system, only AP classes cover that and the average American high school subjects don’t cover the syllabus of A-levels.</p>

<p>They are incomparable. I’ve been in both the British and US systems, and each has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. Preference depends on the students priorities. I’ll say it again: no one is better than the other.</p>

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At least in terms of campus beauty, I think Cambridge leaves pretty much every other university in the dust. Alexandre posted this link a while ago that shows how truly gorgeous the university is.</p>

<p>[Cambridge</a> University Photo Gallery](<a href=“http://www.pbase.com/compuminus/cambridge]Cambridge”>http://www.pbase.com/compuminus/cambridge)</p>

<p>Some of the Ivies are very beautiful, though none quite match up. I am admittedly an unabashed fan of Gothic architecture; I think it’s the most suitable for a college campus and is particularly beautiful in the snow.</p>

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<p>Assuming that the top students only learn what is covered in AP classes. That’s the major assumption. When you get to the top 1-2% of students who occupy the top 10-15 you are in a very very different league entirely. Even when I was in undergrad 80% of the science students were already familiar with multivariate calculus just by self-learning or taking advanced classes in nearby colleges. Or their teachers had gone way above the curriculum. The A-levels (the math, further math, physics and chemistry- the ones are familiar with) are not that hard, the material is very algorithmic, you just have to practice past papers.</p>

<p>Also A-levels is kind of grade-inflated and not all the students who even get As have a thorough grasp of the subject. I used to help kids in second-year engineering at a UK university with A-level math and further math who were pretty average compared to most students in their sophomore year in the US. Most had even taken a year of engineering math and still could not apply diff equations to solve engineering problems outside the box. All they were interested in was getting the math formula and chugging it into a calculator and then spitting it out. Maybe that’s an engineering thing I don’t know just that they were on able to think outside the box to solve problems which I found kind of odd.</p>

<p>I think the problem is that most people generalize based on the “average” high-school student body in the US. But the students at the top schools say studying math or physics are not the “average” high school student.The kids who went to Andover/Exeter or Stuyvesant already have a thoroughly comprehensive science background that might be a bit higher than the average American student (which I have to agree is pretty below average compared to most countries). </p>

<p>Also Oxbridge students are much higher in quality than other UK schools just slightly below them in “league” tables. That’s why their advanced education is effective because they are very very smart. Its more where you place on the IQ curve as opposed to advanced education IMO.</p>

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<p>jhaverford4587: That would be indeed a most interesting comparison between Oxbridge and Duke…:smiley: Duke is a great institution, but cannot complete against Oxbridge by any means – not even in terms of money. </p>

<p>The particular reason why everyone compares HYPSM with Oxbridge is that these are the world top 10 institutions (+Columbia, CalTech, Chicago and, in terms of research, Berkeley). You can start comparing Duke to, say, Cambridge, but name just one respectable world ranking (there are three big one) that puts Duke into the top 10.</p>

<p>Duke:</p>

<p>QS World 19</p>

<p>TIMES World 24</p>

<p>ARWU World 35</p>

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Are you so sure?</p>

<p>Duke’s Endowment: $4.8 billion for approximately 6,600 undergraduates
Oxford’s Endowment: $5.3 billion for approximately 11,800 undergraduates</p>

<p>Even if you factor in the fact that Oxford receives money from the UK government, that would still put it about even with Duke in terms of endowment per capita and certainly not above.</p>

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Yeah but all 3 of those world rankings are heavily flawed and don’t consider factors related to undergraduate education at all. Only Harvard and Oxford are in the top 10 in all 3 of those rankings. YPSM fall out of the top 10 in one or two of those three rankings which automatically discredits them in my eyes.</p>

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<p>Have no idea what are you talking about; Cambridge and MIT are also in the top 10 in all of the rankings.</p>

<p>Moreover, these ranking may be indeed flawed, but this changes but nothing: the ARWU, the TIMES and the QS are the most respected rankings worldwide. Nonetheless, I most certainly not intend to start a debate over that Duke is better than Oxford for undergraduate education…</p>