<p>Again, the US is far from #1, in this case at providing places for foreign students, relative to its own population size. Australia per capita is supporting 3x as many foreign students.</p>
<p>Any English-speaking country can provide the quality of university education, in English, that most foreign students want.</p>
<p>A MAJOR part of advantage of the US over countries like Germany in providing education to foreign students is the desire of ESL speakers to become fully proficient in English.</p>
<p>If the US would stop focusing on being “well rounded”, babying students, and catering to individuals/families that could care less about education then we could match other nations. These are three major problems that are present in every classroom K-12 that, quite frankly, other nations could care less about.</p>
<p>Either you’re ■■■■■■■■, or you have no idea what you’re talking about. Oh, or both. They’re rarely mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>Correlation is not causation. There’s a correlation between amount of firefighters at a large fire and damage done… So, direct correlation between damage done in dollars and number of firefighters. Lurking variable: the size of the freakin’ fire. Does that mean that firefighters cause more damage at fires? No.</p>
<p>Guess what? Same principle applies to test performance. We train everyone to the same academic standard, and some simply surpass it. It doesn’t mean that our education system is screwed up. </p>
<p>(This is a reply to someone on the front page):</p>
<p>“I LOVE how much American’s who see this make a whole bunch of excuses instead of realizing that the educational system is messed up! Really there direct correlation between time spent in school and rank…and guess what America is on the lower list of time spent in the class. So please stop making excuses for America when it is the people’s faults!”</p>
<p>A screwed up education system wouldn’t necessarily cause the low ranking.</p>
<p>I suppose if I slapped you in the face 20 times and you felt a sharp pain 20 times, it’s just correlation and not causation? Some things are obviously causation, my friend. You can choose to call them “lurking variables” and the rest of us will call them by their more commonly used name - “excuses”. Oh, speaking of lurking variables, please, propose some for our entertainment.</p>
<p>For one thing, the study is flawed in that it purports to show results for the American education system. There is no singular American education system. There are thousands of them, dozens in each state, thousands more that are private . . . and then there are tens of thousands home schooled. Now it may be that many of the locally run government schools lack the legal authority to implement changes that would make their schools appear more “competitive” - one still has to consider how it might be that so many brilliant teenagers end up applying to colleges from high schools in the U.S. each year. Somebody must be doing something right somewhere. The “study” hasn’t picked that up.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>What makes you think this isn’t true in many of the other countries?</p></li>
<li><p>Maybe if you are right about this, and the study is right American students as a whole aren’t doing particularly well, this shows that the American decentralised system you mention is a bit crap?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Why do so many of the critics of these results point to the US as being some special case?
…and please stop using China as the main comparison…there are 34 countries in the OECD and US students, on average, were beaten by roughly 50% of the other countries…so enough about China.</p>
<p>OECD countries have their own Poverty issues.
They have Diversity issues
They have large migrant communities for whom national language is not spoken at home.
They have decentralised, state and local based educational systems and authorities.
They have Disadvantaged students.
They have ADHD students, students with Learning Difficulties, or Dyslexia.
They have some students who don’t care about study
They have some parents who care even less.
They have some teachers who don’t care.
They have inner city crime, drugs, and gangs.
They have crap TV and violent video games
They have strong teachers unions who strike or cause disruption.
Their citizens claim they don’t spend enough on education.</p>
<p>In fact the reason the test is sponsored by the OECD and not someone like the UN is because the OECD is a more similar sample group…a test of 15 year old students amongst wealthier, industrialised, developed countries…pretty much what we used to call the ‘First World’</p>
<p>Actually, having experienced the education and University systems in the US, Australia, Ireland, and the UK, first hand, I can’t think of one single external mitigating factor that even partially explains the performance of US students in the current PISA test in relation to their OECD peers.</p>
<p>Mediocre is the word.
You may think it doesn’t matter, that’s up to yourself.</p>
<p>I think the obvious reason is that we expect all students to pursue a standard college diploma. Who are they testing? Are they testing all of the students or just the ones who were directed toward college rather than a vocational track? Is the population generally homogeneous as in Japan and Norway. That makes a huge difference as students who are from the same culture tend to approach the learning environment in a similar fashion. In the US we do what no other country tries to do-educate everyone regardless of race, creed, color, or socio-economic circumstances. I am so tired of studies that compare the US to countries like China where everyone is from the same demographic-ridiculous!</p>
<p>…“In the US we do what no other country tries to do-educate everyone regardless of race, creed, color, or socio-economic circumstances.”</p>
<p>You must be joking right?</p>
<p>Maybe you should look up which countries make up the OECD membership BEFORE trotting out your rather myopic perspective.</p>
<p>Yes…Of course we don’t educate all our children in Sweden, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland. Italy. Germany France, Iceland etc…Just America does that.</p>
<p>as I noted above… Australia and the UK send higher percentages of high school students to University than the US does and have policy plans to markedly increase those percentages over the next 10 years.</p>
<p>imagine, how the time spent trotting out 15 pages of excuses on CC could have been better spent waking up their kids to the real world and reminding them of the importance of education.</p>
<p>My guess would be the American culture. After attending k-12 and college in the US, I can say that for every motivated, intelligent kid who takes their education seriously there are several more that don’t give a **** about anything but devoting all their time to texting all day long, video games, parties, sports, etc.</p>
<p>* I noted above… Australia and the UK send higher percentages of high school students to University than the US does and have policy plans to markedly increase those percentages over the next 10 years.*</p>
<p>The road to Oz, doesn’t have a pot of gold at the end of it.</p>
<p>Ok…A little context:
Australia ranks much higher than the US or the UK on the PISA test
The UK ranks lower than the US
The US, Australia, and the UK are the major destinations for international students and all 3 countries actively promote (quite successfully) University Education as an ‘export’ industry.</p>
<p>The PISA results have caused consternation in the UK (they are Brits after all)
The results have caused an uproar in Australia (Aussies being much rowdier) even though they are well ahead of the US and UK.</p>
<p>The theme of my posts here have been that the PISA scores, especially in Australia and the UK, are a concern due to the perceived lack of competitive performance against imported international students in the future.</p>
<p>Given that its unlikely that ‘the international market’ in college education will be rolled back the trend leaves local candidates (in the US, UK and Australia) less likely to be competitive against imported foreign candidates for domestic university placements.</p>
<p>As you correctly note…there is much soul searching and gnashing of teeth amongst the Brits and the Aussies.</p>
<p>Why not in the US?
Many of the contributors here have come up with a manner of possible reasons why the US scores are so decidedly mediocre…but very few have attempted to think about where this trend is heading.</p>
<p>Believe me there is a lot of talk about it in the UK and Australia.</p>
<p>Personally I think the the who came first and who came third ‘claims to fame’ are juvenile and unimportant.
I feel for Australia, The US, and UK the question of being able to compete in their own domestic markets against increasing affluent and academically able foreign students is the real question</p>
<p>I think it’d be interesting to see which students took the scores. Like if it was prep schools are some poor inner city school. I didn’t read through it all but I’m just wondering. Or if it was a random sample.</p>