How would British / UK schools stack up against American / US schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a general rule, UK schools are overrated. There's no real reason why a school like Oxford and Cambridge should ever be considered on par, let alone better, than HYPSM. Their inflated reputation has more to do with the vestiges of colonialism and imperialism than anything else.

A tangent, but Americans would do well to get over their Anglophilia. The British certainly don't think highly of Americans and our education system, so there's no reason why we should be over here fawning over the British and their schools and letting it get into their collective heads.

Oh dear.

I mean, are all these people refuting this British or what? I think it's a terrible look for Americans when Brits collectively look down their nose on us while we're licking their boots. America's tertiary education system is, amid the many (many) shortcomings of this country, one of the few things Americans can confidently say we're world leaders in. Our collective fixation on schools like Oxford and Cambridge is a holdover from Britain's sway on the world stage and our association of "British" with anything classy, upper-class, and better quality.

This is a tangential analogy, but it's sort of how like Brits will view an American accent with anything ranging from disinterest to outright disdain, while 100% of Americans will fawn over a British accent.

All this BS aside, in the 1990's the US was #6 in the world for education and now? #27

PP here. You're looking at figures for K-12 education. Even here, America's top secondary schools/systems (because, true to the grotesque inequity embedded in our society, each state/municipality/district varies wildly in quality) outperform the top secondary schools/systems elsewhere. Do you really think somewhere like FCPS or the Big 3 DC independent schools are anything but first-class?

What I'm talking about, if you had actually taken the time to pay attention, is tertiary education, where America is indisputably the world leader. This is in large part due to the intense concentration of wealth at the top schools. Harvard has an endowment bigger than half of the world's economies, at over 41 billion USD. Oxford, with more students, has less than 8 billion USD. If Oxford were in the United States, its endowment wouldn't even crack the top 10.

Mic drop.

Who knew this forum had so many Brits? Looks like they've all gone quiet now, though...

I wrote a rebuttal and then I just trashed it because it really wasn't going to change the PP's opinion. Endowment is an imperfect metric by which to measure quality, particularly for European schools that are much more generously government-financed. However, if we'd like to pursue the endowment issue, Texas A&M holds the 7th largest endowment in the US and Michigan holds the 8th. Michigan is routinely derided on this site and I would hardly imagine that the DCUM set is rushing to send their children off to College Station. Conversely, Cambridge's endowment would rank somewhere around 12 or 13 in the US, higher than Duke, Northwestern, University of Chicago, Dartmouth, Cornell and Brown.

You're mistaken. Cambridge's endowment sits at around 9.5 billion USD. Northwestern's endowment is 11 billion USD.

Michigan and the Texas schools are absolutely gargantuan, which explains their endowment sizes.

Whether you'd like to admit it or not, the more funds a school has, the better able to provide resources for their students and attract/retain talent. Whether those friends or publicly or privately derived makes no difference.

This is why you see a lot of smart European and Asian folks teaching in the US because American schools offer significantly higher salaries than Oxbridge or any government-funded university in Europe. Don't forget that staff at Oxbridge (and most universities across the UK) had a strike over faculty salaries last year and a lot of classes were suspended, which is very damaging to the education experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I attended a rigorous international high school in Asia (think Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong) that sent students to both British and American unis. Many top students applied to both HYPSM/Ivies Plus as well as Oxbridge/LSE/UCL, and would always choose the American schools (especially HYPSM) over Oxbridge schools, unless they had family in the UK or something like that. I'm familiar with similar schools elsewhere and this was pretty much the case everywhere.

That's true - American schools also give you more freedom to pick your major as opposed to studying a fixed subject matter for three years that you may end up not liking and alumni networks are generally stronger for American schools in the job market. The job market in the UK is not terrible, but also not ideal. Entry-level salaries are quite low compared to the US and employment options for international students are rather limited, however, the Oxbridge name does carry a lot of clout in other countries. Still, my impression with the people I've met from overseas is that if they can afford to send their children to the ivies or Oxbridge for undergrad, they usually would favor the US over the UK.

Precisely. And the areas where Oxbridge does have clout equal to HYPSM are the UK, Europe, and several former/present Commonwealth realms. In much of the rest of the world, a degree from a top American school holds more water, particularly in developed regions like East Asia. Hence, HYPSM > Oxbridge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I attended a rigorous international high school in Asia (think Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong) that sent students to both British and American unis. Many top students applied to both HYPSM/Ivies Plus as well as Oxbridge/LSE/UCL, and would always choose the American schools (especially HYPSM) over Oxbridge schools, unless they had family in the UK or something like that. I'm familiar with similar schools elsewhere and this was pretty much the case everywhere.

That's true - American schools also give you more freedom to pick your major as opposed to studying a fixed subject matter for three years that you may end up not liking and alumni networks are generally stronger for American schools in the job market. The job market in the UK is not terrible, but also not ideal. Entry-level salaries are quite low compared to the US and employment options for international students are rather limited, however, the Oxbridge name does carry a lot of clout in other countries. Still, my impression with the people I've met from overseas is that if they can afford to send their children to the ivies or Oxbridge for undergrad, they usually would favor the US over the UK.

Precisely. And the areas where Oxbridge does have clout equal to HYPSM are the UK, Europe, and several former/present Commonwealth realms. In much of the rest of the world, a degree from a top American school holds more water, particularly in developed regions like East Asia. Hence, HYPSM > Oxbridge.

I mean, in most of continental Europe, Harvard would be viewed as more prestigious than Oxford.