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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]10:10 again. It also feels like I'm being overly critical. All these schools offered interesting courses and had beautifully laid out campuses (no A/C in a lot of dorms though). I can't put my finger on WHY none of us were enthused. For us parents, perhaps it was the price sinking in. We'd rather pay just for the courses, you know? Seems like the manicured grounds, athletic complex and all the extras are weighing down the budget here :-) DS was looking for small classes and a particular program, and he'd rather go to a less selective school that has that program than these beautiful SLACs, even if the classes are bigger. His preferred school is *even more expensive*, but since it's less selective, he's hoping for merit aid and the school did say that they offered some at his range of stats.

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We really should be moving towards a European-style, subsidized post-secondary education, with just the academics, no frills. That way, more people will have the opportunity to receive a better education, and we might avoid election pitfalls such as our ongoing political saga.
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As someone with one of these European educations you idealize, I really hope the US doesn’t go that way. I think it would be a terrible loss. [/quote]

PP you replied to. I actually am European, and studied in my home country. I think it's a much more equitable system that delivers rigorous education to the most students for truly rock-bottom costs. However, it requires students to specialize early. There is no exploring in undergrad. And the facilities are bare-bones compared to lush American campuses. DS is American, and prefers to look at colleges here, Canada and possibly the UK (not my home country).

But if the point is to deliver a good education at low cost, then EU or Asian-style education is the way to go. You know, Christian Nationalism and political divisions are rising everywhere in the western hemisphere. I attribute its greater rise in the US to a much more unequal society. Access to a post-secondary education is part of the problem. And before that, a fragmented and often very low set of standards for K-12 is an even greater part of the problem. And before that, scraping the bottom of the barrel for adults with two neurons to rub together to teach K-12 is an even greater part of the problem. Unlike in certain other countries, the USA has very low quality education degrees, because it has difficulty recruiting top candidates who prefer to do other work. And now some states do not even require an education degree or teaching certificate to provide instruction to children. Education is the cornerstone of building independent and critical thinkers in a world that reacts faster than it can process news. The USA has to bring down the barriers to education at all levels. [/quote]

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