Reply to Record Number of U.S. Students Apply for U.K. Undergraduate Degrees For 2025-26

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Americans are cash cows for British universities, along with all other international students. There's only a few British schools worth leaving the US for and don't kid yourself today's UK is going to give you a unique experience. Maybe 20 years ago it would have.

The UK is bitterly divided by cultural and populist issues and there's significant pressures on universities these days from a variety of quarters. Just saying the grass isn't greener on the other side of the fence.[/quote]

Americans are also cash cows for American universities, along with all international students. It is a business and you need to be an informed consumer. You can get a great education for a great price in the UK if you choose wisely.

And every country is divided by cultural and populist issues. That said, I would take the current climate in the UK over the US any day. We don’t have a government that is trying to use every lever they have to destroy the any source of opposition there. [/quote]

Your post shows that you have no clue what the UK is really like, which is common among most Americans. UK politics is bitterly divided, the current Labour government has collapsed in approvals in the polls and is trailing Farage's Reform Party. Part of its unpopularity is the widely held perception that it pursues a two-tier policing and justice strategy, punishing one group more heavily than others, sending people to prison for a year over a twitter or FB post. Economically moribund, it's commonly talked that young people are seeking to leave the country for places like Dubai for job opportunities. Major demographic changes with even the current prime minister worried about the UK turning into an island of strangers. Universities have seen funding cut significantly and as academic cultures go, UK universities are even more conformist and pedantic than American universities.

It's not all doom and gloom, of course. But the myopia of Americans when it comes to the UK, whether it's people thinking it's still the posh land of milk and honey and people swanning around twee villages with posh accents, or a uber progressive wonderland of socially correct beliefs and an escape from whatever your American bogeyman is only just makes me laugh. [/quote]

I am the previous poster to this screed. But I have to say that I do have some clue of what the UK is like, having lived there for thirty years or so (and having received an excellent education there, as one of my children is also currently doing). You, on the other hand, appear to get all your information sources from right-wing "news" sources. Politics is far less divided there than here. And while US wages are much higher than the UK, unemployment there is below 5 percent and the economy is not doing too badly. Indeed, the UK was the fastest growing country in the G7 this last quarter.

So please keep your apocalyptic nonsense to yourself.[/quote]

I lived in the UK for many years as well and keep close ties with the country. You are talking with blinders on. I'm guessing you only read the Guardian and live in a very select progressive left Labour supporting constituency in a leafier part of London? Are you totally ignorant of the mushrooming of Reform and overtaking Labour in the polls? And the implication of Farage as leader of the Reform party? And the social unrest and tension especially the  riots that explode every now and then such as the one following the Southport knifing? The child grooming scandals that lasted for years out of fears of offending a certain demographic? The pervasive feelings among the young that they can never get on the property ladder, the concerns over mass migration and its implications on everything from housing to social welfare. There's a great deal of social tension bubbling underneath the surface in Britain (and in other European countries, including France and Germany). I'm just realistic about it and clearly you are not. It doesn't mean it's terrible and day to day life is certainly perfectly functional and fine but it's unquestionably a country with many, may, deep seated and regional tensions that no amount of head in the sand writers in the Guardian want to pretend. Like your comment about Brexit reveals. And American society is nowhere as divided as British society is, whether culturally or class or racially. Outside of DC and a few other cities, most Americans just get on with life regardless of politics.

An American kid going to a better university in Britain will be fine. He or she won't have the resources of the better American schools and it's a different approach to academics, with pros and cons. A lot of more affluent British kids are also coming to the US for university too, which is intriguing given how much more expensive it is for them.  Just don't see the UK as a playground for whatever fantasy you have. [/quote]

Yes, rich British kids are coming to the US for university.  That's because Oxbridge no longer accepts half the class from Eton. Unlike in the US, where alumni and donor status gives applicants a heavy thumb on the admissions scale, UK schools consider only the applicant's academic achievements and -- if they are from very low resource schools -- there are a few adjustments for poor kids. Larger numbers of middle class and poor kids going to uni means there are fewer spots for rich Brits. Only the richest can come to the US, given the massive difference in tuition. Most of them -- even the children of Russian oligarchs in London, would choose Oxbridge if it were an option for them.[/quote]

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