Reply to I'm telling my kids to go to the UK for undergrad

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I wouldn't want my kid going through the British system. They specialize kids say too early there. They start narrowing kids to a specialty at 16, when they choose a few A levels. Most British kids drop languages then, which is why it:s an area of weakness for the UK. If you are going into the sciences, you'll never take another history course after age 16, and a prospective history major won't take another science course. At university, you take few courses outside your field. You can also loaf until final exams (unless you are at Oxbridge under the tutorial system).

That doesn't really make for a well educated population. I'm consistently floored when I speak.to Europeans,especially scientists. They are often very ignorant of the world outside their own field. My American scientist friends all understand my field of economics and have taken courses in it. The European scientists couldn't define economicd. Say what you like about the multicultural studies requirementd, but at least they have made white kids from the burbs think about tbeir place in society.

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Absolute gibberish. I learnt more history by the time I was 16 than Americans have by age 21. Prancing around from bullshit course to bullshit course like undergrads do here does not make you well educated. In the good British Universities you learn how to think. The subject is irrelevant.[/quote]

Perhaps you do learn how to think at Oxbridge. Their tutorial system is markedly different from the approach used by the rest of the country. Talking to researchers from the EU has not convinced me that that's true in general. I usually hear the kind of casual racism that you get from someone who hadn't been asked to look at the world from any perspective other that their own since age 15.I also hear an inability to know how their work fits into the big picture. That's how Hitler got all of those scientists to do his bidding. They didn't ask questions until it was too late. In thecUK, there is the added problem that the brightest students go into the City, not academia, and s lot of the top professors take the brain drain to the US for higher salaries.

The world of research is rapidly becoming more interdisciplinary. Historians and political scientists are finding that they need graduate level statistics in order to publish. Scientists ignore public policy at their peril, since they are dependent on government funding.

You may call US courses bullshit. That's exactly what I expect from someone with the kind of narrow view of the world that you get by focusing on one subject and thinking that somehow makes you well educated.[/quote]

I hate to burst everyone's "it's so much better in Europe" thread, but I'm married to a European and I work with/interact with a large number of Europeans (not just from the UK, though) and this has been my experience as well. If there are such advantages to the UK system then why did the British Education Minister suggest a few years ago that the UK needs to look at its system because it's narrow focus from a young age is not helping it's students in the long run?(I'm paraphrasing, but it was something along those lines).

Also, to the PP who kids have dual citizenship you may want to reconsider applying as a UK citizen because the reason that it's getting easier for Americans and other nationalities to get accepted to UK universities is because they want and need the international tutition (not unlike what's happening to US universities). I know someone who applied as a UK citizen a few years ago and was denied admission, but when they re-applied as an international student to the same program (and the same admissions cycle) they were accepted. [/quote]

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