Very cool. I just hope that, as we anticipate everything from future exploration to space tourism, we can find less crude ways to hurl people into space. An occasional launch is great entertainment, but as they become more common we’ll be punching too many holes in the Ozone layer, in addition to other potential atmospheric damage (it’s ironic there’s a refinery flaring in the background). I hope we’ll transition to something else, like an orbiting launching station, accessed by high-altitude aircraft with gentler footprints.
You obviously didn’t go to my school, which was terrible. What I learnt was because of my parents and despite my schools.
Or do you mean university? In which case, probably still the same thing. English* degrees are shorter than almoat everyone else, so far as I can tell, and I really don’t like the idea of specializing from age 16 (okay, now I’m back to schools again).
I know some schools in the US do the International Baccalaureate now. I’ve heard good things about that.
*from what I know of it, the Scottish system sounds much better.
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What college?
So will Math, Biology, Science and History. The humanities I’m not so sure about.
Without trying to do new things, are we even human any more?
I’m pretty sure I didn’t attend with you. I did however attend schools in Bristol and Oxford and spent a ‘luvely’ year freezing my buns off at a military school in Cornwall. My mother is British, as are my cousins and I met my 1st wife while she was attending university up north. I think I have a pretty good handle on British education.
You may have had a poor experience, but to color the British education system based on your one experience is illogical. The same could be said for you presumption without support regarding the Scottish system. And the length of time it takes to earn a degree has nothing to do with the quality of education. The average British 3 year degree seems to stack up very well against the bloated US system for example, which requires repeating unnecessary classes that should have been learned in the lower grades, and required courses that aren’t associated with your choice of a field of study.
Univ of Maryland for my BA (and transfer classes from a British College; Wroxton Abbey). Ball State and Michigan Univ for my Masters. All completed in 6 years BTW while working full time.Although a kid can get out without debt by doing it the way I did then, I can’t see him/her completing it in 6 years. Classes are just not available to do so it seems. At least not here in California.
Sorry, I honestly wasn’t trying to offend, just trying to work out what you meant. And I’m perfectly happy to concede you know more about the subject. I just get confused sometimes when Americans talk about school or college instead of university.
Good for you if you had a good experience in British schools (which I imagine is somewhat more likely in Bristol and Oxford than it was in a depressed part of the post-industrial East Midlands); if US education really is noticeably worse than bog-standard British comprehensive then I’m somewhat concerned. My schools were middle of the road in terms of the league tables, so I suspect they’re somewhat representative.
My understanding of the Scottish and US systems (yes, I didn’t take part in them, so feel completely free to entirely dismiss me) is that that they mandate a broader level of study than in England, which feels intuitively (again, feel free to ignore me) like a better idea than picking three or four subjects at age 16 and continuing to focus down from there. Which is why I mentioned the IB (again, based on what I understand, not what I’ve personally experienced). But yeah, that’s just, like, my opinion, founded on nothing more than a thought that a more rounded education would be a good thing.
I’m perfectly happy to accept that a lot of the foundational classes in longer US/European degrees aren’t especially value added. Although don’t some people push for those in England also now, to get kids up to speed for University with stuff they should already know?
I will say that I think the universities I studied at (Reading, York, Sheffield) were very good. I imagine that they stack up quite well.
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So, are you sure you didn’t get a big heap of state support at University of Maryland (and Michigan and Ball State) via the general tuition subsidy?
I certainly did at University of Washington, another public state university.
And then there is the less direct subsidy provided by federal research funding at research universities like that. Most of the income I made in school (I payed for about half of the part of my education the state didn’t pay for) was federally funded lab work.
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US education is incredibly patchy, even within the same district because the funding is so localized and the population so segregated.
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You may have had a good experience, but to colour the British education system based on your one experience is illogical.
Add to that the districts being balkanized so as to support that segregation.
My ‘experiences’, and those of my family and wife… That carries more weight than one person’s sad tale. You can always find an outlier in any data source.
Wrll add my experience and my family and my girlfriend and then the bad out weighs the good and you’re comments are now invalid.
I am enjoying how this thread has turned into the 4 Yorkshireman sketch.
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Enjoying it! In my day we would hate it and be glad for the hate!
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Luxury! With the data-cap imposed by my service-provider, I should love to see this thread turn into the 4 Yorkshireman sketch. Instead, I have to make-do with a hand-cranked shellac-disc of Ghallagher and Shean and 1 person punching me in the face.
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No, it’s because basically every job above minimum wage demands a college degree now whether it makes sense for it to or not.
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Much like rising college tuition in the U.S., all that extra money goes into the pockets of a whole lot of not-previously-part-of-the-equation, mostly-unneeded bureaucrats.
Somehow ‘administration’ has become more important than the thing that administration is supposed to be running.
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And the tying of school budgets to property taxes so the only schools that get all the money they need are the ones rich people’s kids attend.
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Bureaucrats, lawyers, managers, and bankers have the well-documented tendency to take over. In any project/endeavour, hey have to be kept in tight check to not spread outside of the little niche where they are useful. Good servant/bad master.
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