See, I never even thought about this as a possibility. I guess I should have.
A very fair point.
I’m interested in what your spouse thinks, being staff at a small university myself (and formerly staff at a larger, high-profile university)… my experience is that faculty are responsible for 95% of any obstruction to operational functionality and at least half of all unreasonable demands.
(Thankfully the school I’m at now is small enough to not have a medical school. There is nothing worse than a professor who is also a surgeon. Except possibly his secretary.)
That probably wouldn’t be a bad idea, although – at least where I live – trades are taught at “technical schools.” Community colleges are mostly for Associate’s Degrees (although I imagine that varies by place).
I think that’s a really good point, but it would force US society to make a pretty hard decision: how do we measure academic success, or moreover, the success of our academies?
From my perspective, the US higher education system is totally broken, except on one measure: we have some of the best Universities in the world, by academic standards. In fact, in one recent ranking, the US had 17 of the top 25 world-wide (with most of the rest in the UK).
When you think about it, 17 out of 25 is impressive (the UK, the next highest, had 5).
In counties where tuition is free or nearly so-- such as Germany – we have a different situation. Germany has good universities, but none made the list (i.e., no “great” ones). I actually recently read an interview with a German Professor who basically said the same thing (“we have good universities, but they are not world class”).
In my mind this is a real trade-off. I’m sure some people – who, for example, are somewhat Utilitarian – would think that it’s manifestly true that good education for more is better than great education for fewer. Others would point out the advantages of having exceptional educational institutions.
I don’t see it either way, but I tend to be more of a centrist. Regardless, I can’t see the US democracy to be functional enough to really debate and examine the issue in, well, any kind of functional way.
1 Like
I just straight up don’t give those rankings any credence at all. I think the fact that 23 of the 25 are English-speaking can’t possibly represent anything but bias on the part of the people doing the rankings. The idea that Germany doesn’t have a school that is comparable in quality to U of T, Harvard, or MIT seems very unlikely to me. This ranking is subjective.
But even if I accept their rankings are useful it still doesn’t really make the point well. The difference between being 10th vs. 50th on a list of thousands is not really a big difference.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
