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What the secret of US universities ?

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Moved to Studying in North America.

Once again, university rankings mean incredibly little.

There can't be because quality is subjective.

My experience at GW [Wash, D.C], was that the correlation between tuition and quality of instruction was negative - i.e. the higher the tuition, the worse the instruction. This was principally noted at the undergraduate level [by me]. Fortunately, i was a graduate student at the time. Cheers.

Reply 21

AmmarTa

Original post by Rabbit2

My experience in working with 'graduates' of unis in the near east, is that they consider 'education' to be memorizing a book. They were proud to show me that they had memorized entire chapters out of engineering books. When i asked them "Ok, Ali, what does that MEAN"?? I was greeted with a blank look, and they would start repeating the contents of the textbook - like i didn't hear them the first time.

In reality, they hadn't a clue what the text meant. They had simply memorized it. I couldn't tell you what the text was in the numerous books that i used to get my master's degree in engineering, but i know the information. I can also apply it, and use it to answer other people's questions. I think that is the difference in "education" between the near east (and some other areas) and the US. In my experience, anyplace you are memorizing books, and considering it 'education' you are in REAL trouble. Cheers.

That's quite a good point actually, no point in useless knowledge.

Reply 22

Rabbit2

Original post by AmmarTa

That's quite a good point actually, no point in useless knowledge.

Well, in fact, they don't have the knowledge. Memorizing text [particularly in a language you are barely competent in], i wouldn't classify as 'knowledge'. They cannot explain to you what the text means, or apply the material in the text to solving a problem. If you take a statement in the text, and turn it into a question, they cannot answer it. Hence, they don't understand what it means.

It seems to me it would be just as useful to memorize the London white page phone book. Maybe more useful - you might hit a phone number you could use. Now if you are an 'idiot savant' - where you memorize the book, and then someone gives you a phone number at random, and you tell them the name and address of the subscriber with that number, that might have applications. They, of course, cannot even do that. It's like the 'rock' bands you encounter in the near east. They have memorized things like the "Beach Boys" hit songs. When they sing them, and play along, they sound remarkably like the Beach Boys. I encountered 3 of these groups whilst i lived in the near east. Each time, i walked over during a band break, and got talking to their promoter and the members of the band. Each time, i found out that NONE of them spoke English (or Yank) AT ALL!! Not even "please" and "thank you". When you heard them sing, they had it perfect. Practically no accent at all - sounded like a Yank band in fact. They had absolutely no idea what the lyrics meant of course. I translated two songs for one group. My local language capability was extremely limited, but i recruited another dinner customer in the restaurant to help. They thanked me. The other customer was not very fluent in Yank - he couldn't make out the lyrics when they were sung, but when i gave it to him written out, he could make a translation. Cheers.

Reply 23

Rabbit2

Original post by CollectiveSoul

US universities are great for postgrad due to funding but appalling for undergrad, they're literally like sixth form over here.

A lot of the graduate funding results from companies paying for their employees graduate school. I benefited from that myself. As i changed jobs in the middle - i ended up with two different companies paying for my masters degree. One 'feature' of this set up, is that, unlike undergraduate students, schools take graduate student complaints very seriously. Any grad student that has a documentable complaint - particularly about quality of instruction - has the dean's immediate attention. They do NOT want the student going to his 'education manager' at his company, and telling her/him that so-and-so uni has 4th world instructors teaching, who cannot do the example problems in the textbooks. My company [which wasn't all that big], had over 40 grad students going to GW when i was there. At about $2500 per course, that's a LOT of money. Coupled with the fact that my education manager was a member of two different 'adult ed' organisations, and that they each had a meeting a month, which other companies education managers attended, the total amount of funding ran into millions. The school would do literally anything to avoid getting the reputation of having incompetent instructors.d