penguinsix

Grr...guess I need a better education so I can spell the title "Joneses" correctly. Oh well.

Anyway, a rather long but somewhat interesting piece in the London Times today about the growing movement amongst some of the 'jet set' in the UK to send their kids to the US for university. Guess they all want to follow Emma Watson or something...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/lif...cle7005150.ece

tamms_1965

Interesting.

elfman

this is one of those articles where the Times journalist seems to have extrapolated wildly from a small subset of people in one particular (hardly representative) section of UK society. It strikes me that the eye-watering cost of a university education here means that a degree in the USA is out of reach to all but the richest section of UK society in the first place.

The article says there are 4,352 UK undergraduates in the USA. Given that approximately 400,000 graduates start university in Britain each year, that means there are about 1.2 million British undergraduates at any one time (undergraduate courses are 3-4 years, and allowing for some of that total to be from outside Britain). So by this reckoning less than 0.4% of UK undergraduates are "flocking" to US institutions. This is not to knock American Universities at all, just to point out that the article seems to exaggerate the situation somewhat.

dunroving

I think culturally, there is something of an idolization of all things American, Australian, or Kiwi at the moment. I commented in the UK/US dictionary thread on the increasing Americanism of the British English language. Ironically, the Limmy show last night had a skit on just that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGIRwtRSp4I

elfman

I agree to a certain extent that this is always there, but my personal gut feeling is that the British fascination and idolization for the USA peaked around the mid to late 80s.

dunroving

I think Australia is more flavour of the month these days. (I'm thinking mainly of younger adults rather than overall popular culture - from my interactions with university students, mostly).

Leslie

Exactly, and it's always been only the elite in America that could afford to send their kids to European Universities.

RoadWarriorFromLP

Uh oh, you mean you actually took the trouble to do a bit of research?

As you have exposed in your example, a lot of what passes for journalism is utter tripe. Reporters need to fill space in a hurry, particularly in this age of 24-hour electronic media, which leads to articles such as this one.

It's a favored trick of journalists to start with an anecdote, then imply that it serves as evidence of some sort of movement or trend shift, even if the data isn't there to support that assertion.

meauxna

That reminds me of the French getting upset about English words introduced into their lingo.

Steerpike

If anyone can justify use of "analogue" over 'analog', or 'colour' over 'color', or 'litre' over 'liter', I'd like to hear it! It is more efficient and more obvious (and less French) ! Long may the trend continue ...

dunroving

Well, if Bill Bryson is to be believed, British and American English used to be the same, but it was the British who changed the language in order to be different ...

budleigh

currently reading that at the moment and have been suitably humbled!

RoadWarriorFromLP

When Webster standardized American spellings, he had two motivations: He wanted the spellings to be more phonetic, and he disliked Britain. In that sense, American English set out to be different.

I may as well preempt the inevitable aluminum/ aluminium debate by noting that it was called "aluminum" first, and that it was given that name by a Brit: http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/aluminium.htm

nethead

Bill Bryson has been slated in quite a few reviews of Mother Tongue for so many errors or misunderstanding of linguistics.

NAR14

Mediocre? Acre? Massacre?