chartreuse

Interesting article this weekend about US colleges considering a move from four year to three year degrees. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...052203681.html

The comments are also interesting, with some posters questioning why poetry courses should be mandatory for a degree in engineering and others pointing out that the purpose of a US college degree is to maximise the revenue raised by the college.

Do folks think this (if it became the norm) might make life easier for people with UK degrees? Currently e.g. Texas Tech says that it will not consider a 3 year degree (even from Oxford or Cambridge) sufficient for entry to a Masters' course.

Or will we just see credential inflation, with employers requiring a Masters' to be a janitor, as other commentors to the article suggest. Dr Jerry Pournell, writing elsewhere has said:

hobbes79

My wife can compare the 2 reasonably well, since she did the US 4-year degree but did a year at Nottingham Uni (where we met!).

She says the UK system seems to allow people to know more about their specific subject. She did Psychology and found classes tough.

But then she was amazed by the lack of general knowledge of some i.e. she was chatting to a 3rd year Physics student who didn't know what an analogy was.

I've found that with my Eng degree I tend to have more engineering knowledge than your average US eng graduate, but then they tend to be able to speak a little Spanish... something which I wish I could have done in Texas!

Really is 6 of one, half dozen of the other.

dunroving

I've learned AND taught in both systems. I always used to think the UK undergrad degree gave you a higher level of training in a specialised field (because you study your major from day 1, whereas US universities require you to take over a year of general education courses). I also used to think that UK students were generally brighter than US students.

I no longer feel that way. UK universities are being increasingly squeezed by finances to incease class size, increase teaching load, make sure students pass (i.e., grade inflation), and dumb down content.

In the US, a 3 s.h. class would require 36-50+ hours classroom time, and multiple asessments of varying kinds. Admittedly, in some classes, assessments are little more than busy work, but certainly in the classes I taught, you'd only pass if you worked bloody hard, attended class, and studied (i.e., read a book). For example, one of my undergrad classes required 3 exams (not mini-tests, real exams), 3 lab assignments and a paper/project. In the UK, a similarly loaded class (10 CR) involves 24 hours classroom time and often just one assessment (e.g., a paper or a single 2-hr exam).

I am appalled at the standard of work students hand in here (I'm in the UK). Much of what I have described above has also been described in the media (and not just in the Daily Fail). For example: http://www.timesonline.co.uk:80/tol/...cle6301149.ece

I actually like the US idea of spending some of your time at university to simply broaden your education rather than learn specialty knowledge.

But I also agree that on both sides of the pond, part of the agenda is keeping people off the unemployment register and keeping university staff in a job.

Bob

I don't know...probably a good thing in the long run, get rid of the fluff.

As for which is better, can't really say, good and shit places on either country. I know when I did industrial design, my work load made the san fran exchange students cry but was on par for those at Milan and Delft....which was really high.

The missus started doing her masters in York but dropped out when she realised it was shit, way to general and the knowledge expected just wasn't there.

Found the complete opposite with Kings College though. Far more indepth level of thought and discussion and expectation of research from the lectures for the papers, which weren't long but far more thought required to defend your position.

Her undergrad in the US, which was good, didn't really prepare her for that as a lot of the "loads of papers and exams" was just a memory exercise and regurgitating what you were told in classes.

So all in, it's horses for courses. Some good and some shit where ever, so you've got to find what works best for you that your smart enough to get into

hobbes79

Just as a little side note, when going for an H-1B my lawyer wrote an explanation basically going through why a 3-year degree is as good as a 4-year degree (just to prove I definitely had one). They explained that in the UK, at A-Level, we specialise at the age of 16 and therefore have more specialist knowledge even before uni.

They basically said 2-years of A-Level equals the one year of college I was missing compared to an American.

How accurate that is... I have no idea. Got my visa alright though

chartreuse

I've been using the rule of thumb that 2-years of A-Level is roughly an Associates' Degree. I have no idea how accurate that is either...

In truth, there's a lot of smoke and mirrors around equivalence, evaluation etc. There are lots of different agendas, the Feds' desire to keep folks out, colleges' need to make money by forcing people to take unnecessary courses, HR people's need to tick boxes, credential evaluators' need to keep things opaque and so on, and they seem to shift around a bit.

Dan725

I always worked on that A level rule too - again no idea how accurate it is!

However, I am now within 6 months of (hopefully) cracking my Masters Degree (from a UK university), at which point I can then tick that box and not worry about it any more!

lapin_windstar

Another way of looking at it is US school public holidays are usually 4 weeks longer per year than in the UK. 12x4 = 1 year. So the first year of US college is just "catching up" with the last year of UK school. Of course, the days are much longer in the US. But there are fewer filler classes in the UK. So...

Not the best comparison really - can't compare the amount of tutor facetime at Oxford/Cambridge to many other places in the UK/world. And of course they get a "free" Master's...

Dan725

This mirrors my laymans perspective - obviously you are right there in the ring and can see it first hand. It does appear to be a popular idea amongst Brits that US education is "shite" compared to the UK. From my limited one year of experience at a UK university may years ago, by comparison to the attitude I see/hear about here regarding study, I don't agree.

The Horticulturalist

Interesting, our kids are small right now but we're starting to think about saving for the inveitable costs of putting them through university.

I was speaking to someone last night with college age kids and he said that many students these days are taking more than 4 years to get their degrees, something to do with them not being able to take all the required classes in each academic year and having to tag them on the end, or something. He reckoned it was a deliberate money spinner for the Universities and colleges.

dunroving

Well, often it is because they fail classes and this puts them back (especially if the class is part of a sequential series). Sometimes it's also because of poor course planning (either the student's fault or the academic advisor), so they end up with a nonsensical combination of classes left to take in their final semester. Other times, students simply take fewer classes because they have to work, so essentially they are only part-time students for at least part of their program. It's rare (in my experience) that a student is prevented from graduating on time purely because of class schedule conflicts.

The Horticulturalist

Ok, that's good to know! I had visions of an already $$$ process becoming even more costly!

The Horticulturalist

Ok, here's another question, do you think that where you obtain your degree from matters in terms of employability, do you really have a better chance if you graduate from one of the top schools?

And what about Ivy League versus the Public Universities?

Bob

If you went to a top ivy league school it will help out on the job front, just like saying you went to OxBridge. Outside of that tier, a better known univerisity helps, but only in certain fields and makes no difference in others.

A US uni that isn't well known though will carry no kudos over the pond if they decide to move and the reverse is true here.

made of kent

I don't know about accurate, but that in nutshell is how I discribe university in the UK to my American friends, esp as in this state my boy will be nearly 6 before starting school where as the UK they would be going in September this year!