Pulaski

No! A "well rounded education" is what you spend a lifetime acquiring. ..... Which is why I have hundreds of books, a book case in every room, and I buy dozens more non-fiction books every year - physics, astronomy, biology/ecology, some popular chemistry, history, and current affairs, among other topics.

PetrifiedExPat

Funnily enough this did strike me as the thread fleshed itself out!

Unless you're giving the fed... I mean state government 30k a year, you're not well rounded!

MidAtlantic

Lagoon Nebula

I entirely agree with that, but I maintain my original statement with regards to formal education.

MarylandNed

While it's true that there are "breadth requirements" (so e.g. science majors would need to take some humanities classes), plenty of the 1st and 2nd year classes are prerequisites to classes in the 3rd and 4th year. If you're a science major, you're going to be taking plenty of math and science classes in the first 2 years (both my daughters were science majors and both had physics, chemistry and biology classes with labs plus math classes in years 1 and 2). Studying science while also learning to read/write well, speak other languages, learn history, learn economics, take business classes, or learn to write computer code isn't exactly a waste of time.

ddsrph

The number of hours required for non major courses is actually very small and more a function of how higher education evolved in this country than some conspiracy to extract money from students. Something is working right as Silicon Valley and other very highly regarded tech centers are here and not in London or India. Sure we import a lot of foreign trained tech workers but many more flock here for higher education.

PetrifiedExPat

Fair enough, but disagree.

geoff52

When I went to university I gained knowledge and qualifications in bio sciences.
Education I acquired over a lifetime of travel, meeting interesting people, reading great literature. know I spend my time trying to make sense of it all.
In my opinion it all depends on your definition of education.

petitefrancaise

yes. 1.2 million foreign students came to study in the USA in 2016.

I would recommend that the OP attempts to get an internship in the UK and not the USA as I cannot imagine that his attitude to fellow interns will go down well with either them or the recruiters.

tom169

I moved here in November '16, but the few years before that I definitely noticed a rise of companies offering internships.

I also hope that companies in the UK start to offer scholarships and that the UK government give tax breaks to offset this, but can't see that being adopted any time soon.

retzie

Posting to point out the irony of everyone saying that people flock here to study so the system must be good! We all know very well that study is one of the easiest ways for a young person to get a visa if they have the cash, so it would be foolish to draw a correlation between popularity and quality. IME teaching in US higher ed, plenty of foreign students are studying a major in which they already have a full degree from another country. The US degree is just a foot in the door (or "you might meet a nice American" ), not a learning experience. This doesn't mean the degrees are bad (or good), just that the data is heavily skewed by the broader circumstances.

To the OP: I don't think there is any perceived difference between a US and UK degree. It is still called a Bachelors and a fairly large proportion of people seem to have no idea that involves 3 years of study in other countries. (And does anyone really really look at the dates on a CV?? Surely I'm not the only one who doesn't give them more than a glance.)

And to everyone jumping on the snob/not snob argument: there are large, quantifiable differences between the content of a Bachelors degree in the US and UK (or Australia). Topics that are in grad level course work in the US, I learnt in second year undergrad in Australia. Setting aside the question of whether this is good or bad, there is no denying that a Bachelors graduate from the UK/Oz will have covered more specialist ground than their US counterpart*. Whether this is a good or bad thing is not a debate I intend on entering, but I imagine the (perceived) value in the workplace would vary a lot by field and even by employer. If it's the sort of field where you might ask "are you familiar with X system/technique/standard" then an answer of yes/no could be a deal breaker; another field might value maturity and judgement over specific content experience.

Having said all that, I suspect the actual academic content plays a distant last to the networking opportunities associated with studying in the same country as where you plan to be employed...


*in an academic content-heavy field

petitefrancaise

So, I just asked my daughter about her fellow students.
She does have a few international undergrads on her course,not one already has a previous degree and she is pretty sure they would not gain entry if they did. This is at a very good state college on an exceptionally good CS honors course.

A lot of the grad students are international ones though.

I'm not disputing Retzie's experience but it doesn't seem to be across the board.

I'm going to be very interested in watching and listening to my kids over the next couple of years since 1 is doing her degree here in the USA and the other one is in Europe. The college he's going to in EU is very selective, all taught in English and follows the US structure except that it's finished in 3 years. His department is run by the University of Amsterdam and world renowned for this field. He's looking forward to carrying on with one of the languages he's been learning, continuing with philosophy and his science major.

MarylandNed

I know some US students who obtained a bachelor's degree in 3 years. For example, some take a heavy load in the traditional fall and spring semesters and also take classes during winter and/or summer breaks. Most do it in 4 years. Some take longer. There are various reasons for taking longer. For example, some students can't get enrolled in the classes they need because of scheduling conflicts or classes filling up. Some switch majors or transfer to another university and that sets them back.



But there are also large, quantifiable differences between universities within the same country. You can't make sweeping generalizations about US universities based on your experience.


Networking opportunities are obviously easier to find if you're studying in the same country where you plan to be employed. But I don't think that the actual academic content is a "distant last" to the networking opportunities. Much also depends on the university you went to and the courses you took.

carcajou

True . . . there was a poster earlier who raved about Australian unis compared to others, and my experience dealing with them has been the opposite - I really felt the 2nd year units where I was, were comparable to Grade 12 AP units in an American high school. The University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, and Australian National University compare to most in the world but the rest are a chook raffle.

To the poster's original point - I find it hard to believe that anyone in the financial industry will be examining your course structure, and it may not be a good idea to emphasize it. Large segments of American business view academia as being out-of-touch with society - they are not necessarily wrong about that - and they will want to know what you can do for them in a practical sense, not what university classes you took.

PetrifiedExPat

I also think education, and healthcare, rankings, are often telling. US News puts the UK at 2 and USA at 7, both I am suprised are so high (for education)..:

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-cou...tion-full-list

I like US News, it's one of the big three for respected rankings, along side The Times and (I forget the precise name right at this moment) the system respected out of China. The Pisa system looks more at high school level, and a Pew Research Center article suggests the US still has a long way to go..:

U.S. academic achievement lags that of many other countries | Pew Research Center

I have resisted quoting sources in the past, since in these times it is often easy to find information that supports any point of view.

For what it's worth, the WHO ranks UK at 18 and USA 37 for it's Ranking of the World’s Health Systems...:

World Health Organization’s Ranking of the World’s Health Systems | thepatientfactor.com

I quote healthcare because it is so critical side-by-side with education.

To summarize my experience. I came out of the UK system, as mentioned, 5 years before my US peers. It was not difficult to determine that I already had a competitive edge in my chosen field, I was far more specialized and could go through the ranks much more quickly. x amount of years later (<10), I find myself in one of the top industries in the country (second only to the tech sector), in a job where it is easy to dominate my US counterparts, based on the big, early jump I got from my college years.

Others experiences may vary, and that's great, but, singing the praises (really of either system, and I guess I'm guilty of that!) is naive and a consequence of being told 'we are the best' (USA and UK) from an early age. Not true in the slightest.