One of Europe's biggest universities is in need of repair

From the Economist: One of Europe's biggest universities is in need of repair

Excerpt:

Botched computer systems can always be fixed. But Europe should not lose sight of a significant fact that it differentiates itself from the US. Which is graphically visible here:


THE US IS NUMBER ONE AGAIN! (The highest public tertiary level educational cost of any developed nation.)

Europe has some of the lowest public university fee-costs in the world because they are funded by national governments!

 

BRAVE NEW WORLD

Post-scriptum:

Can the US do better? ONLY 45% of high-school graduates go on to a post-secondary degree.

In this brave-new-world of the Information Age, that just is not enough. It is time we wake up to these two key historical facts:
*Robotics has changed fundamentally what and the way the US produces products. Only 12.6% of the workforce is presently employed in "goods-producing sector". (See that data-point here!)
*The cost of a post-secondary education in the US at a state school is around $12K per year. Far too many families at the bottom of the Income Totem-Pole cannot afford that amount of money. A public tertiary-level education MUST BE as low-cost to this group as is humanly possible. (As Hillary had promised in her campaign here.)

 

Europe has Oxford, and Cambridge.

Are there any others that's as big as Harvard or Yale?

Maybe that ballet school in Paris.

 

What do you mean by “big”? All four are well known, wealthy and so get to choose to have relatively exclusive intakes but that doesn’t make them fundamentally better by any real measure. I know that when I was looking for a good UK university to study Computer Science, none of the old “red brick” Universities were recommended.

I think this is part of a general problem where it is presumed that going to (a “good”) University is the achievement, rather than gaining the best education and training necessary to start a successful career.

 

.....am I missing something here...there have been a myriad new universities springing up all over the country in the last two decades...where I live we have 3 campuses...in fact theres 3 unis and a college.... the concept or even the business model of the OU is a bit outdated now since universities are ten-a-penny around the country all offering on-site education...away from parents....and with a plethora of bars, clubs and cash points....why would kids choose to stay at home and do the OU?? I imagine that all that's left are a bunch of pensioners and people who want/have to study work related stuff..??
Kids can choose any number of universities up and down the country where they can incurr monumental debts doing bugger all without having to stay at home and learn.... and miss out on freshers week which basically lasts 3 years, the costs of which is in addition to the monumental debt and funded by parents...why go to the OU and actually have to work at something when you can study at the lofty halls of intellectual prowess like Greenwich University which seems to take any form of mentally incapable kid....or is that the Medway College of Higher and Further Entertainment...sorry Education.....they share facilities so it doesn't matter.... anyway I think the concept of the mass attraction of the OU is no longer...ergo it ain't getting the money....ergo its dropping out

 

Not to mention the fact that course lectures can be given over the Internet. Thus reducing the need for actual classrooms.

The emphasis, I think should be taken off "showing up for a lecture" to "based upon a lecture, attending a class workgroup the purpose of which is to debate and form an answer to a question posed". Coupled with periodic internet-exams regarding lecture subjects.

For the moment, the education process is:
*Attend lectures
*Take notes
*Respond to some questions that the lecturer may pose to stimulate a discussion
*Take some mid-course exams
* Take final exams

The part I suggest is the most important are the classroom discussions (and not over the Internet!); where students can express themselves regarding a subject. And were these sessions noted by the professor, students would have an incentive to participate in them.

And, if all they did was to attend and not participate in the discussions, they'd get a "C" or a "D" depending upon how much they participated actively. This could work in economics courses where there is alway something to debate, as well as other subject-areas that lend to discussion.

But in the physical-science courses, debate is very much less a question than "mastery of the knowledge or technique" ...

 

The UK isn't in your list - why not ?

UK university fees are higher than those in the US as I recall. I think the statement in red is inaccurate.

 

My process for my degree was very different.

As a physicist, labs (16 hrs per week) occupied more time than lectures (13 hours per week) and I also had 2 hours a week of tutorials where a group of four students had an opportunity to get into more detail with our tutor (in my case a senior professor).

There was also a great deal of course work, assignments that had to be turned in on a weekly basis.

Engineers had it even worse. Their schedule was a full-time job.

 

I did not create that list.

Yes, UK degrees cost the most of any European country. The higher rates are at around 9300£. Like the US, "student loans" are available.

I think the UK was left out purposely to underscore that the US was the most expensive. In fact, given that neither the US nor the UK tuitions are generally government funded, both are indeed the most expensive.

And nowadays anybody graduating from university in the UK is going to have fun finding a job to meet the loan payments ...

 

The thing is that if you have a low-paying job then you're not obliged to pay. Any outstanding balance after 30 years is written off. The write off rate is expected to be in the 35-50% range...

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...academia-disadvantaged-students-a8537971.html

Interesting read, particularly the final item.

 

GUNS OR BUTTER?

Thank you. In a way, I am pleased to read your comment.

Tuitions may be similar between the US and the UK, but I suggest it is because the "debt" owed is private in the US and public in the UK. That is, a lot of companies make student-loans because it is sufficiently lucrative.

If my fellow Yanks want to keep being ripped off as regards a service that is equally important as National Health Care (which costs roughly twice as much as in Europe per capita), then that is their business; and the consequence belong uniquely to their blindness as regards the eventual consequences in terms of generalized ignorance and bad health.

As regards the latter, our life-span in the US is four-years less than in the EU where a National Health Care service is universal. See infographic here.

In Europe, nationalized-healthcare is not free, gratis and for nothing - but damn close! It costs about $25 for me to see a doctor in France, which is reimbursed. Actual surgical intervention and hospital stay is not fully reimbursed, but the private-insurance available for the extra-amount coast about only $100/150 a month!

So, fellow Americans, here we are again. Whadaya-want Guns or butter?

Our lifestyle and those of our loved-ones depend closely upon our Collective Answer to that age-old but fundamental question ... !

 

In the UK it's free (or nearly so) at the point of delivery, but it's not free - our taxes pay for it.

That said the proportion of GDP spent on public medicine in the UK to provide coverage for everyone is the same as the proportion in the US to provide coverage for around half of the population.

Then again, a conversation about how to fund healthcare is likely off topic in a thread about university fees.

 

All funding for national health-care in Europe comes out of taxation. How much the consumer-'n-taxpayer pays differs from country-to-country.

France had a BigProblem with too many French going to see a doctor for reasons not related to their physical health. So, they upped the ante to all of "25 euros"! Wow!

More importantly, actual hospital-service fees were made less remunerated to the patients, which stopped a bit the flood into hospitals. But, as the number of doctors over the years has declined, the impact on the quality of medicine has been important. For instance, see this independent study here from the Commonwealth Fund:


Btw., the date of that ranking is 2017 ... and the UK is still Numero Uno!

And France is 10th, just ahead of the US ...

 

I do not see why people think it is necessary to point that out. Are there actually those who do not understand it themselves? What does "free" mean to them ... extraterrestrial doctors and medicine dropping from the sky during a heavy rainfall?

 

Some folks use the "free" label to denigrate such health care programmes. Of course it's not free, of course it comes out of taxpayers funds. That's the whole point of it.

 

Free means the recipient need not pay for the service. That does not mean there is no cost.

And there are certain services that some think are key to the economy. I happen to prefer Education and Healtcare as two of the most important to a market-economy seeking the better-good of all constituents.

But, that is a European Notion that does not sell as well in the US as in Europe ...

 

I'd say "obviously".

Absolutely.

I know. I am from Sweden but I did live several years in the US.

 

As you perhaps know well, a good many Swedes migrated to the US in the 19th century.

I wonder if their Swedish-Americans descendents are really better off today than are the "original Swedes" back in Sweden ...

 

Good question! But it would be difficult to ascertain. The vast majority came from Småland and they were farmers from a rocky landscape that had been badly mistreated by the weather, similar to the American Okies in the novel "The Grapes of Wrath". Anyway, the Swedes travelled to North America where the settlers (from wherever they came) were being exploited in order to clear the land from the Indians. It was rich land and working the soil was probably easy compared to what they were used to. They worked hard but they prospered. I am sure they thanked God every day for their good fortune while their relatives who stayed behind in Sweden probably withered away.

I don't know how to compare that with their situation today. Sweden turned out to be one of the top Democracies of the world and we have had lives that are so good that some people can't even comprehend it. But just right now we are experiencing an awful change with the hoards of migrants flooding in. I am sure you have been reading about it.

 

It's just a passing political hiccup. In any democracy, people that have the right to vote (which decides political leadership) often "turn-coats" to vote for people they don't particularly like. But they do so to underline a principle. (This time around, with the migrants, that principle is "Too much is too much".)

In fact, the Swedes are to be complimented on this last vote. The Sweden Democrat Party (how dare they use English! ;^) got its nosed tweaked. They expected a vote that would allow them to manipulate political decision-making.

That didn't happen in the proportions that they had anticipated. Thankfully ...

PS: Frankly, I do not understand how Europe could have let the "migrancy problem" grow out of proportion. At first it was to escape that madman running Syria. But it grew from being a political issue to becoming an economic one. It should not have been allowed to do so.

 

Well put ...

 

How dare who use English?

 

The Sweden Democrat Party.

(The Swedes speak English better than most Americans!)

 

It is you who calls it "The Sweden Democrat Party", not us. Sverigedemokraterna is the proper name.

This is no joke either.