new coup for you

I can't remember, I did a ton of research while I was applying...4 years ago.

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And why does your tone suggest that you do not care about children?

I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike.

Scucca

You should have a look now. You'd be able to note the volatility in rankings, particularly as methodologies have been adapted because of more vicious criticism

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bub

Hey from what I know you're not a stupid bastard! Needless to excuse yourself when you don't agree with me



As Scucca said, you should not give too much credit to the rankings. They are made by US universities and only take into account factors that are relevant to US/UK universities and not the others, and don't take into account several factors that are important here.

For example, how much did you pay for a year at university?
Here, 95% of the people could afford a bacchelor and a master. It's around 850€ I think (+ the books, the food, a student room...) and if your parents are jobless you pay only something like 200€ and have train tickets for free, money to buy your books...

However, I agree that the best universities in the world are Cambridge, Yale, Oxford...the best teachers go there and the scientific revolutions also come from there.

But that's because those few universities get most of your education budget. The dozens of other universities get much less money and their average level is lower than European ones. On the contrary, European (or at least Belgian universities) get a fixed ammount of money per student. That's less than in Oxford or Berkely, so the ammount of money that goes to experimentations etc... is lower, but it's still higher than in most of the other US universities.

Then, if our colleges were "terrible", I don't think that so many of our graduates would be hired by US companies. I've got a nice example in my family, I can PM it if you want!

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SFLRN

Outside of rankings, U.S. universities usually have more assigned contact with professors. At the liberal arts colleges this is especially true. The place where European universities "beat" American universities is usually in cost, but some of the reasons for that are outlined above. One should also consider the fact that if you attend Princeton (and major in Econ) you have a chance (if you have a 3.5) to work in I-Banking, which usually has overall compensation packages over six-figures. In these cases the extra cost of education certainly pays off ( it opens you up to job opportunities). Certainly there is Cambridge, LSE, Oxford, and some other European universities that will open up such lucrative careers, but they are less in number than the American unviersities. Even The Economist agrees that the U.S. universities are superior (and European secondary institutions are equally better than American ones). This is partially shown through research production, and the quality of said research (in Economics it's especially slated in America's favor).

Scucca

Even then you're in dodgy waters. The methods used to measure research quality is a tad murky. For example, when is the American Economic Review superior to the Cambridge Journal of Economics?

bub

you should look at the criteria they have selected

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...b/Criteria.gif

I don't think that bigger universities are better than smaller ones
I don't agree that the number of publications by an university shows that the students are better educated there (in the US teachers have to write a certain ammount of articles per year, not here)
I'm not sure that the prestige of an university is the best criteria to show that students are well educated there.

Even the guys who made the "academic ranking of world universities" say that their ranking is biased in favor of US universities and big universities (if you spoke French you could check that on wiki)

Countries like Belgium, with numerous small universities (mine has 1500 students), are totally absent of those rankings, because they mainly take into account the size of the universities.

It also ignores universities working in "nets" (like mine)

SFLRN

I agree. That's why the U.S. has a number of very good liberal arts colleges (with no graduate students, and faculty that is almost entirely devoted to undergraduates). Examples include Amherst, Williams, Oberlin, Swathmore, Vassar, and others. These are probably some of the best places one can receive their undergraduate education (if one overlooks networking opportunities and other factors). However, Princeton (as an example) is the top-rated undergraduate institution in the U.S. (and one of the top in world by any methodology). It doesn't have an MBA program, a Law School or a Med School. It's a big university in some senses, but it still focuses on it's students (as an example).
It's not the best indication (research output). Because it could imply institutions have professors who aren't committed to their students. However, in a number of European universities professors are near inaccessible. This is certainly the case for some U.S.-based professors, but on the aggregate U.S. universities make sure that their professors allot office time for undergraduates. If one looks at graduate training then article publication does play a role in determining how well institutions can prepare their students for research work. In this regard the U.S. is ahead of Europe. Prestige is not going to give you a perfect picture of educational quality, but it is an indicator as more able students will (likely) be given more challenging work at more prestigious universities (U-Chicago is a very good example of this).

But what in which metric does Europe beat the U.S. outside of these? Is there something significant missing that European universities beat American universities on?

There are U.S. universities that do this as well. An example is Columbia's sharing of some course offerings with Barnard. I believe Amherst shares some course offerings with UMass- Amherst, Smith and Holyoke.
If one evaluates which country (or country groupings) produces the most Nobel Prize winners (in economics especially) then the U.S. would seem to be ahead. I would say that the American Economic Review is superior to the Cambridge Journal of Economics. By how much is questionable, but one does have to accept that U.S. based professors have a stronger impact on the field of economics than European ones (which is why Oxford, LSE, and Cambridge all model their graduate economics programs after their mathematical American counterparts). Surely, this method needs some fixing (or rather some warning against the temptations mathematical economics presents), but it is currently the best model.

new coup for you

In continental Europe colleges are basically a continuation of the lower education system. There's feeder colleges controlled by central planning with central budgets.

It makes bad schools. It also makes cheap schools...if you had the option would you really want to go to a cheap school?

bub

my point was that there is a lot of inequality between US universities and not in Europe.

So in Europe we've got good universities.
And in the USA there are some great universities, and the others are average.

Scucca

Based on what criteria? The suggestion that one journal is better than another is bogus, but still used in research quality ratings. The so-called "top journals" have become overly technical and of little practical value.

A temporary phenomenon, reflecting the over-reliance on neoclassical economics. As economics corrects its error, the technical experts produced by the UK and US will become less important.