PeteEU

While I don't exactly disagree, but I dont agree 100% either. You tend to forget history.

Not long ago, education was class based. The poor had next to no education and were a large part of the population. And it don't matter if we look at the UK, US, China, Afghanistan or any other culture/nation, the picture was the same. A kid born in a poor family, who's father was a miner, or worked in a factory, most likely did not get any education, and if they did, it was very limited, as by the teenage years he or she was sent out to work.

The near non existent middle class did have some education but that was mostly for the boys and only at a price.. either economically or brianwashing by religious organisations.

Its not until socialism came onto the political field and basicly liberated the mass poor population from the clutches of conservative religious class based society, did the masses start getting an education. And I am fully aware that most Americans will see red over this comment, but facts are facts, and only blind hatred towards socialism can prevent people from seeing the truth.. i dont like socialism one bit, but it has had quite a positive impact on every society on the planet.

However by the time this happened most of the old schools, were run by either conservative class dependant institutions or by religious organisations and they fought tooth and nail to preserve "the old times" and were some what successfully in some societies, noticeable the UK and US. Instead of incorporating the old institutions, many nations let them be, and formed a whole education system not based on class, so that the average education of the citizens went up considerably over the last century. Private schools (in many countries) were allowed to exist as long as they followed certain rules (mostly on education standards) and many even got public funding and were eventually incorporated into a national education system, but a number did not and again depending on country. Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Cambridge and so on.. all old schools based on conservative values and ideals, set up by the elite for the elite over 100 years ago and this is hard to get rid off.

But the bottom line, since the turn of the century, the class divides in almost all western societies have been degrading slowly or in some cases fast, and that hangs very much together with the mass education of middle and lower class people.. and the expanding middle class, and shrinking poor class.

100 years ago for example, my father would never have gotten his degree in civil engineering, and yet he was born at the start of the education revolution.. 1937 and born out of wedlock on top of that. By the time he came of age, the education revolution of the post war era exploded and ordinary people could get with some work, into universities and higher education, but such things were in no way available to his father or stepfather, despite they technically were not "poor" but more middle class and certainly not available to my grandmother and her part of the family, as they were simple farmers.

So basicly, the last 100 years have really changed the class structure of the western world.. some more than others.. with the UK and US being at the lower end.

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PeteEU

new coup for you

that is ABSOLUTELY the worst way to pursue equality! Look at the state of Continental higher education, and compare it to the anglosphere. Anglo countries around the world tower over the rest of the European peoples in terms of college rankings. Bringing everyone down to a common level in the name of equality is an awful idea.

and it doesn't work anyway because wealthy continentals can just send their kids to school in America or Britain and avoid the constraints placed upon them at home.

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

Scucca

I certainly don't forget my history. Indeed, reference to the failures of education to increase mobility is rather important when we have income inequality similar to Dickensian times.

Indeed! But it hasn't changed as much as folk believe. We still have a long tail of low skilled labour, untouched by the massive education subsidies (that go mainly to the middle classes)

I can't agree here. Investments in education and health can be traced back to the capitalist classes. The public good characteristics of the "goods" were recognised, particularly with imperialist competition.


I cant respond to the rest of your comen6t. a baby has just been droped into my lap.

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new coup for you

"low education" today doesn't mean the same thing it did in 1848, even in Chelsea, London and the South Bronx, New York.

I mean literacy is nearly universal today.

Scucca

Mobility has always existed to some extent. This ensures class structures change. Whilst you're quite correct about the shoddy performance of the UK and the US, I think you're exaggerating the overall change in class. We have seen the rise of the petty middle class and this has changed the nature of government (e.g. inefficient provision of public goods such as health care). These effects reflect significant shifts in the nature of our economic structures. However, class remains as boring in its consequences: from the underclass where no mobility is possible to the concentration of wealth such that intergenerational immobility stamps upon merit

PeteEU

This is a typical outrageous claim with no proof what so ever. On top of that you basicly insult every country on the planet and their education systems. You do know that the attitude of "bringing everyone down to a common level" is EXACTLY the elitist attitude that has plagued conservative lead societies for hundreds of years and created the freaking class issue in the first place? I or he is better than everyone else, hence we should get special treatment bla bla bla, and lets just not educated the masses, as its wasted money.

And what is exactly the state of the continental European higher education system? And what do you base your claim on that we are sending our young people to the US and UK for a "better education". Now we are not talking about a semester, but a whole education in the US or UK.

As for your college rankings bull****. Lets look at the most popular rankings, and their methodology.

The Times ranking, often quoted and used by many.

University rankings :: world’s top universities :: Times Higher Education THE - QS rankings - QS Top Universities

And their methodology? Basicly polling and questionnaire responding of what people think. Key the VCR, and look at the last half century of movies and popular TV, books. Note the amount of times places like Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge are used as backgrounds for movies or quoted as being the education of the main person. Public perception of these places is that they are better than all others, and hence they rank high. It has no basis in any empirical or factual facts, but in a "feeling".

BTW the survey even admits bias towards US universities, and has tried to counter that bias in its latest survey.

Another one also seen as widely accepted one, is

Academic Ranking of World Universities - 2007

Now this methodology is totaly different. It uses things like Nobel prizes. published works, size of university in a weighted system? But how does that prove that the education at a university is some how superior to others? The only thing it really proves is that said university is good at getting research published and getting awards, but does that make it a good place to learn?

Another ranking, which is very interesting actually, shows the percentage of Fortune 500 company leaders/executives and where they were educated.

PROFESSIONAL RANKING OF WORLD UNIVERSITIES

Yes its French so I bet you will dismiss it, but it clearly shows that not as many US universities in the top 10 as the other surveys. So having a Harvard education might lead you to a top spot in a fortune 500 but so would an education from a "continental" school.

There is even a ranking based on links and hits on the web on University sites...but how serious is that.

Point is, that the rankings are not only extremely subjective but also so very very different in methodology and give very different results depending on which statistic you use.

But yes Harvard is on top or near there every time and yes Harvard is a great institution and yes its an elitist school.. like it or not, based on former class society and still promoting it.

So basicly the rankings are a bunch of elitist bs that have no base in actual education standards. Just because you graduate from the University of Madrid does not mean your education is some how worse or better than if you graduated from Harvard and your success is not linked to where you were educated.. as the French survey shows.

PeteEU

I don't agree that income inequality is as bad as in Dickensian times in the UK, and certainly not on the continent and especially not in Scandinavia. As for increased mobility. You forget that the main push of income mobility happened in the 1960s and 1970s. The middle class exploded in most industrialized nations and the lower class shrank quite considerably compared to previous times. Now the jump from middle to rich is a hard one and in reality unattainable for most (but damn we try), where as the jump from poor to middle class is not so unattainable as it once was.

Back in the Dickensian times as you say, going out of class was unheard off. A child born into poverty, born into a mining family, a fishing family or what not, in 99% of the times stayed in the same income and profession as his parents. It was only through marriage across class lines that one could hope of gaining any upward mobility and that was again extremely rare and dangerous often. The Indian cast system of today was very similar of how people lived 100+ years ago... you did not go outside your class.. period. Now this changed dramatically in the early part of the 20th century and especially after WW2.

Totaly disagree. Not only are we now at almost 100% literacy in the UK, most of Europe and in the US, we also have far far far more people not only graduating from primary education (since its mandatory), but from secondary and tertiary education than we had 100+ years ago when the class differences were very much a part of life.

You misunderstand me I think or I am not clear enough.

The advent of socialism added a new dimension to democracy in most countries. Finally the lower classes had a political view that was solely based on improving their lives for the better. This in turn forced the conservative so called capitalist (because they were not) governments into rethinking how they did things.

Socialism showed its head at the height of the industrial revolution, and the theories that Americans so hate (yet embrace often.. ) were formed during this period. It was not until the Russian revolution that socialism was taken seriously by the respective governments, conservatives the whole bunch. Why? Because they feared that what happened in Russia could happen everywhere, and they were justified in said fear.

On top of that Women's suffrage happened, a very important event in this discussion as women were seen and treated as second class citizens but now they had a voice on the political scene and that voice was often very sympathetic to the socialist ideal (as it is today).

So not only were the lower classes "freed" by the advent of socialism but so was half the population with women's suffrage. So the whole basis of the conservative elitist governments that ruled Europe and the US for centuries was gone.. the genie was let out of the box so to say.

These 2 factors in the end forced the conservative male elitist governments and rulers across Europe to change how they did things, and include the new socialist parties in the democracy. Once they did this the parties, despite the electoral system often biased against them, often won power.

Because the whole system was built up around private capitalistic enterprise, these new socialist governments funny enough had to either nationalise them, which some did, or incorporate them into their plans, which many did as the money was still in private hands and the tax income was very dependant on said private enterprise as the masses earned still next to nothing.

Now this includes the educational system. It was the private sector that knew how to build schools, and had the teachers and universities to educated teachers.. so without them the mass education systems of today would not be around.. well at least not as fast as they were.

Let me give you an example. In Denmark, once a very class based society, we had Copenhagen and Aarhus Universities as the main educational centers. On top of that we had "old" schools for the elite scattered in the rich areas of the country and we had the church bases schools in many of the poor areas. Problem was lack of teachers, and schools. So what the socialist governments did (hell even the conservative ones), was to first make it mandatory for every child to have a certain amount of education. Then they basicly carbon copied the best schools as best they could and created more to reach this goal. It worked as literacy levels increased dramatically from generation to generation.

On the University front, the age old Copenhagen University with its elitist attitudes and backers fought against this change. So what the government did, was not to kick all the elitists out as that would drain the system of good teachers and piss off the higher classes,... no it simply started up new schools in the areas where the University refused access to "commoners".

This way the Royal Veterinary School was founded and the Copenhagen Business School. And when the University elite refused to accept "new studies" on campus.. funny things like Communication and even educating teachers, then the government just opened a second University not far from Copenhagen for these studies. And yes the University of Copenhagen regrets the past attitudes of its leaders.. as students = funding.

But NON of these things would not have been possible if it had not been for rich private benefactors who "had seen the light" so to say. Very little public funding (as there was no money to throw around) was used. And this goes for most countries.

Universities are not a new thing, and have been around for many hundreds of years, and were all started by private enterprise in a time where governments could care less of the masses.. they were cannon fodder for the post part.

new coup for you

maybe a better solution is to bring everyone up instead of bringing everyone down. I'm not going to argue over academic rankings; the general collapse of continental academia is born out of pretty much every ranking system.

Scucca

And you're a tad eek driven if you believe any of the ad hoc ranking systems. Refer to the general productivity of diddy matters like the labour force

new coup for you

I didn't say that continental Europe is bad, in fact I like it a lot, in the way only a liberal East Coast American can. However I'm not going to blind myself into think that juts because Germany has fabulous healthcare that its universities are great because they're not.