Originally posted by: RabidMongoose
Originally posted by: Tango
Well... academic institutions in US better than in Europe. Let's see... Based on what?
Rankings and reputation, of course.
My field is International Affairs, and I have travelled and studied in a lot of different schools in many different countries. Personally I think the best in the world (for this subject) to be Sciences Po' in Paris, London School of Economics and Columbia University in New York.
If you want my experience... the AVERAGE education you get at college (not graduate school) is better in europe, and the top schools in the US are on par with the top schools in Europe.
My opinion is that the average educational system in Europe at the undergraduate level is more inferior to the average US educational institution. In addition, the ceiling is much higher in the US.
Graduate studies requiring a lot of funding (technology) are better pursued in the US. I think the approach is often different, with european scholars more interested in pure theoretical thinking and americans more into the practical, case-study way of thinking.
I think that American institutions teach both methods better, as evidenced by the vastly superior amount of techological superiority. You can't have that with only 'case-study way of thinking' and an inferior 'theoretical thinking'. That makes no sense.
It also depend on the subject... I would advice Europe for anything involving art, literature, history, philosophy or social sciences... US for the sciences, IT... there isn't a big difference and both continent have great academic institutions...
One exception being technology intensive subjects, where I think the US lead the pack BY FAR.
I actually think that the US is better in almost all of these circumstances and much more varied, providing a better intellectual freedom.
Marxism is just not taught in the IR programs in the US. It is not taught at Columbia, nor NYU, nor Harvard. I don't have direct experience of other programs, but I quite trust Stieglitz about anything that comes from his voice.
It IS taught in the anthropology or sociology department as a philosophy course, but not in the professional programs. I don't really care about Marx, but avoiding the study of the researches that came from his critical thinking, many written in the past 10 years and being the most brilliant thinking about globalization and sustainable developement, is just plain incredible. For someone coming from another country is unbeliaveble. It would be like.... for a student of physics to skip Einstein because you don't like some other german guy that wrote before him.
Please provide proof of these claims, especially since a simple google search of international relations marxism course yields several results of US schools where their introductory international relations courses' syllabus involves reading from Marx.
Your statements are bizarre and the fact that you seem to have so easily believed such an outlandish statement essentially proves one of my points in my other post.
Well, academic life is something I have directly experienced both as a student an faculty in both Europe and the US. I told you what I think. Rankings just cannot be applied to academics. This is why you have such a HUGE difference in rankings around the world. Just try comparing FT, WSJ and BW rankings of business schools. Huge differences. Then you have the problem coming from the fact that usually rankings are only avaiable for Business and Law schools. These are the ones people care about, and the surveys in other kind of schools lack consistency. Then you have the criterias. In many american rankings some of the variables are things like Dimensions of the Dormitories, Money spent per student, Sports results for the resident teams. Hum...
I usually care more about the writings coming out of the research departments of each university. And according to this I gave you my personal ranking: Oxford, Cambridge, London School of Economics, Sorbonne Paris, Harvard, Yale, in no particular order. Now Baudrillard is teaching a semester every year at the New School in New York, and I find this exciting. He is the best mind around for semilogy, social impact of the media and globalization related studies.
Now, I still consider the average education (undergraduate) in europe to be better. Just look at the results. Europeans coming for one year at an american university usually do incredibly well, despite the fact they don't work in their mother tongue. They usually have a broader culture, expecially humanities, speak more foreign languages and are used to harder workloads. You don't get credits for playing football in europe.
In the same way I never found differences in the cultural preparation of people coming from elite schools in Europe or the US. Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, INSEAD, LSE all are on the same level. On the other hand I think there are MORE elite schools in the US, and more people attend them, while in Europe is a very exclusive thing, basically because not a lot of people is willing to pay for private education when you can get for free almost the same thing. More people go to elite schools later, for their graduate studies.
For the subject thing... I really cannot see how could you ignore the differences... There isn't any tradition in the US in many fields, and some fields just require tradition. You just cannot build a philosophy school in 100 years. That's why there sin't any great american living philosopher. Philosophy is mainly a Franco-German thing, period. You cannot fake 2000 years of history. Same if you want to study arts. That's why so many americans go to Florence, Madrid or Paris to study art. Same with music: Germany and Russia are THE places. Paris for Ballet or performing arts. Italy for Opera.
On the other hand, there are field where money is the key. You need money for practical experiments and research. Medicine, Information Technology, Computer Sciences, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, and every other technology intensive subject. Here the US just RULE. European academic institutions usually are more focused on theoretical-only studies and are not integrated with private research groups or companies, so they just can't compete with american university with the possible exception of Swiss. But Swiss is not in the EU, and it's a completely different academic environment.
It's very easy to understand this. Where tradition is a big part of the thing, you just need it. Nobody out of Italy will ever find a key interpretation of Reainassance, just like nobody in Australia will ever write an history-making critic of Heiddeger philosophical corpus. Every country in the world (expecially France) has been trying to enter a competition with the russian school of ballet, still the Bolshoi is just unpaired and the Etoile at Paris Opera still comes from Moscow conservatory. Same with eastern european piano players, or english shakespeare theater. Each country has its own legacy.
The marxism thing, as I told you, comes from a Stieglitz speech. But I assure you that neither Columbia, nor Princeton, nor Harvard, nor Georgetown international affairs school cover that branch of the International Political Economy tree. At Columbia you can find some marxism in the anthropology department, but again his point was that it is not taught in
professional schools, like Columbia's SIPA or Harvard's Kennedy.
And, just to make it clear, I'm not biased on european traditions. I don't consider myself to be citizen of any country, due to my personal life that required me to move every 6-12 months since I was very young.
If I am biased on some institution, then this is Columbia. I spent there most of my graduate studies year, and those have been terrific years, and I part-time work for that insitution and just love it. So I am being very objective when dealing with EU vs. US education.
I also would say that in this whole conversation we never talked about
asian universities. I don't personally know them, and never worked for one, but some of my indian and japanese collegues are just among the brightest people I ever met, some with an almost neverending knowledge and the distinctive capacity to manage incredibly heavy workloads, smiling.