AnastasiaZ

I was reading Russian livejournal blogs and somehow came across an article about CEO of some major Russian mass media company. In short, the author was saying how stupid she is and how messed mass media was since the CEO lived in USA since the age of 14 (that's like the worst thing that she could lol) and attended Middlebury college to study Slavic (or smth like that) studies there. He then proceeded to say that Middlebury is a "PTU" which, in russian system of education, is a 2-year college where one goes after 9th grade and that only a retarded person would declare such a useless major... So yeah, one of the very top LACs here in USA is regaded as worse than a community college in Russia... and that CEO is made fun of for attending it...

AnastasiaZ

I am so MAD. OMG hate russians (yes, i'm russian)!!!! so there is another article i've found which has a whole freakin paragraph about her education, which starts with
"reference - Middlebury college is a LAC. American colleges of entry-level can have different names: junior colleges, community colleges, liberal arts colleges, technical colleges. Comparable to PTUs in russia. Their goal is provide education to everyone and therefore accept everyone....
.... Therefore we can conclude that she has virtually no education and is not of appropriate intellectual level to work at (the company)"

Sorry I know translation is rough, but you get the point...

arcadia

Why do you care so much about the skewed perceptions of one uneducated Russian? How about that fact that the woman being criticized is the CEO of major Russian mass media company? Not that's an accomplishment--and a testament to the strength of a Middlebury education.

AnastasiaZ

The point is- it's not just one... this kind of conversations are all over the forums and lj. Even my friends when i tell them that I'm applying to colleges ask me why I don't try to get into universities..

arcadia

Internationally, the only U.S. colleges and universities that have true name recognition are Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and in some instances, Stanford and MIT. Other than that, you're mostly out of luck.

If you look at polls of the American pubic, the most prestigious schools, in addition to Harvard and Yale, are New York University and Penn State (both of which are great schools, btw). Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Middlebury, Pomona, etc., have very little name recognition among the general U.S. public, let alone abroad. If you want your neighborhood butcher or your favorite bartender to know where you went to school, then you should go to Notre Dame, Duke, or some other school with a good basketball or football team. Stay away from elite liberal arts colleges. If you want the admissions officers at Harvard Business School and Yale Law School to be impressed with your undergrad institution, then by all means attend a top LAC.

kwu

Once you're admitted to, and enroll at, an "elite" liberal arts college, you stop caring about what people think about you and your institution. GQ calls it a "quiet sense of superiority." You'll be able to comfort yourself on that, no worries.

middsmith

Someone who hasn't heard of Middlebury is uneducated and has skewed perceptions? Does it make a difference if that Russian went to the top school in Russia? There are many incredible people in the world who doesn't know Middlebury. I'm sure it doesn't register with Ahmadinejad, Einstein, or Doogie Howser.

arcadia

That Russian wasn't uneducated because he didn't know about Middlebury. I agree that a vast number of educated people have never heard of Middlebury.

He was uneducated because he made generalized, uneducated statements about American liberal arts colleges that are patently false. I'm uneducated when it comes to discussing the Russian system of higher education, but I don't go around posting on blogs that Moscow University is akin to an elementary school. Middlebury isn't a two-year community college, and it doesn't have an open enrollment system whereby anyone who wants to attend can do so. A small bit of research would have made this person's blog post a bit more educated.

middsmith

I suspect the author is not serious. It's like saying Geithner went to a dumb jock school. Or JFK Jr. went to a feel good experimental school on some random blog.
If anything, it is a testament to the unparallel educational system in America. A two-year community college that accepts anyone with a pulse & educated a prominent CEO is very impressive, yes?
Why so defensive. ;-). You should try it, it being "quiet sense of superiority", sometime. It works wonder to your self-esteem.

arcadia

Or that Calvin Coolidge went to the second best liberal arts college in Massachusetts?

It doesn't seem to work for you. ;-)

interestingguy

To great extent, this is true, but Princeton is probably the least well known of HYPSM because it lacks professional schools.

Also, I'd include UC Berkeley, especially if we're talking about Asia.

Interestingly enough, many international students have heard of NYU too, mostly because they know about NYC.

johnwesley

It shouldn't be all that surprising that even well-educated Russians are a little confused by the American system of higher education; there's really nothing else quite like it in the world, in terms of quality, nearly universal access and history.

First of all, there's bound to be some confusion over the terms "college" and "university". Historically, Americans have tended to use the terms interchangeably (think, Wesleyan *University* and Dartmouth *College*); if you look in Webster's Dictionary, the definitions for the word, "college" include, "a preparatory or high school" -- so, who knows what the Russian translation might be for the same word!

But, the biggest difference is the vast and robust private sector role for higher education that exists in the United States. The idea of a private institution (often founded by a religious order) that morphs over the centuries into a powerful engine of secular change is pretty much an Anglo-American historical anomaly. Most of the premier universities of the world are state run, usually by a central national authority; and, specialization -- both academically and vocationally -- begins far earlier. In light of its history, it's easy to understand why the same continent that brought us Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Robespierre, and two or three different Bonapartes would be bemused by colleges with names like, Williams, Amherst, Wesleyan, and Smith.

Dad_of_3

Who is having the last laugh? The CEO who probably lives in a palace and has a huge entourage, or the journalist?

shennie

In discussions with an exchange student from Switzerland, he was very confused. In Switzerland, they call their university prep high schools "colleges". After you finish "college" you attend university. I think that this nomenclature might be common in Europe, thus the confusion.

starbright

Using the term 'college' to describe 4 year institutions may be a uniquely American thing. In Canada, the term 'college' is reserved for non-degree granted institutions and the rest are called universities.

Not that I think it matters.