Harvard compared to Oxford (undergraduate studies)

Colleges & Universities Harvard University
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<p>I’ve been informed users of this site take great offence at suggestions there are valid arguments for rating Oxford as a superior undergraduate university. </p>

<p>I find this surprising. What makes a university “good” is clearly subjective. There are valid reasons for rating Harvard’s excellence. Surely, however, if one’s criteria are more academically focussed, it is easy to see Oxford holds advantages which with Harvard cannot compare? Tutorials are Harvard often have 10-12 studnts, at Oxford 1-2 is typical. Clearly this is far more intensive. Further, Harvard’s core requirements ensure a substantial part of the degree is spent on very unsophisticated materials.</p>

<p>Clearly, under academic criterions, of which university is most intellectual stimulating and stretching, Harvard, for all its advantages, cannot compete with Oxford?</p>

2

<p>The Times doesn’t share your view,</p>

<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Higher_Education_Supplement[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Higher_Education_Supplement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

3

<p>Firstly, what an appallingly lazy argument.</p>

<p>Secondly, the Times makes no comment on my view. That’s why Harvard College is not mentioned on the indirect link which you provided. Its rankings, which are pretty severely flawed anyway, are to do with an overall university, which is clearly not the issue I was raising. </p>

<p>Your argument is equivalent to asking which are the top soccer teams in Europe. A quick look at the Deloitte revenue rankings would point out it’s Manchester United and Real Madrid. Yet they’re both second in their domestic leagues and faring poorly in the Champions League.</p>

4

<p>Personally, at the undergraduate level I would prefer a classroom of about 10-12 kids over a tutorial session involving only myself and possibly one other student. Perhaps this is a function of my being American but I think it’s moreso that more than 2 students are necessary to bring out the exchange and proliferation of diverse ideas and points of view essential to the undergraduate education. </p>

<p>That is not to say that Oxford isn’t successful. It clearly is in its educational approach. I just feel it conflicts with what Americans hold is excellent undergraduate education… or at least what I hold it to be.</p>

5

<p>Graduate or undergraduate, your opinion is not widely shared, even in the UK. Undergraduate education at Oxford is narrow and rigid in scope, underfunded and outmoded, and open to a relatively small fraction of the population. Funding is chronically inadequate, and the faculty so underpaid, in relative terms, that many of the best minds are lured away with some regularity.</p>

<p><a href=“Businessweek - Bloomberg”>Businessweek - Bloomberg;

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<p>Oxford is a joke, a museum. Tired old and and filled with antiquity. It’s time has come and gone. Schools overseas are the same. USA is where its at. Get over yourselves. Like the Royal Family the only thing that remains is the “wave”. Plus the schools are nearly allllllllllll Asian Indian so much for the British Empire. Pleeeeze not worth debating here or anyway. Pay the place a visit take in the sites, and find everyone at the Pubs half loaded all day long. Intellectual. I think not! But the ritual is interesting.</p>

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<p>While Oxford may have financial and other structural issues as an institution, such points have little bearing on the educational benefits of the tutorial system. Even the Business Week article cited by Byerly states:

Oxford-style tutorials for undergraduates can definitely work in the US. They have been deemed very successful at Williams (the second-oldest college in Massachusetts, which is affiliated with Exeter College in Oxford). See [url=<a href=“http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i23/23a01601.htm]this[/url”>http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i23/23a01601.htm]this[/url</a>] link, for example (though it’s a bit outdated).</p>

<p>This may seem heretical, but some might suggest that Harvard College itself has certain “rigid” and “outmoded” elements. It wouldn’t hurt Harvard to try tutorials, or other innovative approaches to undergraduate education. It seems like the kind of thing that Lawrence Summers might have supported, had the FAS allowed him to stay.</p>

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<p>Couldn’t agree more with Byerly and BirdloverFLA.</p>

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<p>Byerly, funding is not ‘critically inadequate’ at undergraduate level. harvard spend approximately $50k per undergrad, per year, and Oxford $35k, this difference partly due to the pay being less for proffessors. However many stay at oxbridge with lower pay just for the reputation. they have their fare share of the worlds best. In the 2005 world university ranking Harvard came NO1, Cambridge NO6, and Oxford NO5 (check:<a href=“Times Higher Education - Wikipedia)%5B/url%5D”>Times Higher Education - Wikipedia)</a>.</p>

<p>Not a ‘Joke’, and Intellectual,… i think not’ is the most typically ignorant, incorrect, red-neck comment as i have heard on this site. </p>

<p>You say that you: ‘prefer a classroom of about 10-12 kids over a tutorial session’. well valid point. Oxbridge DO provide this as well, Within the college, students reguarly meet with the tutors in groups of around 8-10, in both academic meetings, and also outside official teaching sessions-(ie over lunch in the dining hall) to discuss and debate among eachother and with tutors. Not to mention within the 10 lectures per week. The tutorial system is simply an added bonus, in addition to these. Yes, at Harvard you can talk to a proffessor 1-to-1 if you like, but not for 6-8 hours worth of time per week! We get the best of BOTH worlds at Oxbridge.</p>

<p>On whether the American Liberal arts education is superior, i would simply say that Oxbridge provides more depth and rigour ( Yes i have compared the physics and math syllabai), whilst the liberal arts programme provides an amazing array of study areas. Both are geared for different aims, with former aiming to produce experts in a given subject (at Oxbridge you are awarded a masters (MA) for a three year undergraduate degree!), while the latter aims to produce all rounded students, with graduate school instead focusing on depth of study.</p>

<p>Neither are ‘superior’, just have different aims and values. Also, we are not saying that Oxbridge does not produce all rounders as well, joint degrees in Maths/physics and philosophy, PPE, Economics, social Sciences, the Natural Science tripos and more, all require and develop both mathematical and language/essay skills. Furthermore in-depth lessons are available in nearly every modern language.</p>

<p>Therefore the undergraduate education Oxford provides therefore is still along with Cambridge, quite simply, the finest in the world.
The collegiate systems were the original and always the superior, with Harvard itself being founded itself on this principle as New College. If the American system has shown any weakness in it, it is merely its decentralised financial strength, which in any case has only become an issue within the last 20 years, with reduced government funding.</p>

<p>You are also wrong about the Oxbridge being ‘open to a relatively small fraction of the population’. The government in the UK provide all of the cost of the fees for poor students, as well as bursaries for ALL of those students who require it (based on parental income). You are correct in one way with the fact that most of the population simply is not bright enough to get in, which is much the same as for Harvard, as most americans are not capable of scoring a 2250 SAT. 55% of students at Cambridge are from state schools, compared to 66% at Harvard. hardly the disparity you imply. The main difference being the Affirmative action. At oxbridge your intellect and love for your subject is sole dictator of your chance, not your race or class. We do not socially engineer, and we do not have quotas. The main reason you do is the current and historical, near crisis level wealth divide, and appauling record of racial equality, most recently highlighted by the the New Orleans disaster.</p>

<p>On a final note, overall Harvard is the worlds No1, when one includes the graduate schools with its simply untouchable Law, and Business schools. Its research here and impressive faculty is what pushes it to the top of the table.
However, Oxbridge has architectural beauty and history, of which Harvard simply cannot compare to. Oxbridge is adapting and updating its financial strategy. Within ten years, i simply hope we can compete on the financial front too.</p>

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<p>check also this ranking:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4339960[/url]”>The brains business;

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<p>Harvard DOES have tutorials. It was, after all, created on the Oxbridge model. Depending on one’s concentration, the tutorial can have perhaps 20 students for a general lecture, but these will then be divided up into smaller groups of no more than 5 for discussion. I agree that being in a small group may be superior to the one-on-one structure as students learn from one another as well as from their profs and Teaching Fellows. </p>

<p>The general education requirements at Harvard (and most other American liberal arts colleges) can be fulfilled in one year if one were to take nothing but gen ed courses. Since an American undergraduate education lasts one year beyond a British one, there should be rough equivalence in the amount of time devoted to one’s field of specialization. Most American students, however, prefer to take a few other courses besides those mandated by the general education concentration requirements.</p>

<p>What an American college has is greater flexibility in changing major (concentration). Most students at the age of 17 or 18 have only vague notions of what they want to do in life. A very large proportion of Americans answer “undecided” to the question about their intended major. A French student who decides that medicine is not for her after all and wishes to become a lawyer instead has to start all over again. An American student need not, by virtue of the fact that she will have taken a course or two in the field to which she wants to transfer.</p>

<p>Are Oxbridge students better prepared than Harvard students in their particular fields? Judging from admissions into graduate programs, it would not appear so. Some are and some are not, for individual reasons rather than because of the structure of their undergraduate education.</p>

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<p>Hasn’t this been discussed already?</p>

<p>It depends on what you want in an undergrad experience. My Princeton interviewer was offered a place at Cambridge for medicine. She choose Princeton, because she wanted a liberal arts education.</p>

<p>Sure, you’ll be better prepared in your concentration if you attend Oxbridge, LSE, et cetera, but their American counterparts provide breadth.</p>

<p>For what it’s worth, I have an unconditional at Oxford, but I am turning that down if an American equal takes me. I’d like to take a drama class :p</p>

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<p>you guys are just splitting hairs man.</p>

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<p>Byerly: “a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing” seems a hugely apt description for you. Proving Harvard is richer than Oxford is so trivial it’s tedious. I’m discussing here how this money is applied. Clearly all other things being equal Harvard’s resources ought to make it superior but my argument is that in some respects it is failing to apply these resources effectively and is therefore achieving less. I’m not sure why you’re failing to engage with this argument so spectacularly, it’s not a difficult concept. </p>

<p>Sonar: It has already been discussed. Your opinon is exactly right, I believe - it depends what you want out of university.</p>

<p>What I’m amazed that is the narrow mindedness existing on this forum. Two years ago I spent more time than anyone I’ve ever met comparing the two universities in a very open minded way, because I held offers from both and had to choose. Despite some very active recruiting on Harvard’s part, I concluded overwhelmingly that Oxford provided a better undergraduate education, for me. Yet I don’t dismiss Harvard’s merits out of hand. Users of this website, for some bizzare reason, do. </p>

<p>I’d guess that it’s because there’s such a Harvard obsession here. The amount of academic stats and extra-curriculars you guys reel off is amazing. I got into Harvard with about a fortnight’s work in total, so I hadn’t committed so much effort to it that I couldn’t afford to see it criticised. Clearly some of the people on here have.</p>

<p>For what it’s worth, academically Harvard does not compare to Oxford. When I went to Harvard as a pre-frosh, I attended a whole load of classes, lectures and tutorials and was stunned at the poor quality of it. I went to a core biology lecture, a subject I hadn’t studied beyond grade 10, and found that I knew most of the material (and that many students around me were asleep); you call that breadth, I call it an insult to university education. I went to an advanced math class (Math 25 IIRC) dealing with integration. Not only was the stuff being taught stuff I’d done in grade 11, it was taught wrongly - the teacher got basic formulae wrong which made his integrals impossible! Even more appallingly, it was left to me, the high school student in a class of 20 Harvard undergrads, to correct him, because I was the only one who knew the correct formulae. The final straws, however, were an economics class and third year tutorial I attended. The economics class appalled me not because the standard was so low - it was because, despite a competent teacher, the students were forcing it down. They needed to be taken through example after example of a very simple concpet (compound interest). It wasn’t just that this is a grade 10 topic in the UK; it was the fact they were struggling with it that really made me wonder what sort of academic standard was on show here. Finally, I went to a third year history tutorial. The subject was illuminated manuscripts. Again, I, the high school student, was the only one who knew what they were, even though these guys were concentrating in this subject. But what was really poor was that despite being taught by a full Professor, the standard was so low - it was more like show and tell than an intellectually stretching discussion!</p>

<p>Compared that to being in a tutorial with an expert on your field where you’ve prepared a very challenging essay and then have all your assumptions and ideas challenged and tested and you’ll see why I had little doubt about choosing Oxford.</p>

<p>(ooh I just remembered, I also went to a stats class which spent about 90 minutes on a topic so basic that at the end the students were so embarrassed they apologised to me about how boring it was…)</p>

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<p>The ignorance of people on this site is shocking. The level of study at Oxford far exceeds that of Harvard college. One merely has to compare the course content, which i have. Topics we study during the first year, you do not cover until end of the second year.</p>

<p>Harvard college does not provide the level of adademic depth many of us in Britain desire. The level of depth, especially within sciences, is simply unmatched by any other undergraduate degrees in the world.
And you are wrong in your assumption that people of 18 do not know what they want to do. 8/10 people i know, know exactly what they want to do. To get into Oxbridge you have to LOVE your subject, as this will show in the interview. If you interviewed at Oxbridge and said: ‘yeah i like physics, but also English literature and fine art’, you would not get in. This is the way we like it in the UK, and this is the way it has been for 800 years.
We have cultural differences in this respect, something you dont seem to understand. Neither system is better, just, we both want different things from undergraduate study.</p>

<p>Sonar, the Oxford drama society is the best. If you want to do drama go there, it worked for Kate Beckinsdale, Hugh Grant, Hugh laurie etc. or you could go to RADA after you graduate.</p>

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<p>Some do know, but most do not. A large propotion of applicants to colleges in the US answer “undecided” when asked about their majors. True, they have a vague idea. But most don’t really know if they want to study anthropology as opposed to history or sociology or psychology. A lot of students assume that because they did very well in certain subjects in high school, they ought to be studying those subjects in college. That is not always the case. On the one hand, college-level work is at a far more advanced level and rapid pace than in high school; on the other, there are so many different subjects that are not taught in high school but from among which college students can choose. A young man I know went to MIT wanting to be a biologist. He had to take one history class in order to fulfill his gen ed requirements. He ended up becoming a student of Renaissance history (taking most of his classes at Harvard). Stories of students switching majors in college are the norm, rather than the exception. This is why admission committees do not put a lot of weight on statements of intended majors, unless an applicant has won a major award in the field, such as an IMO gold medal, or has shown in some other way that s/he is really committed to this field (summer programs, internships, and so forth).</p>

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<p>CAMBRIDGE is the best:)</p>

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<p>Cambridge is up there for sciences and is simply the international king of maths, but Oxford wins for politics, classics, theology and law. </p>

<p>‘Oxford has had a role in educating four British and at least eight foreign kings, 47 Nobel prize-winners, three Fields medallists, 25 British Prime Ministers, 28 foreign presidents and prime ministers, seven saints, 86 archbishops, 18 cardinals, and one pope. Seven of the last eleven British Prime Ministers have been Oxford graduates’.</p>

<p>Not bad hey? Both have their merits architectuarly, but what does cambridge have that compares to radcliffe square? </p>

<p>In Britain, our high schooling is much more in depth also, So we have a better taste of what our subject really entails at higher level.
many people have said our A-levels are to narrowly focused on this site, but Oxbridge applicants typically study 4-8 subjects each being studied at far higher level than APs (yes, i have looked at the AP syllabai). We really do have different cultures, Marite, i am not joking when i say nearly all oxbridge applicants know exactly what they want to study. Remember those few who are unsure often change courses, as you are allowed to attend lectures of other courses. i myself am going to change to Physics and Philosophy, but first i will attend some philsophy lectures, to see.</p>

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<p>Oxford also has the Iffley Road track. For track and field athletes and fans this is a site of great historical importance.</p>

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<p>"The problem for policymakers is how to create a system of higher education that balances the twin demands of excellence and mass access, that makes room for global elite universities while also catering for large numbers of average students, that exploits the opportunities provided by new technology while also recognising that education requires a human touch.</p>

<p>As it happens, we already possess a successful model of how to organise higher education: America’s. That country has almost a monopoly on the world’s best universities (see the Top 15 below), but also provides access to higher education for the bulk of those who deserve it. The success of American higher education is not just a result of money (though that helps); it is the result of organisation. American universities are much less dependent on the state than are their competitors abroad. They derive their income from a wide variety of sources, from fee-paying students to nostalgic alumni, from hard-headed businessmen to generous philanthropists. And they come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, from Princeton and Yale to Kalamazoo community college.</p>

<p>(T)wo pieces of advice for countries that are trying to create successful higher-education systems, be they newcomers such as India and China or failed old hands such as Germany and Italy. First: diversify your sources of income. The bargain with the state has turned out to be a pact with the devil. Second: let a thousand academic flowers bloom. Universities, including for-profit ones, should have to compete for customers. A sophisticated economy needs a wide variety of universities pursuing a wide variety of missions. These two principles reinforce each other: the more that the state’s role contracts, the more educational variety will flourish."</p>

<p>The World’s Top 15 Universities (The Economist)</p>

<ol>
<li> Harvard University (America)</li>
<li> Stanford University (America)</li>
<li> University of Cambridge (UK)</li>
<li> University of California-Berkeley (America)</li>
<li> Massachusetts Institute of Technology (America)</li>
<li> California Institute of Technology (America)</li>
<li> Princeton University (America)</li>
<li> University of Oxford (UK)</li>
<li> Columbia University (America)</li>
<li>University of Chicago (America)</li>
<li>Yale University (America)</li>
<li>Cornell University (America)</li>
<li>University of California -San Diego (America)</li>
<li>Tokyo University (Japan)</li>
<li>University of Pennsylvania (America)</li>
</ol>