@ChoatieMom - Please thank your son for his service
@cobrat - thanks for the excellent example of the differences in cultures/laws. Something like that could never work because of how equal opportunity has become equal results. That, and education is too political.
@cobrat:
Basically, In Asian countries the big push is to get into an elite college (usually public, with some exceptions), and once they made it in, they basically kind of slough off, because the big part is done. In those countries, unlike the US, where you go to college most definitely defines what you can do, which outside some of the ivy track/old boy network kind of jobs like investment banking or white shoe law firms/judicial clerking, is not necessarily the case in the US. I read an article a bit ago that talked about that in China, going to anything but the elite colleges is a waste of time, that graduates of the ‘lesser’ schools often ended up working jobs that paid less than manufacturing jobs (they were talking jobs like running the ‘honey carts’ that took human manure to fertilize fields and the like), that to get into the government or into the ‘good’ jobs, you had to come out of these schools.
@torveux: The Asian method in many ways is just as political. For example, admissions to a lot of those schools require bribes to administrators to be able to get admitted, and often those that are politically connected get in, the kids test scores are ‘re-examined’…not to mention that in Japan and Korea, there is a huge industry with cram schools and such to make sure kids do well on the exams, and it means that often it is the kids from well off backgrounds who are getting in their, it isn’t a meritocracy either, it isn’t about equal opportunity, it is often about inequal opportunity based on wealth, not unlike the prep school track into the ivy league for favored sons that still exists to some extent. One of the things the US colleges have tried to do is realize that equal opportunity itself doesn’t exist, in Asia you have a self fueling elite going on, and it is rapidly starting to happen in this country as well, where education attainment is more and more tied to the economic health of the family.
Can you cite specific cases? I ask because this wasn’t the case in Japan or The ROC(Taiwan). One illustration of the latter was that none of Chiang-Kai Shek’s own children/grandchildren were given backdoor admissions to the universities. The only area where he could exercise influence even as a dictator was in the military academy* and even then, at least one grandson was expelled with extreme prejudice for failing to meet academic/disciplinary standards with the superintendent prepared to accept the loss of his rank, career, and freedom to uphold that expulsion.
In the US, 'Political, has an entirely additional segment. Our politicians like to use their influence to make an unfair life fair. In addition to their own children getting into schools (often because the school wants some cachet) they will try to force the schools to admit students who look, feel, think, etc. a certain way. This makes the German/Asian concept tougher to implement. That, and the way the Constitution is interpreted at various times would torpedo any chance to build a similar program. To admit that some student are just smarter than others will rub some people wrong. It will be deemed unfair to slot a ‘child’ into a particular career path, etc.
No, I think the only way you get ‘free’ education in the US is to water down what that education means. Even if the rigor could somehow be maintained, we would simply end up with a glut of educated people with no careers that use their talents.
European systems used to be for the elite but that was consciously altered by the governments. In Austria, for example, where my neighbor is going (as an Austrian citizen, for less than $100 per term), the number of students with university education rose from about 19k in the late 1950’s to over 200k in 1990. About 85% of the eligible kids get some university education - and the number of women has of course risen dramatically. The graduation rate tends to be lower but not because of cost (which is a main reason here). It seems more connected to the job market’s requirements in Europe: the US demands more credentials.
Doctors get a LOT of training. So, sure, why not? You don’t need to be a genius to handle the vast majority of cases that come into a doctor’s office. On the rare case where someone really does need a genius doctor they’re still out there. Foreign doctors are not nearly as educated as US doctors and it’s not as if all other countries are in chaos over it.
I have been told by people who would know that in the PRC even though they have a national exam, each school has a certain number of spots they are allowed to award on a case-by-case basis outside the assignments from the results of the exam, and in some cases these spots are subject to bribery. Though this is a minority of these spots, and these special spots are a minority of the total spots with the majority being filled as the result of their national exam. And that this goes on today, this is not just history.
It’s certainly not hard to imagine there’s more corruption in the PRC than in Japan or the ROC though.
In Germany, students are tracked into educational paths earlier than in the US. This allows education to be more optimized for each path, but the cost is that decision points are pushed back earlier (age 10-12).
While there is some corruption and politics, the percentage of spots where this applies are so tiny they are extreme aberrant exceptions to the rule. It’s not comparable to the percentage of elite U students here admitted on the basis of legacy/developmental factors or non-academic factors like Div. I athletics*.
There are also exemptions from taking the national exam for legit co-curricular achievements such as the case of a student in a frontline report who was admitted to Tsinghua’s math department without examination because he earned a silver medal in an exceedingly competitive international math competition.