Why are Finnish students smarter then the rest of the world?

[Bill Mattocks]

Sure. When it comes to blowing things up and outspending your adversaries, you ar enumber 1. But Belgium rules where it really matters: we got the worlds best chocolate, beer, waffles, and things like that.

Which we buy from them. We are demand, they are supply. This is how it should be. Make stuff for us. Thank you.

 

[crushing]

Sure. When it comes to blowing things up and outspending your adversaries, you ar enumber 1. But Belgium rules where it really matters: we got the worlds best chocolate, beer, waffles, and things like that.

Smart enough to not have prohibition or some silly purity law (which was really a tax scheme) ruin or retard the art and science of zymurgy. I must say that the US has come a long way in regards to beer in the last 25 years though.

Now, for me to make an educated comparison between the US and Belgium please send me some Trappist Westvleteren 12 and maybe a couple others that you think best represent what Belgium has to offer.

 

[Bruno@MT]

If I could, I would. Sadly, West Vleteren is almost impossible to get, even for us. But your post gave me an idea and I am going to put myself on the waiting list, and hopefully I'll be able to buy some in a couple of months.

I actually played with the idea of sending beer to my fellow forum members on another forum, but that is problematic because of US customs which has an issue with people mailing alcohol.

Still, If you want I can send you a couple of bottles of West Vleteren, if and when I can get them, at cost but without guarantees. I.e. if they get 'lost' in shipping or the customs department wants import fees, it is not my problem. Drop me a PM and we can discuss the details.

 

[Ramirez]

One might also consider why so many people of various nationalities find it important to attend US universities and colleges, particularly for technical and scientific education. I'm struggling to think of that world-class Finnish university that all the US students flock to...

you can argue about the judging criteria but here are a couple of lists of university rankings and Bill is correct, the preponderance of them are American.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/top-200.html

http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2010/results

Finland`s University of Helsinki comes in around 75 and 102.

Of course a wealthy university can attract the best academics so if research and publications are weighted highly those universities will come out on top. It might be interesting to see a list based just on quality of undergraduate education. (Harvard As....)

 

[Tez3]

I see my uni is 149th! many of the British universities on that list are actually small in fact very small compared to the American ones and as pointed out have far less money to attract the 'stars' of the academic world. I believe too that American universities have a huge amount of scholarships to award to attract students, ours don't. You don't get into a British uni just because you are good at a sport, it's academic qualifications only that get you in. There's been students here that have failed to get into British unis but have gone to America and been accepted, now does that mean your standards are lower or that you simply have more places available or you can just buy your way in?

What qualifications do you need to get into an American university and what qualifications do they offer?
These people say they will give you an automatic place at an American university, all you have to do is pay.
http://www.cepascourses.com/fsc/

 

[Ramirez]

I see my uni is 149th! many of the British universities on that list are actually small in fact very small compared to the American ones and as pointed out have far less money to attract the 'stars' of the academic world.

It might be interesting to find out how many academic stars in US universities are "home grown" and how many are foreign trained. In general it seems that the UK pays its academics so poorly that they have a serious "brain drain" going on.

eg. physicist Joao Magueijo in his book and engineering professor Nick Hitchon of the Up series have publicly said that.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

There's been students here that have failed to get into British unis but have gone to America and been accepted, now does that mean your standards are lower or that you simply have more places available or you can just buy your way in?

Doesn't matter - it's not the quality of the students, it's the quality of the instruction. The universities that make all the money can also attract and pay the best instructors. That does not mean that there are not excellent instructors at every level, in all sorts of settings, but when money is involved, you can indeed buy the best and that's what the richest universities do.

The top-end universities can also afford to buy the best equipment and fund the best working environments if you're talking about hard sciences and so on which require things like particle accelerators and whiz-bang gadgets. So again, this has the synergistic effect of attracting the top-end teaching talent, the best post-grad type students, and even the best research grants and outside-funded experiments. Let's face it, the USA has a stranglehold on this.

Changing? Yes, it is changing. I do not argue with those who say that China is on the rise. I am also quite aware of the fact that we do not have as many post-grad hard sciences students in our own universities as we do those from other countries. They come here, learn from us, and go home; we lose brain power yearly. However, if Americans want to sit in front of the TV and watch the game and drink beer, so be it.

For the moment though, the USA still rules the education game. We're the smartest, and by a lot.

 

[Ramirez]

.

Changing? Yes, it is changing. I do not argue with those who say that China is on the rise. I am also quite aware of the fact that we do not have as many post-grad hard sciences students in our own universities as we do those from other countries.

I suspect your bright students are being lost to finance. Back in the 60s engineering and science were the hot careers, then it was law , now it appears finance takes the cream of the crop.

 

[Tez3]

Doesn't matter - it's not the quality of the students, it's the quality of the instruction. The universities that make all the money can also attract and pay the best instructors. That does not mean that there are not excellent instructors at every level, in all sorts of settings, but when money is involved, you can indeed buy the best and that's what the richest universities do.

The top-end universities can also afford to buy the best equipment and fund the best working environments if you're talking about hard sciences and so on which require things like particle accelerators and whiz-bang gadgets. So again, this has the synergistic effect of attracting the top-end teaching talent, the best post-grad type students, and even the best research grants and outside-funded experiments. Let's face it, the USA has a stranglehold on this.

Changing? Yes, it is changing. I do not argue with those who say that China is on the rise. I am also quite aware of the fact that we do not have as many post-grad hard sciences students in our own universities as we do those from other countries. They come here, learn from us, and go home; we lose brain power yearly. However, if Americans want to sit in front of the TV and watch the game and drink beer, so be it.

For the moment though, the USA still rules the education game. We're the smartest, and by a lot.

However the OP is about students and while the instruction may be from very good people it doesn't mean much if the students are there to play sport and are as thick as two short planks. The OP is also about education not research or fantastic facilities, it's about the students, what they learn which means that America doesn't have the best educated students does it, if all many are doing is playing sport for their university or don't have to have any qualifications to actually get into university. Being able to pay money and turn up doesn't make students 'smart', it means they have rich parents.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

However the OP is about students and while the instruction may be from very good people it doesn't mean much if the students are there to play sport and are as thick as two short planks. The OP is also about education not research or fantastic facilities, it's about the students, what they learn which means that America doesn't have the best educated students does it, if all many are doing is playing sport for their university or don't have to have any qualifications to actually get into university. Being able to pay money and turn up doesn't make students 'smart', it means they have rich parents.

Well, America is the best (at more or less everything) and that's pretty much that. I realize it causes people in other countries to feel badly about themselves. Perhaps it's a hate crime to be American and know you're the best.

 

[Ramirez]

However the OP is about students and while the instruction may be from very good people it doesn't mean much if the students are there to play sport and are as thick as two short planks. .

LOL....raises an interesting question, is it better to have a generally better educated population or a small extremely educated class.

 

[Empty Hands]

Doesn't matter - it's not the quality of the students, it's the quality of the instruction. The universities that make all the money can also attract and pay the best instructors.

Heh, if only that were true. The largest and richest universities also proportionally use grad students far more often to teach courses. That's because the largest universities recruit the best academics, and the best academics are not the best teachers. Indeed, taking the time to become an excellent teacher will preclude almost every professor from being the best academic. Tenure and advancement are decided mostly by research and grant productivity. The best academics however bring in the most prestige and the most grant money, which further enhances the prestige of the university.

At the end of the day, that's what the largest universities are selling - not quality instruction, but prestige. The scions of the wealthy aren't going to Harvard to learn the most, they are going to Harvard so they can say they graduated from Harvard and use that network and prestige to their advantage. If they wanted to learn the most, they would be going to a small liberal arts college where every course was taught by a professor, not a grad student you can barely understand who is only teaching the course so they can survive long enough to finish their research. Or they would be going to MIT, CalTech, Carnegie Mellon or another university with extremely rigorous academic standards. Harvard's standards for one are a joke. Grade inflation is rampant. The hard part is getting into Harvard, not graduating and learning.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

At the end of the day, that's what the largest universities are selling - not quality instruction, but prestige.

That's certainly part of it, but my local community college doesn't have a particle accelerator, know what I mean? The biggest - for whatever reason - get the equipment, the contracts, the teachers, and attract the star post-grad students. For undergrads, sure, they get the sons and daughters of the idle rich as well as the bright ones.

 

[Ramirez]

Heh, if only that were true. The largest and richest universities also proportionally use grad students far more often to teach courses. That's because the largest universities recruit the best academics, and the best academics are not the best teachers. .

True, I went to a large research university (university of Toronto) where instruction was regarded as an annoyance and the general attitude of the professors was that undergraduates were barely more than pond scum where the best thing to do was flunk as many as they could so they didn't have as many to teach the next year.

Now they need undergraduates to keep their funding up so the general attitude the way I understand it is the profs give out inflated grades with the understanding that the undergrads don't bother them.

 

[Tez3]

LOL....raises an interesting question, is it better to have a generally better educated population or a small extremely educated class.

Good education for all! Education shouldn't be elitest, it should be for everyone.

 

[Ramirez]

Good education for all! Education shouldn't be elitest, it should be for everyone.

I agree with you completely Tez, I was trying to get to that we seemed to have reached the consensus that the general population is better educated in most advanced countries than the US, but the US attracts the really highly educated with its bucks.

And as Bill is gleefully pointing out (its getting a bit annoying actually), the US is economically and educationally dominant. They do have the best of the best.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Good education for all! Education shouldn't be elitest, it should be for everyone.

See, that's a problem.

You can't give everyone a high-quality education.

First, many people don't want it.

Second, many aren't up to it.

And third - yes, I know this sounds awful - but the world needs ditch-diggers and crap-shovelers. The world cannot be made up of entirely white-collar professionals with middle-class incomes. Someone must server fries at McDonalds.

It is important to provide education, yes. The opportunity must exist for all, regardless of race, religion, sex, etc. It is also important that it be difficult enough to obtain that only those who want it and can learn the material get it.

Sad but true - we need a lot of poor people to support an economic pyramid. The poor are generally the uneducated or the undereducated.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

And as Bill is gleefully pointing out (its getting a bit annoying actually), the US is economically and educationally dominant. They do have the best of the best.

Sorry, I'll stop now and revert to my usual annoying drum-beating for the US Marine Corps, Isshin-Ryu, and the state of Michigan being the best...hehehe.

 

[Tez3]

I agree with you completely Tez, I was trying to get to that we seemed to have reached the consensus that the general population is better educated in most advanced countries than the US, but the US attracts the really highly educated with its bucks.

And as Bill is gleefully pointing out (its getting a bit annoying actually), the US is economically and educationally dominant. They do have the best of the best.

Are you so sure they do? a nation of people who don't actually know where their soldiers are fighting and dying doesn't seem to be awfully well educated/smart to my mind!

As is always the case the Americans have the biggest and the most expensive, that doesn't equate to being the best. It gives them bragging rights only in that they have more money and as I was brought up a good middle class English girl I think it's terribly vulgar to boast about how much money one has.

 

[Tez3]

See, that's a problem.

You can't give everyone a high-quality education.

First, many people don't want it.

Second, many aren't up to it.

And third - yes, I know this sounds awful - but the world needs ditch-diggers and crap-shovelers. The world cannot be made up of entirely white-collar professionals with middle-class incomes. Someone must server fries at McDonalds.

It is important to provide education, yes. The opportunity must exist for all, regardless of race, religion, sex, etc. It is also important that it be difficult enough to obtain that only those who want it and can learn the material get it.

Sad but true - we need a lot of poor people to support an economic pyramid. The poor are generally the uneducated or the undereducated.

Why do you associate education with the job a person does? I think you mean job training not education. Your understanding of education is flawed, you take it to mean the training to be a lawyer or doctor not the education of the mind. A ditch digger can be highly educated, it has nothing to do with what job he does. He could read Proust or Homer, he could be knowledgable about geography, he could be an expert of history so why does what job he does have anything to do with it. A lawyer can be woefully ignorant, knowing nothing. A doctor too can be ignorant, ill educated but a very well trained doctor.

Education is more than learning to do a job, it's about learning about life and everything that goes with it. why shouldn't someone who works in McDonalds not want to know about their world? Education is so much more than learning to read write and add up sums.

Education should never be difficult to get if you want it, that's elitest and condescending. Education is a journey, a voyage of discovery, it is for everyone.