Still rock solid but there are cracks in the ship. (1) Prohibitive costs of education (ultimately) do no good. It doesn't mean anything if you lose out on talent if no one can afford your glittering universities. Bridges are falling, kids- we need scientists and engineers fast and those people cost $ to educate. . .and without them your lives will be more expensive. And saddling students with six-figure debt does not (and will not) create a solid ground for a future labor force that can spend and invest. (2) Graduate U.S. Programs are solid, but undergraduate programs are starting to suffer from grade inflation at too many places. That would require a separate weblist. . . (3) Universities should stop admitting more freshmen than they can handle. They know that only 55-60% will actually graduate so they try to squeeze as much tuition out of 'em as they can- good business idea, but should education be a pure business venture (?). . .turning schools into an extended summer-camp for future dropouts is a drain on resources and a waste of time for too many people. . .

While there is definitely a wider buffet of college options in the U.S. than in any other country, this example of American abundance is, like the others, in the end more limited than it first appears. The vast majority of colleges cater only to the 18-22 crowd, and an alarming number of these schools seem to be designed to groom the sons to take over dad's job and the daughters to get their M.R.S. degree. Only a very small number of colleges serve an older student population pursuing goals such as job training for the globalized economy. In the U.S., these goals are actually much better served by the Armed Forces; a friend of mine is a Navy graduate who never went to any college yet is better off than any of us. In Western Europe, by contrast, the notion that education should be a lifelong opportunity has created a much better system of night schools and other postsecondary opportunities. While this system has problems of its own, such as creating a class of permanent students, it seems more flexible and adaptable to the sudden shifts in the global economy.

And I can see the facebookers and myspacers on this site are making full use of the opportunities.....

I dunno, academia seems to be pretty full of shit to numbah. I know people with talent who make half of what they are worth due to lack of paper and I also know people who don't know a damn thing that have a high paying job because they have a little piece of paper on their wall that they cheated their way through school to get. It stinks...

This is one of the few items on the list that does present a characteristic largely unique to the US. The only true rivals to the US in post-secondary education were the elite European schools; but Germany's universities, once the best in the world, were destroyed in the 1930s, while Britain and France lowered their standards in the 70s and 80s to accomadate mass education. The US has managed to have both quantity and quality in post-secondary education; that's why there are so many students and professors from abroad in American universities. The financial aid/scholarship system is not always fair or cost-effective, but it gets the job done better than the state-financed systems elsewhere.

On this issue, Drummond simply does not know of what he speaks. The assertion that post-secondary education is not available to most people in the U.S. is flatly wrong. And a larger percentage of people than ever before in our country are attending school after completing high school. No, we do not have a socialist system akin to the one in Germany wherein the average college student graduates in 7 years because university level work is entirely paid for with tax dollars ... nor do we have the average American citizen paying over 50% in income taxes as do Germans. What we do have is private colleges, public universities, community colleges, trade schools, business colleges and vocational institutions that are more diverse and numerous than those found in any other developed country. Further, we have a wider variety of people, from all income brackets and racial backgrounds attending these institutions. Not only that, but the U.S. has the greatest age diversity present on university campuses in comparison to other developed nations. And persons who are young, middle-aged and even elderly attend these institutions because of widely available loans and grants available at the state and federal levels. Try doing that in Japan, Hong Kong, Korea or Taiwan where a person's future is essentially decided based upon the outcome of his college entrance exams in his late teens. There is a reason that United States colleges and universities are the most sought-after foreign destinations for students from abroad: They are the envy of, and standard for, excellence for the rest of the world.

Why else would so many foreign students choose to study in the U.S. if not for the effectiveness of its higher education? There have been a lot of studies that rank the world's universities over the years and this is an area that the U.S. has come to dominate. http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2004/top500(1-100).htm The U.S. cannot put out enough of the highly valued math and science graduates to fill the world economy's needs, so other countries like India, China, Japan and South Korea have been filling those enrollments. While lousy teachers are a problem in America's post-secondary education, a lack of pressure on students to excell in in-demand areas is too.

Don't think we even compare with western Europe. And unlike Europe, post-secondary education is inaccessable to many if not most Americans, particularly with the depletion of financial aid.

We have better opportunities for HS grads than most countries.