RateItAll: The Opinion Network

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.