No, I absolutely hold to my assertion. It is one of the worst. Or, it was allowed to devolve into one of the worst.
The results we obtain do not align well with the money we spent per student. Not to mention the ideological crap we shove into their minds, particularly at the university level.
And the problem is that it isn't getting better.
Things need to change, and do so quickly. Like I said in one of my prior comments, these are issues that take a generation or more to yield results. If we don't fix this quickly, we are going to have very serious problems in the coming decades. And, the only way to solve these problems will be through the promotion of immigration of university graduates from other countries. There's nothing wrong with that other than the huge disservice we will do to our students.
The world is a competitive place. Nothing should stand in the way of our system of education reaching for and demanding excellence.
EDIT:
I have to add this.
One of my son's friends decided to go for a Masters in Mechanical Engineering. Since I was a mentor at our local high school robotics team, she asked me what I thought about one of the schools she was kind of set on attending. I took one look and begged her to not do this. Her Masters was going to cost her THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS.
How? Why? This is insane!
Mechanical engineers graduate every day from excellent universities around the world at a cost between zero and, maybe, one tenth of what she was facing. And they are just as capable as anyone else.
Well, the sales people did a good job on her and she took that path. Years later she told me just how sorry she was not to take my advise.
How does an ME degree cost $300K? How is it possibly worth it? How did we allow the system to degenerate to such a level that it is legal to do this to our young?
No my friend. This is a disaster. This is really bad on many fronts. It needs to be fixed or we will pay the consequences in the long run.
The results we obtain do not align well with the money we spent per student. Not to mention the ideological crap we shove into their minds, particularly at the university level.
And the problem is that it isn't getting better.
Things need to change, and do so quickly. Like I said in one of my prior comments, these are issues that take a generation or more to yield results. If we don't fix this quickly, we are going to have very serious problems in the coming decades. And, the only way to solve these problems will be through the promotion of immigration of university graduates from other countries. There's nothing wrong with that other than the huge disservice we will do to our students.
The world is a competitive place. Nothing should stand in the way of our system of education reaching for and demanding excellence.
EDIT:
I have to add this.
One of my son's friends decided to go for a Masters in Mechanical Engineering. Since I was a mentor at our local high school robotics team, she asked me what I thought about one of the schools she was kind of set on attending. I took one look and begged her to not do this. Her Masters was going to cost her THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS.
How? Why? This is insane!
Mechanical engineers graduate every day from excellent universities around the world at a cost between zero and, maybe, one tenth of what she was facing. And they are just as capable as anyone else.
Well, the sales people did a good job on her and she took that path. Years later she told me just how sorry she was not to take my advise.
How does an ME degree cost $300K? How is it possibly worth it? How did we allow the system to degenerate to such a level that it is legal to do this to our young?
No my friend. This is a disaster. This is really bad on many fronts. It needs to be fixed or we will pay the consequences in the long run.