Comment

Even then, career tracking absolutely can and does take on a segregationist character when the wages of the labor make access to certain career paths a purchasable privilege.

And yet it appears in most countries, including Communist ones like China. This isn’t a uniquely American action.

That’s how you get all the Eton College grads going into politics and journalism as a single congealed cohort.

That’s more due to family connections. Most UK students taking their A-Levels aren’t going into politics and journalism.

And that’s created a rich vein of for-profit schools that exist above the High School grade, which people are obligated to assume debts to attend in order to be accredited for certain jobs.

The USA still has one of the best public university systems in the world. This includes community college programs which help “lower” track students get a 4 year college degree.

And, going back to what I’ve said earlier, other countries have degree restrictions on their jobs as well. Senior government positions in other countries are usually the domain of the college educated, with a much lower percentage of their populations having a college degree.

You keep pointing to things happening in the USA as a uniquely American set-up and therefore evil without being able to contrast that with his the rest of the world handles secondary education.

source

Sort:hotnew top

UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

And yet it appears in most countries, including Communist ones like China.

I’m not sure how we shoehorned “China Bad” into the discussion. But a country with a large public non-profit education system that’s insourced enormous amounts of industrial research and development isn’t a strong example of this model. On the contrary, the Chinese state has been particularly good at pulling domestic talent into domestic industry. It’s one of the excuses Americans regularly use to condemn Chinese manufacturers for “cheating” and “stealing” intellectual property. They’re not hiring a bunch of American Ivy League grads to run their businesses in Shanghai and Chengdu. They’re hiring and promoting from within.

That’s more due to family connections.

Eton’s family connections are economic connections. It’s one big aristocratic snarl. You’re rich because of who you know and you know these people because you’re rich.

The USA still has one of the best public university systems in the world.

20 years ago it did. Now our administrative overhead has exploded, our student-to-teacher ratios are shit, even historically prestigious state schools are becoming little more than diploma mills, and on top of all that you’ve got Trump snatching international students off campus and throwing them into blacksites based on spurious allegations of whatever-the-fuck has an online conservative frothing for blood.

Meanwhile, you can go to Berlin, Germany or Sao Paulo, Brazil or Melbourne, Australia or Singapore, China and get the same or better quality of instruction, facilities, and job prospects without the comical rent-seeking by privatized American institutions. Turns out undergrad organic chemistry isn’t something Americans have a monopoly on.

other countries have degree restrictions on their jobs as well

Which nation outside the US has anywhere near the level of college student debt? Canada and the UK are the only two countries that come close.

You keep pointing to things happening in the USA as a uniquely American

Americans pioneered the modern university system at the turn of the 20th century. That system began as a non-profit, research-oriented, academically focused public institution. And the idea of academic R&D spread globally, so that we now have university systems replicating the 20th century American model pretty much everywhere a large urban center exists to support it.

But then the Americans took a good, useful, public sector innovation and converted it into a mechanism for gatekeeping professional positions and rent-seeking young people. That particular model hasn’t metastasized as broadly as the former. Perhaps its just a matter of time. But it appears the root of the evil is the decision, back at the turn of the 21st century, to publicly defund university systems.

So much of the rot in US academia is driven by the privatization of the university model. Where you see the rot infiltrate other foreign universities tends to be where privatization has occurred the most rapidly.

source
- HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  I’m not sure how we shoehorned “China Bad” into the discussion.
  
  I’m not, but you’ve identified a a thing as American without looking at how the rest of the world operates and how some practices may be an international standard or at least more uniform than just one country. I didn’t say “China bad”, I brought up that China performs the a similar filtering of students; you applied the label that I was saying “China bad”.
  
  It sounds like you’re angry at the American system, a system you know, and think other systems must be better without understanding how other secondary education systems work. Other countries may do some things than the USA, but a lot of the basic structure that you complained out is more universal than you think.
  
  source
  - UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    
    you’ve identified a a thing as American without looking at how the rest of the world operates
    
    You’ve restricted your understanding of the world to the US/UK and its colonial enclaves. FFS, how do you think Cuba is pumping out so many extremely talented doctors per capita? It’s not via the American debt-for-access model.
    
    It sounds like you’re angry at the American system
    
    Hard not to personally experience the machine that grinds your bones and not feel a little resentful for being shoved through it. But more broadly, it has been eye-opening to travel and talk to people outside the American financing system and learn how other countries produce large numbers of professionals who aren’t crippled by debt on graduation day.
    
    Other countries may do some things than the USA, but a lot of the basic structure that you complained out is more universal than you think.
    
    The debt-financing model is not simply an American invention, but a very recent American invention. As in, barely ten years separate the cohort who got larded up with debt and the generation that didn’t. It came about very quickly and as a coordinated set of reforms orchestrated by privately funded think tanks primarily based in the United States.
    
    source
    HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    You’ve shifted to talking about tertiary education, which I’ll agree that the USA hasn’t funded to the level of other countries.
    
    source