Every country has public schooling. The USA tests very poorly in the students who go to public schools compared to similar countries. Judging education based on institutions that as said are unavailable to the vast majority of people is a weird metric.

It's great that the USA has very rich private universities with multi billion dollar endowments, but the elite ones don't do much for 99.99% of people living in the USA and their value over the next best school isn't amazing either.

Again, I generally agree with you, but as a public school kid I must protest that we also have many very good public universities.

USA 3rd most populous country so "tens of millions" sounds bigly. Best to deal with per capita numbers.

Calling b.s. on the not attainable line of thinking. USA the land of opportunity like few others.

edit: saving an image, post in a sec



http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2016...2017_FINAL.pdf

This is true, but people are pointing towards the elite schools in the USA as a reason that it has good education programs. This is why I'm discounting the "merely good" schools that aren't super expensive or renowned.

Ligastar, it shouldn't even be controversial that it's not attainable for most kids to go to a school that costs more than the median family income per year.

These students are flocking to grad schools that charge no tuition and provide salaries to everybody that attends. Yes, very few americans can get in. Very few people in any country can get in. Maybe youre a trump fan and want to ban foreigners taking up valuable university spots....that would absolutely destroy USA #1 as the worlds scientific power

I call BS on that. What are the prospects for a poor kid with poorly educated parents in the US vs. Western European kid in the same situation?

I mean, the US isn't going to come in near the bottom of all countries in opportunity, but I don't think you can say there are few others like it. A poor but very intelligent and motivated kid with poorly educated parents in France might have a better chance of going to Harvard than the same kind of kid in rural Mississippi or West Virginia.

It is controversial. The U.S. is loaded with solid, affordable state and public universities. The number is in the thousands. It doesn't sound like you're familiar with the U.S. educational system. Furthermore, tens of thousands of students receive/qualify for stipends, grants, scholarships, etc. to offset the costs of education.

the post you quoted. 3rd in the world. you might not agree with this report, but i'm not sure what to tell you.

Liga, the USA has a lot of wealth. It is one of, if not the best places to be born rich. You are vastly overestimating the opportunities of those who have much less privilege.

I'm not reading the 400 page report. "Global Competitiveness" doesn't seem to be an answer to which countries have the most opportunity for the average person.

It's better to be born rich in America, it's better to be born poor in the Nordic countries

i understand where you are coming from, but i disagree with where you are coming from. taking education totally out of the equation, simple hard work, grit, and relentlessness can get you far in the U.S. not so much in many countries (including several EUR countries).

as i said, not sure what to tell you then.

edit: read the one page Preface on page xi for info on the report.

The university system, though quite impacted, is great. And you can go to a school like the University of Iowa and find maybe the best writing program in the world. But, it's hard to get there if you go from a ****ty elementary school to a ****ty middle school to a ****ty high school. It's not impossible, but you can't rank the US education system based entirely on colleges and universities.

I'm not disagreeing with the report, but with your interpretation of what it means. Or at least I'm asking you to explain how it's germane.

You can use per capita if you like, but lol @ the higher institutions you are talking about being more than even a pipe dream for tens of millions of americans. That is just disjointed from reality.

And you can call BS if you'd like on it not being attainable in the sense that "Well 1 kid from Harlem got into Harvard," but cmon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ion_attainment

If you're too lazy to click, we are 44th.

Re: your global competitiveness chart. It's methodology is questionable to say the least, especially in a conversation about education opportunity.

Maybe I'm the most left-wing radical you know! Literally no idea where you are going with this, given the context of the posts leading up to yours.

YEP

And if you're born rich in a Nordic country you'll be fluent in English and can attend an American university.

wasn't doing this. said in totality you couldn't call the U.S. education system "mediocre" when the rankings of the world's universities looks something like this: USA >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>UK>>>>>>>>>>>who gives a fk

Girls, girls, you're all pretty, could you move this slap fight to another thread so we can hear more about Trump trying to destroy the world?

you're talking about opportunity in a given country. the report ranks opportunity in countries.

I don't know what your politics. You seem to have no idea wtf you are talking about so I assumed TRUMP.

for the third time now, this isn't what i was doing. i was arguing that calling the "U.S. education system" mediocre is just lol b/c a big part of a nation's educational system is higher education. USA is #1 in the world in this aspect of education by a wide wide margin.

later, others said there's no opportunity in the U.S. b/c lol nobody can afford Harvard. microbet and i noted that the U.S. has literally thousands of solid, affordable state/public institutions of higher education.

Ossoff at 50.4% with 53% reporting.

I think it's probably a good idea to pay a bit more attention to the people who aren't born rich. They seem upset.