Hacker News Reader

Comment by gommm | Hacker News Reader

This is why when my son is old enough to choose a university, I'd probably try to advise him against doing undergrad in a UK or US university if he's studying STEM. Based on interviewing CS graduates, it doesn't seem that the level is that high in most UK/US universities compared to other countries (of course with the exclusion of the very top) and that seems partly due to a culture of pushing for profits over education and making it very hard to fail.

View on HN

When I did CS at a UK university in the 1980s it was brutal - I was an idiot in my first year and had to retake maths 3 times meaning I slipped behind by a year. However, I eventually did learn my lesson(s) and did increasingly well over my second, third and fourth years - ending up with a 1st and being particularly fond (ironically) of the mathematical parts of the course.

We had quite a lot of foreign students on the course and they were all, without exception, completely awesome and great people to do a course with. Mind you, Norwegian moonshine is horrific...

Second paragraph rings true of my experience 10 or so years ago. But may depend on the university and the current funding environment is a bit different.

Exactly. Also, the same push for profit made cohort sizes for many courses extremely large, simultaneously making the more interesting/required (or if you a slacker, easy) classes extremely difficult to get in (first-come-first-serve basis, you need to ensure you are the first in the online line to get your seat) and the class sizes are too large to make learning interactive.

Funnily enough, as a full-fee paying international student, I had an easier time learning in India than in the US a decade or so ago; the only thing that made my masters education worthwhile was the research opportunities, the general quality of students, and an easier job market (at that time). Given that all three are in decline right now, I would not advise anyone to pursue masters abroad.

Without knowing anything about your situation, this sounds like a bad idea. I think roughly you want a university that is well-regarded[1] and hard to get into so that one’s attendance carries some signal.

[1] by well-regarded, I mean well-regarded by eg people at competently run well-paying firms who do hiring, rather than eg people who are really into politics and who have idiosyncratic opinions about particular universities

Oh I mean alternative would be a well regarded university/school in Germany or France... I'm French but we live in HK and most kids here (even the ones who go to the French International School or the German Swiss School) end up trying to go to UK or US universities. French and German international schools tend to not be that well ranked in the most well known rankings despite being very good technically (which is annoying when trying to get a visa to certain countries).

Part of my bias is that I was an exchange student at RIT and while I appreciated the experience, I was not impressed by the CS courses or the level of maths of the students going there.

Maybe ETH Zurich does a good job both of being somewhat outside the anglosphere but also well regarded.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com