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Comment by jsonne | Hacker News Reader

This is totally anecdotal, but isn't the US (especially at the college level) more focused on a "broader" education? My cousin got a BA in international relations in the US and then went and attended school in Spain. Something like only 1/4 of his credits counted towards his degree there even though nearly all of them transferred. His explanation was that they expect less of a broad education and more specialization.

Recalling my own experience I got a BA in political science and I spent something like 30 hours in my major, and 90+ in general education.

It seems as though many people on HN (and in general) talk about how we need more STEM majors, but then complain that a degree that's very highly technical isn't broad enough. If you want people to graduate in a reasonable amount of time than it almost has to be one or another.

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US education seems to be stuck between traditional university and job training.

Traditionally, University exposed you to many things, various schools of thought and diverse subjects. The idea was to create an intelligent, rounded individual that could go out and become useful in a great many things. This worked when it was expected that the specifics of any job would be learned on the job.

Employers now however, don't want to do any training at all. They expect everyone, including new grads, to come in knowing everything they'll need to know. This is turning higher education into simple job training. They drop anything not directly related to whatever monkey position the school has decided to target you for.

A major difference is tiering in secondary education in Europe. There's not just a single "high school" degree, but there are vocational degrees (which you usually finish after 9th or 10th grade, after which you continue at vocational schools) and academic degrees (which you usually finish after 12th or 13th grade).

The academic degrees, since they only have to target a subset of students, can then be considerably more demanding than a more generally accessible high school degree (e.g., Calculus being a mandatory subject in some countries rather than the equivalent of an AP course) and you will cover a lot in school what in the US you'd do in the first and second year of college. For the same reason, Bachelor degrees in Europe are typically three year rather than four year affairs.

However, that is only part of the story, and a full undergraduate degree in the US (at a good university) will offer you a broader education than what you get out of most undergraduate degrees in Europe; if you want a broader education than what European universities offer, many European countries will point you to affordable continuing education. For example, if you want to learn another language in Germany, many Volkshochschulen offer courses for 2-3 Euro per hour of instruction (more if you need it to be credentialed).

Or, more simply put, while you can learn the same things in either the US or Europe, the educational content is packaged in somewhat different structures. And it isn't that one is better or worse than the other; the differences exist more as a result of historical accident or because of how education interacts with the rests of society's institutions and structures.

It depends on the school, and even further the major and sub-department.

For example, at Berkeley the L&S (Letters and Sciences) department was in charge of Computer Science (hence the BA) while the Engineering department was in charge of EECS (the more technical CS/EE major).

The Engineering department is one-track technical with very few outside electives, almost pure specialization. The L&S department was extremely broad and had great depth as well. I greatly enjoyed the latter, but both had great reputations.

I think diversity is important—some individuals will want to specialize, and the best you can do is offer them opportunities to branch out. Some people will naturally generalize. Encouraging a good variety of education is important and I think extremely valuable, but it isn't the best path for everyone. However 18 year olds aren't always the best ones to make decisions about their education and/or future ;)

After studying in both Spain and US, I can only say that this is correct (even though I did undergrad in Spain and grad studies in the US I think I have a pretty good idea of how the undergraduate studies work in the US).

Spain has a (more) specialized system in the undergraduate studies, even though it has been shifted lately (with the much hated Bologna process) to a brad system. Prior to the instauration of the Bologna process, an undergraduate student in Spain had two options:

- 1st cycle: 3 years of undergrad. I would say that it was pretty much equivalent to the undergrad in the US, but focusing only in courses relevant to the major. - 2nd cycle: 5 years of undergrad. This is (at least in STEM, the area I know) similar to a undergrad+master in the US (Even though in the US are only considered as a normal undergrad).

It depends on the university; some have a small number of credits that you can/should spend on things separated from your major (even in some cases sports), other have nothing similar to that and 100% of the credits are relevant.

Currently the educational system in Spain is slightly different after trying to merge it with the rest of the educational systems in Europe. In most cases the change has been seen as a shift into an educational system where students are less prepared and have to pay a more expensive Master (after the undergrad) to receive the same education they received with an undergrad years ago.

My experience with public research universities would say that yes, in general you are required to take quite a few courses in many fields that may be outside the realm of your major.

I'm an Information Systems major (BS) and I took two philosophy and two psychology courses, plus archaeology and a bunch of other things in other subjects.

I agree with you: that's about the best you can do if you want to graduate in 4 years.

At least at the universities I know of, majors being too specialized isn't really considered an issue.

My Informatics degree (also BS) required 1 philosophy and 1 psychology. The philosophy course was focused on ethics, and the psychology course on business relations, though they were both professor-dependent (the topic changed with different professors). They were part of the "human-centric" track of the curriculum.

My experience is that the US system is very much focused on a broader education- when I was at university in the UK I did not have the opportunity to take classes in different disciplines then choose my major. I applied to study International Relations, and I studied International Relations, and came out with a degree in International Relations.

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