From: roland@cs.monash.edu.au (Roland Yap)
Subject: Re: US vs British university degree
Organization: Computer Science, Monash University, Australia
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 14:48:12 GMT

napi@jaring.ism.my (Mohd Hanafiah Abdullah) writes:

>Here's my 2 cents worth:

Here's another $.02.

>I am convinced that the American system of education is SUPERIOR to its
>British counterpart by far as explained by the following:

While I haven't I haven't undergone either the American or British
system, the post may be unduly critical of the British system.

>1. As a computer science graduate from an American university, the number of
>   required CS courses that I took surpassed those of a friend who studied in
>   Britain.  And I took more CS courses than I was required.  In addition, I
>   was able to take so many other courses in the humanities, literature, and
>   other hard sciences, and social sciences to expand one's horizon; and this
>   is non-existent in the British system.

I have no idea about the course requirements. However if one is well trained
in CS, it should not be that difficult to pick up whatever is required.
After all there is no way a CS course or any course for that matter can
cover everything you may possibly need to know. One of the purposes of
a university education is to raise your level to one where you can pick
up and know how to do so the material you need.


>2. The professors that I had were involved in heavy duty research activities
>   funded by organizations like the Natonal Science Foundation, Hewlett-Packard,
>   NASA, Motorola, and so forth, just to name a few.  They worked on real
>   projects like building an industrial strength programming language, or a
>   full-featured central-processing-unit as opposed to usually "toy" projects
>   undertaken at British universities.  As a result, one could get substantial
>   amount of high quality education from these American instructors who were
>   authorities in their respective fields.  They were well-balanced between
>   the theories and practice.

Basicallly this just means that there is much more heavy duty funding
in the US than in Britain. There are big projects also funded by Alvey and
Esprit which are European grants with commercial ties as well. However they
seem to fund a few multinational Big projects rather than more smaller ones.

One could equally argue as well that big funding may also distort research
direction. This is not to say it is bad - after who's going to argue if
you are offered more funding ;-)

An example of something now fairly successful is the functional language
ML. That was designed in Britain. It is now probably the most successful
functional language being used nowadays.


>3. In the US, before one starts to work on a PhD thesis he/she has to go through
>   around 30 hours of graduate courses related to the field of study, not
>   including those taken at the Masters level.  Only after that would a
>   candidate start working on the dissertation supervised by a professor who
>   is an authority on the subject and very likely possessing grants from a major
>   corporation.  This means that the person is well-equipped with the
>   knowledge that spans the breadth of his chosen field, thus, he/she has a
>   very high likelihood of producing high quality, impactful dissertations.
>   For instance, the SPARCs, MIPS, and their compilers are results of several
>   PhD dissertations at American universities.  A PhD program normally takes at
>   least 4 years to complete.

Very good points. My feeling is that the US style PhD gives for a more balanced
type degree. It of course, requires a sufficiently large department with people
whose research interests span a broad coverage. However a US PhD takes
substantially longer, which may be considered a minus by some. I know
of people who have taken something on the order of 9-10 years -- quite
a big chunk out of your life. Often most people spend the first two years
doing the coursework requirements and looking around for a topic etc.
So the person doing the British system by pure research alone would
have quite a lot more time to have worked on the thesis.
Another good thing, about the US system is that it encourages students
to produce some original research not neccesarily related to the thesis.
So it could be on smaller things related to coursework requirements.
Of course some people do get sidetracked ... hence 10 years ;-)


>   Talk about resources, most US universities have the state-of-the-art
>   equipment and tools, excellent libraries, world renowned professors, lots of
>   money, and the best and most extensive network infrastructure.  While
>   British universities are struggling with their budget, and furthermore using
>   American made equipment such as computers, test equipment, and software;
>   as well as books and technical reports.

No argument there. But bear in mind that people are more important than
resources - you choose where you want to go on the basis of who you want
to be working with rather than on the state of their library. I don't see
what British vs American equipment has to do with it. All those with cheap
Asian PC's can raise their hands ;-)

>   A PhD candidate in Britain would right away start on a dissertation,
>   ill-equipped, and with extremely little supervision.  They sometime do not
>   see the supervisor for more than six  months until they happen to run into
>   each other in the corridor.  For example, a person with a bachelor and
>   masters degree in Physics go on to do a PhD in computer science.  The only
>   computer science course he has is maybe an intro to Fortran-4 taken
>   several years back, yet he would be awarded a PhD in computer science by
>   just completing a dissertation that covers a very narrow area in the field,
>   for instance something that is related to Object Oriented Technology.
>   What?  A PhD holder in computer science who does not know much if anything
>   about operating systems, compilers, computer architecture, computer graphics,
>   artificial intelligence, database management systems, networks, and so forth.
>   And this usually takes around 2.5 to 3 years to complete.  What a crime!!

This would depend a lot on your supervisor (or thesis advisor as it is usually
called in the US). Also the fact that somebody has an interdisciplinary degree
shouldn't be knocked at. For example, there are a lot of important
computational problems in molecular biology but most CS people wouldn't
be bothered as they would not have the neccesary background to understand
what is going on and looking at just purely abstract algorithmic aspects may
not be sufficient. Anyway the fact, that one takes 3 years to complete
instead of 6 years shouldn't be held against you. In fact if you took 1 year
to complete, I guess I would be impressed ;-)


>5. Looking at the GNP, and the economy in general it would be right to say that
>   Britain is really sitting on past glories.  For one thing, its system of
>   education was thought of during the last century, and it had not changed
>   much since then.  The grading is based on the final exams which does not
>   reflect a student's true achievement.  Most students just spot questions and
>   memorize certain facts for days then forget them immediately after the exam.
>   Remember the SPM/MCE and STPM/HSC?  Plus, many British universities are just
>   out to make money by trotting the globe via British Council and grabbing
>   potential students especially from the Commonwealth countries.  Many of these
>   universities would have to close down without foreign students, unlike
>   American universities.  What a waste, because the students will eventually
>   realize that they have missed a great opportunity of studying in the US.
>   A friend of mine recently obtained a PhD in Computer Science from an
>   Australian university, and he was a top student at MCKK.  He told me how he
>   wished he had gone to the US after MCE because he found out later that the
>   USA was where all the action was, especially in R&D.
>   
>   Whereas the US system place appropriate weights on homework, exams, quizzes,
>   assignments, and class participation throughout a course.  This is a
>   progressive and highly effective system of learning, and a student cannot
>   afford to put of his/her studies until the last minute.  BTW, what is the
>   percentage of American Nobel Prize laureates as compared to British during
>   the last 50 years?

Actually the US school education system has been undergoing some crisis and
self examination of late. They have had some horrifying results from general
knowledge surveys, eg. not existent geography.

>So to the British trained, face the facts, there is not much to be proud of
>about British education.  The fact is that the American system is SUPERIOR
>by a lot!!  I rest my case.

Ok, we now need a British trained expert to fire away ...

Roland


----------------------------
Roland Yap                          Email: roland@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au
Department of Computer Science      Phone: +61 3 565 5186
Monash University                   Fax: +61 3 565 5146
Clayton
Vic 3168
Australia

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