|
In Canada, at least, the quality of education is monitored closely by the accreditation board. A degree from one university, for all intents and purposes, is equal to another. I go to a fairly good school for Software Engineering with a good reputation, but definitely not the best (by some standards). A lot of people consider Waterloo to be the "best" CS/Software Eng. school in Canada, but I end up getting the exact same degree. I've done the same courses, with some brilliant minds behind the podium. Mind you, my choice was also on the environment surrounding the program. The impression I had when I visited Waterloo was fairly bad. The campus is a huge sprawl, and not too many people on campus looked like they were having a good time. My tour guide, a software engineer, told us that Waterloo was the only place to go if I wanted to get a good job when I graduated. As well, beyond residences on campus, there wasn't a whole lot of housing surrounding the campus. Students are sprawled out around, leading to (in my opinion) not the true university experience. I'm currently a tour guide for my program, and I usually get the question: "Why would I go here when I can go to Waterloo?". First of all, I know this guy/girl is probably being forced to look at other schools as a backup plan, and I also know that I have about 60 seconds to state my case before he/she loses interest. My university was one of the first in Canada to have a Software Eng. program, and had several interesting "sub"-degrees with Software Eng & Game Design and Software Eng & Embedded Systems. The campus is beautiful and fairly compact--you can get from the furthest point in the campus to the other side in less than 10 minutes. People are socializing outside. In the spring, the field in the middle of campus is full of people having picnics and playing pick-up soccer, football, and cricket. I tell the student that it's not so much about where you'll be in 4-5 years, but how you get there that's important. University was my first taste of the world, and I'd much rather have a good experience transitioning to the working world than asking myself about what I actually did in the past few years. |