[georgeecollins]

Are Universities in Europe really that high quality? Certainly some are, but as a parent researching schools I have been really surprised by how many European colleges are a bit mediocre by the criteria I was evaluating. For example, Spain and Italy have some of the oldest colleges in the world. But in many ways there are four or five colleges in California that are better, four or five colleges in Texas, and across the US many many colleges than any college in those countries.

I know a lot of people will disagree because there are so many ways to compare colleges. But what I look for is the strength of the top faculty (not necessarily the teachers but who you might work with as you get more advanced), the facilities, the quality of the research that comes out of that University. The US really has an impressive number of schools that attract top faculty from around the world and produce world class research in many fields.

A lot of European colleges seem to give you a good education. But if you really wanted to be an expert in something, or just get the experience of working with top people, it is amazing how relatively strong US colleges are.

I know I am making a lot of generalizations, perhaps unfairly. So if you disagree or see it a different way please correct me. This is something I am really trying to learn about.

[lordnacho]

My issue with the rankings is how they emphasise research. Why would it matter to an undergraduate how highly decorated his prof is? We used to joke that the more titles a guy had, the worse he was at teaching. I think this is true because the guys with the titles have moved on to managing research and finding funding, rather than having daily tasks to do with the research.

I went to a very well known university that's known for giving tutorials with just a couple of students, and this always seemed to be the case. Top prof = doesn't have time or motivation to teach.

If you look at it, everything you do in undergrad is fairly well known anyway. There's no reason why a course at one uni would be much different from another, the fields have decided long ago what is and isn't important.

What might affect your kid is what peers they end up with. If you go to a top uni, people are used to doing well and tend to come from backgrounds that allow them to succeed.

[throwawaygh]

Well, a few things:

1. Research is part of the pedagogy. Getting involved in a research lab as an undergraduate is a great way to land in the top 5-10 percentile.

2. I think what you're saying is roughly correct, but would warn that you can very easily go way too far in the other direction. For example, check out some of the smaller colleges and state branch campuses launching data science departments staffed entirely by non-stats/non-CS faculty who have 0 days of work experience. Mostly because their math courses are under-subscribed and they've gotta do something with those bodies. The quality of these programs is about what you'd expect. So, you don't need top-tier faculty. However, you do need faculty who have at least a relevant terminal degree and/or significant work experience. Otherwise, it's the blind leading the blind.

3. Curriculum does vary radically between universities! C.f., Stanford and a random branch campus of a state school.

4. As you noted, cohorts can also vary even more radically.

[tnecniv]

> Research is part of the pedagogy. Getting involved in a research lab as an undergraduate is a great way to land in the top 5-10 percentile.

I just want to point out for any newer undergrads that might be reading that research is really one of the best things you can do during your time at school. Even if you don't plan on going into academia, it looks great on a resume and professors are often have industry connections that can get you an internship easily.

[jeffe]

A few caveats to be aware of: more scrutinizing employers will recognize that undergraduate research at the same university you attend is usually a gimme. And at my large state school was often used for cheap labor that grad students didn't want to do.

[throwawaygh]

It’s the project output, the faculty connection, and conference attendance. The line on the resume doesn’t matter.

[derangedHorse]

For the large amount of students who don't go on to get PhDs, why would that matter?

[derangedHorse]

1. Research is part of the pedagogy. Getting involved in a research lab as an undergraduate is a great way to land in the top 5-10 percentile.

5-10 percentile in what? Grades? Amount of papers? Grades generally don't speak to someone's practical ability on whatever job they choose after college. For example, one's ability to learn stoichiometry in a time-constrained environment hardly implies they'll be a great chemist.

Papers also come cheap and there are already enough out there of insignificant value or dubious quality (a good indicator might be the journal/conferences most undergraduate papers are submitted and accepted to).

As others have said, just because a teacher is skilled doesn't mean they are skilled at teaching. To your second point, I've once had professors who had significant achievements on their resume not be able to explain the basics of their field in a coherent way. In a case like that, those professors are equivalent to lecturers who have 0 days of "work experience" (which seems like a weird term to use for what I read from your comment as "research")

[throwawaygh]

First Outcomes. So, either total comp or other relevant metric. Feel free to disagree, but I have tons of data so I’m not even going to debate.

You seem to simply not understand the rest of the comment. The “or” is a branch with qualified professors of the practice on one side. It’s ok to not have any research experience as a professor, but then you better have a strong track record in industry. Having no relevant research AND no relevant industry expertise is the problem. One or the other usually suffices. Yes, usually. Spare me your anecdata about that one professor you still hate.

High quality researchers almost by definition do have several years of experience — “research scientist” is a job. One that pays better than most, even. 200K total comp starting in CS - CMU and Mit publish data. Just because you’re not building crud apps or cleaning up PDFs all day doesn’t mean you don’t have experience in a marketable skill.

I know a lot of cs phds. 100% who are current faculty either spent time in industry or had mid 6 figure offers they turned down for professorships.

[derangedHorse]

"Feel free to disagree, but I have tons of data so I’m not even going to debate."

Why say you have tons of data and not just post it? If there's tons of it, it should be easy to find and post one link showing direct correlations between undergrads in research earning in the 5-10 percentile.

It's funny how you can say "One or the other usually suffices. Yes, usually. Spare me your anecdata about that one professor you still hate." when whatever evidence you have to support your "Yes, usually" is probably exactly that. When I was referring to "work experience" I was emphasizing the point that there's the "work experience" being referred to still doesn't factor in teaching which is a large part of what the job should entail.

And a 200k starting salary isn't too impressive when the time taken to get a PhD can be used to get that salary in the industry. 5+ year senior engineers can be seen getting 200+ total compensation on levels.fyi and I personally know people who make beyond that with even less experience than that.

What I'm saying is that the school system is broken and isn't structured to incentivize good teaching. Some hiring processes for university staffs don't even take it into account even when some of their salaries and facilities are paid by students. If you want your kid to actually learn something then I'd suggest vetting colleges by other metrics that actually indicate something about the quality of education he'll be receiving and not the quality of education his lecturers received.

[throwawaygh]

> Why say you have tons of data and not just post it?

For the same reason you don't you dump your employer's IP whenever some internet rando asks for proof: it's not mine to give.

There are many paths to a happy early career. Getting involved in undergraduate research is one of them. There are other paths too.

tbh I'm not even sure what your point is anymore. You clearly have some sort of weird chip on your shoulder re: undergrad research. Sorry for your bad experience or whatever.

[dropofwill]

Your chances of landing a job in a research lab in undergrad probably doesn’t correlate with top research output. People who have armies of phds and post docs don’t have time for undergrads.

I spent my last 2 years of uni in a research lab and got some stuff published. Im pretty sure i got this opportunity because i went to a school with a dearth of grad students and i showed some initiative in an intro class for what became my minor.

[7thaccount]

I went to a public university with a good engineering program. After freshman year I took most of the Edx circuits course from MIT to see what the ivy league education advantage would be. It was pretty much the exact same topics and lectures. I thought the MIT lecturer did a slightly better job and I'm sure all the students were smarter than me, but I feel like I learned the same things for a fraction of the cost.

[noodlesUK]

One of the problems that universities need to contend with is that they’re simultaneously meant to be research institutions and educational institutions. I think universities tend to do better if they focus on research first and let that lead their (comparatively smaller) teaching responsibilities.

[ummonk]

This depends whether you go to college to be taught or you go to college to network and get involved in research.

[alexpotato]

Speaking as a dual US/Italian citizen there are some things I would add to your picture (which surprised me when I first learned them). I should also add, my picture is a bit dated since I last looked at this in the early 2000's but a lot of this is still true:

US vs Italian "high school"

- Finishing Italian secondary education is most equivalent to US high school + at least the first year of most US universities

- I believe this is true for most major European countries and boils down to the expectations for students being higher in Europe than in the US

US vs Italian universities

- It's true that Italian university is free

- It's also true that "anyone" can attend

- However, there is a mandatory "advancement" exam at the end of the first year that MOST (~70% in the early 2000's) students fail which bars them from continuing

- The above is what sometimes skews comparisons between US and Italian colleges

- To complete university, you are required to do a "thesis" and then defend it. Historically, this was done orally in front of a panel

- There is also the effect that because university is free and housing is usually paid for by parents, taking 5+ years to finish is both normal and somewhat socially acceptable (this is more of an interesting side bar)

Long story short, this means the Italian university is really Sophomore year of an American university plus some graduate level work. A good example of this is how there is(was?) no separate law school in Italy since you are essentially doing advanced level courses in "undergrad".

Another comparison: at the time (early 2000s) multiple people in senior level positions in European companies mentioned to me that in their opinion, having an MBA from a top US school was equivalent to a degree from a top Italian economics school like Bocconi University. Since most US companies thought of the MBA as the "advanced" degree, they weighed it more heavily so it did "matter" in that sense but not from an education only perspective.

[andreilys]

“ Another comparison: at the time (early 2000s) multiple people in senior level positions in European companies mentioned to me that in their opinion, having an MBA from a top US school was equivalent to a degree from a top Italian economics school like Bocconi University”

HBS and GSB have much more brand value than Bocconi university. Whether the economics education you get is on par is debatable but it’s clear one of the selling points of an elite US MBA is the signaling.

I’m skeptical of the claim that Bocconi university has anywhere near the signaling effect of HBS/GSB.

[vikramkr]

Bocconi might have more signaling value to European or Italian companies perhaps, but American companies have European companies thoroughly beat in terms of number, size, power, global influence, etc. One of the "benefits" of valuing capitalism as much as we have is that the opinion of American company management carries quite a bit more weight around the world, and they would pick harvard over bocconi any day.

[yolovoe]

US high school education is not uniform throughout the country. Are you going by some states' requirements here or are you assuming some amount of AP credits?

[pa7x1]

Top European universities provide pretty good education pre-PhD level, in many cases the first 3-5 years in European schools is superior and more focused than the equivalent US curriculum. The first 1 or 2 years in US universities seem spent filling the gaps left by a mediocre High School education.

US universities are then miles ahead of most European schools in their PhD programs bare a few exceptions (Oxford, Cambridge, ETH...).

[srtjstjsj]

US college isn't longer because it's remedial, it's because it has more out of major liberal arts required courses.

There are a lot of remedial classes at US colleges, but those students wouldn't be in college at all in Europe.

[7thaccount]

This is true. There are a lot of pointless liberal arts classes for a STEM degree in the US. For example, my engineering degree required 3 English classes, psychology, fine arts, and sociology. These were all incredibly easy and I found the course material was what I was used to as a freshman in highschool (no I'm not exaggerating). So those classes weren't even remedial, but felt like a joke. Please note that I'm not saying all liberal arts classes are a waste, but I think all the 101 classes are pretty bad. The fact that people were complaining and struggling to make a C was mind boggling. The university says they're there to make you well rounded, but we all know it's an excuse to charge more money. The human brain can only take so many technical courses at the same time as well, so it's not like I could cram in another mathematics or engineering course and stay sane. Instead of giving you a break and getting to use that time to study, you have to take the useless other classes which costs more money.

[ridaj]

> There are a lot of pointless liberal arts classes for a STEM degree in the US.

I understand, this was my outlook when I left school too, but I changed my mind about that.

It took me maybe 5 years of work experience before I realized that no matter how "technically" smart I was, my technical skills were worth shit if I couldn't communicate better with my teammates. My writing was poor, I couldn't explain myself concisely, I could get flustered when someone didn't understand a point that looked straightforward to me... I had no notion of how I might go about convincing someone to do something I needed, especially someone who wasn't working in the same field as me or didn't have the same educational background. Not saying I'm a rockstar at this either now, but at least I understand the benefits of well-roundedness in a way that I didn't see earlier in my career.

I also see this with some of my younger colleagues now, who seem to care about technical output and cranking out smart stuff, but they're having problems communicating or taking feedback, and it's really clamping their future professional opportunities until they work on that...

Anyway - I don't mean this to disclaim your experience of feeling like you were wasting your time, and maybe the classes weren't the right level for you, just pointing out that at least for some people in the tech field, lack of skills in the humanities dept eventually prevents their professional advancement, hence it's not necessarily a waste of time for everyone to take classes outside of their major even if they're studying in a STEM field...

[fiblye]

I think he means there are classes that really are pointless. They're basically adult babysitting.

I found quite a few interesting history/culture/etc classes and enrolled in them. They had no prerequisites, but offered engaging material. A week in I notice... these classes don't fulfill my general education requirements--only the most fundamental, non-challenging classes do.

So I switch from classes with 15-20 students that would've involved long discussions, some research, and actual thinking, into lectures of 150 students and only 3 multiple choice tests in the entire semester.

I went to every class. Never was I challenged. They were very much "here are facts. Memorize these for the tests" classes and nothing more. Very surface level stuff. Not even any questions from the professor, and oftentimes if students asked questions, the professors would tell them to ask later because they're short on time. Just a waste of time and money.

[7thaccount]

Yep, this is what I was getting at. Also, the test facts are part of a study guide literally telling you what is on the test and people still fail.

[7thaccount]

I've been out of school for a decade now and would agree that communication is vital. However, that isn't learned via English Literature, psychology, sociology, art history...etc. Public speaking, writing descriptive emails and so on require practice, literacy, and putting yourself in someone else's shoes. Something like Toastmasters in class form would've been nice.

[pathseeker]

None of what you identified are covered in these useless classes. In my undergrad we had a sociology course that when over how people have different roles in life (family head, care giver, money maker, etc). It was all stupid obvious stuff without any non-technical merit.

If only those mandatory liberal arts classes taught things as useful as communicating and writing...

[hakfoo]

The one that got under my craw was when I went to see an academic advisor with one or two semesters left.

I had been fastidious about covering all the specified requirements, and my proposed course-load covered the remainder. Except apparently you needed 128 total hours, and actually covering the requirements of the programme left you six short. They designed the timetable assuming that people would bounce between majors or otherwise load up on go-nowhere electives, and the advisor basically said I could take underwater basket weaving and it would count for the gap.

I ended up taking a CLEP exam a few weeks later to claim the equivalent credits of several semesters worth of Spanish classes.

[dragonwriter]

> There are a lot of pointless liberal arts classes for a STEM degree in the US

Only in a liberal arts program. In an engineering program, there is almost none. Other programs may fall in between. When I was at UC Davis (which was before Biological Sciences was its own college), the non-major liberal arts course load went (both in general, and where multiple colleges had the same degree program, between those specific programs) College of Letters and Science > College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences > College of Engineering.

> For example, my engineering degree required 3 English classes, psychology, fine arts, and sociology.

That's, what, semester and a half all told? That's an odd basis for claiming “a lot”.

> The university says they're there to make you well rounded, but we all know it's an excuse to charge more money.

No, if they wanted an excuse to charge you more money they'd drop the liberal arts requirement, keep the length of the program constant, and add more engineering courses, whose faculty are much higher paid, and keep the same tuition to cost ratio.

[7thaccount]

I've looked at many programs and most schools claim that they want students to be "well rounded". I think that is pretty common and a scam, but that's just my opinion.

We may have a difference of opinions here, but six classes that I have no actual need for IS a lot to me. I still had to show up for those classes, listen to the instructors, do homework, buy stupid textbooks, and briefly study for the tests even though they were easy. That cost money that was the equivalent of me flushing it down the toilet, but more importantly, robbed me of additional time I could have spent studying for my thermodynamics, electronics, and differential equations classes (things that I was struggling in and I was intentionally paying good money to learn) or sleeping or actually getting to spend time with my fiance.

[baskire]

Curious what university you attended. From my experience the engineering liberal arts courses were still engineering focused. E.g. English was about writing ieee formatted papers.

I had an engineering ethics course where we discussed sensitive issues such as a medical radiology device which accidentally delivered 10x the dose due to sticky keyboard keys.

[galaxyLogic]

I had a colleague who told me he went to a university in Florida. I asked him what did he study there, and he said "Golf".

[PaulDavisThe1st]

PhD programs in the US and elsewhere are often not directly comparable. Doing a PhD in the US typically involves 1-3 years still taking classes. Doing one in the UK means starting thesis-forming research immediately. Not really the same thing at all.

[ianmiers]

Uk CS PhD: spend one year figuring out what you are doing, 1/1.5 years doing research. 1 year writing up. Thats the summary I've gotten from several faculty.

On top of that, you have to go do a few postdocs if you want to do academia.(maybe a good thing, but not necessary in hot areas in the US for PhDs from highly ranked schools)

There's a reason the UK is trying to go over to centers for doctoral training and 5 year PhDs. Yes, in those and the US system, you spend 2 years taking classes. But in that time you are also getting spun up and then doing research.

[google234123]

Most programs I've seen have students starting research immediately. Sometimes you might have a few months of rotations through different groups.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Every friend I have (or ex-wife :) with a US PhD (this spans physics, history, computer science, physiology, geology) did classes for the first 2 years (roughly).

[google234123]

You can do both at the same time.

[tnecniv]

non-US PhD programs typically require you have a masters. In the US that is not a requirement, hence the course work. If you are a more mature student coming in (e.g. have a masters) the course work is often a straightforward refresher and you can start doing research when you aren't doing classwork.

[pyuser583]

US and UK degrees in general are not comparable.

[Nimitz14]

Uk is the outlier here.

[Beldin]

Not compared to northwestern europe. France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Germany are similar (not the same - similar). Scandinavia probably as well, but i don't have experience there.

[Nimitz14]

In no serious field does one do a PhD in 3 years in Germany.

[ridaj]

US is great for Masters levels and above, where there is indeed such a thing as a world-class specialists helping shape the next generation of experts.

If you're thinking about college though, that doesn't churn out experts. The material is well-known, and IMO it's more important to have great teachers available to answer your questions than to have world-class research experts on the brochure. Great teachers are also not everywhere, but they are in far higher abundance than the so-called "top faculty", and maybe good teaching doesn't even correlate very strongly with research brilliance.

Some of the classes in which I learned the most had teachers who were (I now see in retrospect) relatively middling postdoc folks, or long-tenured professors who didn't really have much more research "juice" in them... but they had a well constructed syllabus, were able to cleanly articulate concepts, give examples, give exercises, give encouragement, etc.

I've also taken classes with world-class researchers, and some of them were outstanding, while others had sloppy syllabus prep, didn't adequately coordinate with TA's, gave lectures that weren't engaging as they jumped into long solo calculations at the blackboard that they had trouble making their way out of... In short, they couldn't be bothered.

So I wouldn't generalize from my experience either, but I think that especially for college, teaching quality, and student body quality (peers are an important source of motivation) are more important than world-class research renown.

Working in tech in the US, I see enough high-performing European and Asian immigrants that I think it could be good for an American kids today to consider getting a degree from a school abroad for a fraction of what it would've cost them in the US.

[baskire]

The best math professor I had was atrocious at teaching. If not down right abusive.

Taught me how to ask the right questions. How to capture requirements and learn on my own.

Top Universities aren’t their to teach. They are their to empower you to teach yourself and explore deep in areas. While also learning the fundamentals that are necessary for this enablement.

That is drastically different than the average ranked schools.

[jillesvangurp]

Nonsense, there are a lot of universities in Europe to choose from that have been around for centuries with excellent reputations that also publish world class research, rake in nobel prices, attract foreign students & researchers, etc.

US universities tend to be better at marketing because their core business is separating their students from their cash and making them feel good about that. That does not automatically translate into a better academic performance. There are a lot of second and third rate institutions that are perhaps better at their marketing than actual academic performance. Arguably the smart move for a US school kid would be to opt for the life experience, language skills and education at a university abroad instead of opting into a mortage to get an education from some local college.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Are Universities in Europe really that high quality?

Anecdote from a friend studying biochemistry in Milan, but mind-blowing. Apparently, he was the only one in his graduate class to know how to use a pipette and other basic lab equipment. Until that point, their training had been purely theoretical.

There are a lot of other problems in a similar vein. But the quality of American high-access, high-quality higher education from a practical perspective is a solid counterpoint to the European model of high-access, low-cost.

[tinco]

That's weird, basic glassware use including pipette is part of the national final grading in The Netherlands, I guess there's differences across the EU.

[mixmastamyk]

Reminds me of the Feynman story where he goes to Brazil. May be a southern/latin Europe thing?

https://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education

[ChuckNorris89]

I think the US collages you say are stronger than European ones just boils down to money.

It's amazing how having more money just buys you more and better facilities and teaching talent, not to mention the US Gov. investing far more into STEM R&D (for defense) than Europe plus all that sweet private R&D money from all the fortune 500 companies.

It all ads up in the end.

[pyuser583]

Also admissions criteria. Italian colleges are known for having little control over who they admit (and graduate).

Almost all students attend a local university, often without leaving the house. The universities are essentially required to admit (and graduate) large numbers of locals.

[eecc]

Well that indeed is a problem.

I graduated Engineering from an Italian university and I must say much of my curriculum consisted of mind-bending exercises meant to keep us busy and out of the way. The currency we lacked most was context, insight, and an understanding of why some particular detail mattered.

I do think that of all that was thrown at me, something stuck after all; but admittedly the most insightful and profound opportunities that I missed are to be blamed on me, and on the precious little attention to students that the scarce funding allowed for.

[GlennS]

I always find it a little suspicious that all the university rankings in English-speaking newspapers rate English-speaking unversities the highest.

That said, there are definitely opportunities in the USA that aren't available elsewhere.

[ju-st]

At least in Germany research is often done by e.g. Max Planck or Fraunhofer Society. These are public research organizations which are practically part of the universities but their research output is not counted in rankings.

[galaxyLogic]

It may very well be the that the 10 best universities are in the USA so if you want your kid in the best university rather than sending them to Europe that might be the way to go.

That doesn't mean that in general the quality of education, for the general public in Europe would not be higher.

It's a bit like the US healthcare system, the best in the world, but only for those who can afford it.

[alkonaut]

> what I look for is the strength of the top faculty

I think most people getting doing normal undergraduate program rarely notice where the top factulty is strong and where it isn't. I sure didn't in the first years of an education. Every university has better and worse departments (those with some reputation for its research, and "others"). I have seen nothing that suggests that the undergraduate education given by staff at the less-known departmenmts is worse than the education given at the "good" ones.

Of course, if you want to get a PhD or even take an advanced undergrad or PhD-class in a 4th or 5th year at a university, you'll notice where the skilled academics are. But the vast majority of the education done at an university is in the basic undergraduate classes given to hundreds of students every semester. It's the quality of that I think is most important, and I'm going to argue that it's probably not dependent on the number of Nobel Prize medals in the department.

[pjmlp]

My degree was 5 years with professional Software Engineering accreditation (legal title in Portugal), and it had a level of data structures, systems programming, distributed computing, graphics and programming languages that I still find people missing out in online discussions.

So naturally there are bad ones as well, it is a matter of doing the research, and in Portugal's case, having the required grades to get in.

[etripe]

I haven't done a STEM education, but it seems to me like the quality of research output is dependent on the field, to start with. Second, doesn't it really only become relevant at the PhD level, not bachelor's or master's degrees? Seems to me like nothing precludes you from going for a good education in Europe and then getting good research opportunities in the US.

[rscho]

Europe educates people. The US let you believe your child can bring in his little league bat and get to play with the Yankees.

I'd be most surprised if the progress you make as a student was correlated to having the rock stars of the field in your school. In the age of the internet, if you're good and motivated you can work with pretty much anyone in the world.

[pyuser583]

Spain and Italy have a reputation for crappy universities. Italy especially.

[realusername]

> The quality of the research that comes out of that University

Research in continental Europe does not come from universities but mainly from research institutes, so I'm not sure what you are comparing here...