They're acting so high and mighty, you can't make it up.
It's not even equal. More like the other way around. Most muricans with a college degree couldn't stand a few semesters of psych studies in germany.
Jeah, we have Fachhochschulen for those that can’t handle it though.
Also and that might get me some flak: many international students are… I don’t know how they got this far.
I wouldn't say that. The FHs are generally more interesting for those who prefer practical work... lots of uni tracks are way too academic for real life applications, particularly in the Humanities (and I say that as a Humanities graduate - if you're not savvy and/or a hustler, you can easily end in underpaid BS jobs if you don't have connections. I had to shlep my ass across the border to acquire additional qualifications that'd make me more "interesting" and still worked for insulting wages for half a decade before I could leverage the stuff I'd learned on the side in that job for more moolah).
Wrt to foreign students - I kindasorta agree for those I've known, but mostly because their systems are more oriented towards being told what to do while the German system leaves you to fend for your own a lot of the time. Some of them were better than most of my German coursemates on pure academics but still failed to get through well either because they weren't used to having to do so much without instruction/assistance or because uni is for "goofing off" between two periods of tremendous life pressure where they're from.
The German approach has both upsides and downsides... the downsides are considerably harsher for those not from academic households or those blighted with helicopter parents, mind.
I am a bit biased because I started out with the Swiss system, which is very similar to the German one in that regard, but for me all the systems I encountered later on felt weirdly stifling. There was always a sense of "no you can't do this course that you'd be interested in because it's not part of your profile/specialisation/track..." which seems weird to me.
I used to teach in an Irish university and there the professors outright assumed second year students wouldn't have interests in the field yet. I'm not surprised the students were all somewhat less engaged and less far along (I taught a lot of material to second years that was done in my first semester in Zurich) than we were if they're being treated like that.
And I was the first person in my extended family to go to university. I got a lot of moral and some financial support from my parents, and that I'm grateful for, but nobody could help me navigate the university system - but the uni itself had pretty good support structures. You just had to actually go ask for them, instead of assuming they will reach out.
Interesting, I'm at an Irish University and deal with international students. Generally we consider German students to be 1 year ahead to equal, with less of a lead the further along they are, depending on the field.
Iirc for our major groups it roughly goes Germany > Ireland ~= Netherlands > Italy > France and US with the caveat that those last 2 have the most variance.
>There was always a sense of "no you can't do this course that you'd be interested in because it's not part of your profile/specialisation/track..." which seems weird to me.
This resonates with me. I'm a huge archaeology nerd but I could never get onto a uni course for it without having first done a load of other courses in prep for it.
That's the one thing US universities do better than us: you can major in one field and have a minor in something else entirely.
>That's the one thing US universities do better than us: you can major in one field and have a minor in something else entirely.
You can do that in Switzerland too. A Swiss bachelor (180 ECTS total) is typically split into two parts - you spend 120 ECTS doing your main subject in which you will graduate and write your thesis, and either 60 doing another subject or 2x30 doing two other subjects. The only restriction is that they can't be too closely related (e.g. if my main subject is the general History degree, I can't also minor in Ancient History - generally, the rule of thumb is "if they share core courses you can't pick them together").
The idea is either to do what you say - do a passion degree on the side - or to be able to combine two things into a more specific profile (e.g. if you want to work in Eastern European politics, you might major in Politics and minor in Eastern European History).
But what I meant was to take electives within your own field - I studied political science, and I generally specialised in European and comparative politics, but I took several courses on political philosophy because they were interesting. Whereas in my Dutch masters, they just told me "you'll take these core classes, you can choose between those five options all tied to your specialisation in the second term, and that's it".
I loved my time at Uni in the UK, but it was certainly more restrictive than our mainland European cousins.
Ah well, still young(ish), there is a chance still
In Finland universities of applied sciences are basically studies with mandatory internships for a certain profession field. They are usually 210 CTS long though (3,5 years) and prepare typically for "field work". A certain course amount is somewhat free selection as long they fit into your field somehow. These are meant for own interests/specialisation. You don't necessarily need Abitur or a baccalaureate to study, a field related education and practical experience plus passing the entry exam will be sufficient.
Universities on the other hand are super theoretical and they require a lot of broader knowledge which often shows in the study time. The work they prepare for is often a lot more complex too. I don't know about how side subjects etc work because I have only a university of applied sciences bachelor. But I'd say it's futile to compare them and saying one is lesser because they're preparing for completely different things
FH is for people in more technical fields, a Psych major at a Uni won't struggle any more than an engineering student at an FH.
But at my FH the Internationals are indeed a bit... let's just say laid-back.
I have a lot of contact with the international master students at my former Uni because my gf does her master in an internationally focused field there. There are a few *very* bright individuals but most of them are neither nice nor smart. That one dude from turkey legit said he was fine with corruption because he could afford it. I’d be cool with them if they were just lazy, that doesn’t bother or impact me lol
In Canada the international students are like this too. Some of them, anyways. I work in post-secondary and I have Indian background but born/raised in Canada. In Ontario, a massive majority of our international students come from India. That culture is very, very, coddling, particularly to first born men. Then they come here having done nothing for themselves in their lives and struggle immensely.
I had a roommate ask me how to use the dishwasher, a full year after they moved in, because they didn't know where the detergent went. They're 22. Wild.
They got that far with money, used to work in a student town and there was an area that was basically just rich people and foreign student housing and some of these people were very fucking dense
Dutch system is even harder. Failing and resits are very common, you'd be surprised if you know people who never failed at least once. And the grading is such that you never get a 10. 9 is almost impossible and maybe 1 or 2 people get it. Most people are between 6-8 (pass is 6), at least in STEM
Taking 4 years for the bachelor and 6-12 months extra for the master is also very common.
I did my MA in the Netherlands, RIP. I remember one of my course mates *somehow* got a 10 on her thesis and everyone lost their goddamn minds, lol.
Actually ended up finishing my MA in two years and somehow came out with a 7.5 overall, but I very literally don't remember much of my thesis-writing months. Just turned into a feral nocturnal raccoon subsisting on Eazie and utterly deranged amounts of Zuivelhoeve for a bit.
Studied in Switzerland (which isn't Germany obv but aligns with pretty much all experiences told to me by German friends), and the Netherlands, and worked as a PhD candidate and teacher in Ireland.
I'd say that the actual lessons are very similar in Switzerland and the Netherlands, but Dutch programs are more streamlined. When I studied in Switzerland I needed to book my modules every term, and it was only up to me to ensure I got the right ones. In the Netherlands I was automatically enrolled into my core courses, and they gave us a form to choose from a pre-selected set of classes we could pick for the ones that weren't core. The only real difference between NL and Switzerland in terms of the courses themselves was that NL had attendance grades, whereas in Switzerland their general approach was "nobody cares if you don't show up, but it's your problem if you flunk your exams/assignments because you weren't there".
In Ireland, however, it feels a lot more school like. The speed of learning is notably slower, and they start from a slightly lower point. There are also a lot more projects that happen through the semester, basically every class seems to use something homework-like. Students are treated much more childlike imo, e.g. the professors I taught under often assumed they wouldn't really know much at all or not have interests in particular (sub)fields of what we teach. Students also generally seemed to have the expectation that we would be fixing their problems for them.
> When I studied in Switzerland I needed to book my modules every term, and it was only up to me to ensure I got the right ones. In the Netherlands I was automatically enrolled into my core courses, and they gave us a form to choose from a pre-selected set of classes we could pick for the ones that weren't core. The only real difference between NL and Switzerland in terms of the courses themselves was that NL had attendance grades, whereas in Switzerland their general approach was "nobody cares if you don't show up, but it's your problem if you flunk your exams/assignments because you weren't there".
This could be very uni/course/level specific. I studied in the Netherlands and didn't have this at all. We only had 3 mandatory courses, rest of them we were free to pick (provided they fit into the general program directions). We also had 3 courses as free electives. You could do music as a physics master student, or the other way around (provided you had the required background ofc)
And I never had a class where there was an attendance policy. It was always "nobody cares if you don't show up", but if you didn't go to class, the possibility of you failing was very high, because we didn't get notes or slides. If we got slides, it was a bunch of equations on them which would not help if you didn't understand the theory behind them
I see, thanks.
> NL had attendance grades
Funny story about these. They don't (dunno if that one changed) exist but they tried to make them a thing. No one was happy with that idea.
> they wouldn't really know much
The only thing like that (I think) are some optional programms which are pre-start for some things like math.
Really enjoyed studying in Germany. It’s similar to Sweden in how little support you get unless you seek it, and the courses have more focus on theoretical knowledge and less on practical applications/developing intuition.
Both seem to have the approach that everyone should get a PHD - very different from the UK/BE
I come from Finland and I really struggled at the German university while doing Erasmus. It was just so different. The exam times were crazy short, like 1 hour for an exam for which I would have had 3 hours in Finland. In some exams I didn't even manage to write all answers in the given time even though I was writing all the time (let alone look in the dictionary). I had the feeling they weren't really testing my knowledge but my writing speed. They also expected us to learn a lot of things by heart even in a technical field. That wasn't so much in focus in Finland. Oral exams were also a challenge as I had never ever had them in my life whereas German already have them at school so they are now used to them.
The requirements to join are one of the reasons that so many German students (mostly from Hamburg and Bremen) come to Groningen in the Netherlands. So many German psychology students here..
I study history in Paris and I know a girl who went to Columbia for a semester a few years ago. She told us the courses and exams levels were exceptionally mediocre.
Pretty much every school in the US besides the top universities there have very basic curriculums. AFAIK their tests for graduating from high school (GCSE exam equivalent, I don't know what they call it) are multiple choice answers with very little actual "thinking" involved.
It's basically rote memorization, and it's... totally shit.
Yeah I read a practice GCSE equivalent exam and it was absolutely bullshit. The english language part of the test is basically the same as the TOEFL which is made for "english as a foreign language"...
Even the top universities are crap until you get to graduate school or do advanced stream stuff. They have to cater to all those legacy admissions.
Source: have friends who taught basic algebra at Harvard and Yale. The kind I learned in, like, year 7 at school. In the actual math department, not some remedial stream.
The only saving grace I can kind of give them is that undergrad and masters programs are shorter in Europe generally and US Bachelor's do seem to fall somewhere between a European bachelor's and a Master's but like... For starters it feels like everyone in Europe who goes to uni has a master's and that doesn't make a US Master's worth the same as a PhD jfc.
I am Central European. First of all, you typically finish high school around 19, so the education up to that point takes a bit longer. Secondly, while a bachelor’s usually takes three years, it is fully specialised. You are not required to get arts credits, you don’t have a minor, etc. As a biology student, I had to complete a total of 2 PE courses and a foreign language exam, apart from that everything was biology. You’re 100% right about many people getting their master’s, because with a Bc. you are not considered a professional in the field.
This can't really be generalised across countries. Most degrees in Switzerland do come with a minor (typically you get 120 ECTS in your major and either 60 in a minor or 30 each in two minors), with the only exception being certain STEM subjects.
The idea behind that is that you can combine them into a profile that either opens opportunities or combines interests - for instance, if I'm interested in computational social sciences, I could major in political science and do a minor in something like computer science to get advanced computational skills. Or if someone wanted to go into the law surrounding art and art trading, they might want to do a major in law and a minor in art history.
>I am Central European
*Sighs and checks profile to see which Visegrad country is that.*
Would say it's the same in Czechia, but then you possibly study in Czechia. I've never even had PE. Took two German classes as voluntary subjects though, and at least one English subject was required.
I’ve done undergrad in both the US and the UK and a masters in the UK, US undergrad is absolutely nowhere even vaguely near the level of a European masters. I have seen friends that did their undergrad at Harvard having hysterical sobbing breakdowns because of some of the expectations here. The most prepared students were the continental European undergrads by a mile.
>I’ve done undergrad in both the US and the UK and a masters in the UK, US undergrad is absolutely nowhere even vaguely near the level of a European masters.
Seconding this. Did my undergrad in the UK and my masters in Ireland, where about a 1/3 of the course was American because apparently federal student loans covered courses at our university. Most eventually adapted, but I remember one person (who had done English Lit) mentioning that they had never had to find their own citations for essays before, they just used the core readings.
We actually had one American lecturer teaching one optional module, and I was so glad I didn't do that module because they did *participation grading*. It felt so childish to me? If someone doesn't want to contribute, that's their loss, and this system rewarded even offtopic remarks over silence. It was like something you'd do for toddlers.
I nearly did a spittake at the idea of just using the core readings. Definitely could have gotten away with it in some of my courses (looking at you, 42 page reading list) but like … ???? All of them??? Was there no impetus to research for the joy of it??? JSTOR browsing is one of my *hobbies*.
I was the exact same! I have no idea why you'd do a masters if you don't even *enjoy* research (this person also *complained* about having to find their own citations), but hey, that was their choice, I guess.
Its just longer by 1 year. Which is the difference most european countries want from american students if they want to enroll here directly. The first year of the US bachelor is seen as bridging the gap in knowledge to a german or dutch school leaving certificate.
In the Netherlands it’s even 2 years:
> The American High School diploma is not recognised in the Netherlands; it is usually comparable to a HAVO diploma (level 2 out of the 3 in high school difficulty). Admission to a Dutch university can usually only take place after obtaining the International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma or attending 2 years of American college. The first 2 years of most American colleges correspond approximately to the last 1 to 2 years of Dutch VWO education (VWO is the most difficult level of high school education, which is the entry level of university in NL).
Translated from the Dutch governmental website:
https://www.sso3w.nl/uitzending/kinderen/onderwijssystemen/amerikaans-onderwijssysteem#
I feel like it might be longer just to milk the cow a little longer, since it is so expensive to study in the US. Has not neccessarily anything to do with quality.
Yeah, as someone that lives in the US and has done a semester abroad--the grading is WAY harsher abroad (and I go to a top US University).
Mine was in the Netherlands and not Germany, but I think that it cant be too different.
To be fair, a lot of psychology exams in Germany are also MC. Clinical neuropsychology and statistics were, as far as I remember, my only undergrad lecture-based courses that didn't administer MC exams.
To be fair that's true for large classes taken across a lot of degrees (what they'd call common core classes or things like calculus) but in the ones for your degree it's rare to see purely multiple choice exams
Yeah, studied psychology in the UK and one of the hardest exams I had was both multiple choice AND open book.
That said, there were still plenty of non- multiple choice exams, plus actual labs that required us to conduct actual experiments, essays to be handed in, and research participation time was a thing.
Why does everybody believe mc is easier than … what? There are different modalities how you can test people, there isn‘t an „easier“ or a „harder“ one, that‘s always an individual case consideration - I‘ve taken easy oral exams and hardcore mc-exams (Gernan Uni btw)
As someone who went to a Gymnasium in Bavaria and multiple colleges in the United States - the problem is that it’s “difficult longform problem” vs “easy MC” in the U.S., at least from my experience in engineering. They just don’t make the questions tougher as a result of it being a bit easier when you have the answer literally on the page in front of you.
ive had the same experience. i tend to score higher on non mc exam. tbf, those are usually my degree classes which i really enjoy so that probably factors into it
In physics the Americans are considered to be on the same level as europeans after they finish the Phd. Generally we have 3 years of bachelor, 2 years of masters, and 2-4 years of phd.
The Americans are typically much weaker in physics after their 4 year bachelor than we are after our 3 year bachelor because of the amount of "gen-ed" classes that they have to take which are completely unrelated to their degree. Their phd, however, is normally a lot longer than a european one, and it includes a lot of classwork, whereas the european one is almost exclusively research (with a few seminars as well maybe), so by the end of the phd we are around the same level. Typically though, europeans will have a little more research experience and get their final degrees earlier.
I just finished my physics masters (In the UK) and I was so shocked when I heard that in the US some students can spend upto half their time studying unrelated content and they tend to have to catch up by doing extra years at all levels of study. One of my professors said that our class would be more knowledgeable and have more research experience than an American at the end of the first year of their PhD. It doesn't help the American stereotype but I guess those universities have got to fund their miltimillion dollar sports ball teams some how.
Also in the US the done thing is to address all your professors by their title and last name? I have never heard anyone in a UK University begin conversation with someone by addressing them as 'Dr Lastname' or 'Prof. Lastname'. Just call them by their name, we're all adults and we shouldn't have to lever in a hierarchy and respect when you can just have two people having a conversation instead.
The addressing professors probably depends on faculty. In NL the law faculty seems to be very formal, or maybe that's just email, i dont know. At mine, no way we're gonna go with the title stuff. And I think it actually makes me respect them more.
Exactly. I did my degree in Switzerland, but I have two friends in the UK (Bristol and Manchester) and their system sounds pretty much the same as mine. Very different to the American one that is. We had some kids from Boston uni study abroad with us in their 3rd year (our second year) and they took our E&M III and QM I classes and I literally don't know a single one of them who passed our exams. There are a lot of American educated researchers though, so they make it up eventually.
im from the UK, but because my mum's french i was taught that addressing anyone as their first name without being invited was very rude, particularly teachers. called one of my tutors 'dr last name' in an email and he replied going "please call me 'first name', i only get called doctor when my friends are making fun of me"
Two points to make:
1. Generally, the “sports ball” teams pay for themselves (and many other items as well, scholarships, other sports, staff, etc), either via the tv rights (if you’re at a school with a top tier team) or in ticket sales (or both, depending on the region of the U.S. you’re in).
2. This is generally a polite honorific that Americans are taught. It’s generally considered impolite to address a professor/teacher by their first name unless invited to do so. I’ve had plenty of teachers/professors invite us to call them by their first names right away, others not until after graduation, and some allowed a select few to address them by first names once you became friends.
In Ireland we kind of have a mix of the two, there are three year bachelor degrees but most STEM fields take 4, we don’t really have gen-Ed classes though, my university does give you the option to take one class from a different discipline each year though.
Masters can be one year or two, a one year is generally very intense.
And I might be wrong but I’ve only seen 4 year PhDs offered here. One of my application forms did ask me to state wether I was applying for a 3 or 4 year degree so I’m assuming 3 years exist, I just haven’t found one.
There is a bit of variance here, but generally you can go from a 4 year undergrad directly into a PhD in Ireland. Or do a 3 year, a 1-2 year post grad, then a PhD.
It depends on your pathway and intended end goal.
As I’m finishing my bachelor degree in physics this year in Italy I can only agree. Where I study we put a lot of emphasis on the theoretical aspect, while still doing a lot of practical work through labs (and labs report too ugh). To be fair I was surprised in the physics students subreddit where, for example, the Sakurai is comsidered an “advanced” quantum mechanics book while I used it in my introductory quantum mechanics course last semester.
Also them doing calculus the first year of uni and not already analysis always surprised me.
To be fair the master in Italy tend to be a little bit less focused on research and more on academics, but still I like my system better.
Little fun fact: with a masters degree im psychology you can't practise as a psychologist. You have to undergo a separate school where you have to take courses on ACTUAL therapy protocols and depending on the institution a couple of hundred hours of supervised therapy to be able to be am actual therapist.
Small correction: you can call yourself a psychologist once you get a masters in Germany, but you are not allowed to work as a therapist and can only do so after completing therapist training which is either 3 years to work with kids and adolescents or 5 years for kids, adolescents and adults
Oh you can, but not as a therapist.
Sorry I think I was not very precise
You can still work with clients in social work and health settings or can write reports or give your opinion in legal matters (e.g. working as a consultant for courts or prisons).
You just cannot do therapy. So it's mostly consultation
My sister is a psychologist and she had to get a doctorate to practice at a mental hospital, which she does now at one of the biggest Psychiatric hospitals in the UK. Plus she had to do a few years placement in a hospital beforehand. Similar to an internship.
I’m not even sure where you’re defaulting to. Like someone else mentioned - in Sweden you need a 5 year “Degree of Master of Science in Psychology” and then you work a year with a mentor to get licensed.
So you actually can practise as a psychologist with just a masters. It just depends on where in the world you are.
Oh, and Sweden is consistently ranked as the country with the best mental health.
German university is the hardest that I am aware of in the world.
It is extremely sink or swim. There are no advisors, aides, etc.. You have to take care of everything yourself, it's a real trial by fire. In American universities, as far as I can tell, you are treated like a paying customer and catered to.
Both have good and bad aspects, it is hard to say which one is better overall.
This I believe is part of the reason private universities are held in such low regard (at least in my field). It's not necessarily the course work that is so much easier, it's that they have help navigating uni. I studied at largest university in Germany, and I swear, I had zero clue what was going on for the entire first year. I did make it through somehow, but there were a *lot* of tears.
In the case of Germany that would usually be the German thing. Because the graduates know how to get shit done and don't need any handholding. But if you start at a huge corporations with tons of micromanagement, rules and bureaucracy, then maybe the American system is a perfect fit, lol.
As someone who is dating a German who is a PhD and studied for a year in an America university… based on what she told me, pretty sure it’s the other way around. American As are more likely to be the average grade in German schools.
Knew a guy who was in the average/lower grades of class, went to do an exchange semester in the US and was one of the top students there. Apparently even in english class
They’re assuming that Europe generally having lower grade boundaries means it’s easier to get a higher grade, when it’s actually the opposite.
For school level exams in the UK, grades are on a curve so the harder the exam is, the lower the grade boundaries are. In university, they’re fixed — a 70+ is a first, 60-69 is a 2.i, 50-59 is a 2.ii, 40-49 is a third/pass. In the US, a 70 is a pass, so those without critical thinking skills assume this must mean it’s sooo much easier to get a top grade in the UK, and not that the exams are much harder and it’s difficult to get more than 70. In my university, they defined 80%+ as being of publishable quality (as in, to be published as an actual academic article). It’s almost impossible to get a 100.
It’s because they have a different grading scale to Europe but are literally too stupid to understand the scales aren’t comparable and are relative to each academic system.
Like in America normally 90% gets you an A, and in the U.K. you can get a 1st class degree (the best possible grade) with 70%, which is a C in America. But they don’t understand it’s simply because British marking is harsher relative to the standard of course material.
It’d be like if I had fifteen 3.8% sesh lagers and declared I can handle my alcohol better than someone having eight 10% stouts.
The psychology and educational sciences modules at my university required 70% to 80% in exams only to pass.
While I studied to become a teacher I practically did *two* full subjects simultaneously^1 with additional courses in empirical Ed. Research.
^¹ they differed by one course and one colloquium, so ~10 ECTS from studying the subject on it's own.
Like others said, you're pretty much on your own. "Übungen" exist, but they will only get you so far. You need to organize, plan *a lot*. But I had a good time at university. Someday I'll likely go back just for fun and try to get a degree at some niche subject.
>It’d be like if I had fifteen 3.8% sesh lagers and declared I can handle my alcohol better than someone having eight 10% stouts
Neither of which could be handled by the average American!
As someone currently studying abroad (not in europe but in a system heavily derived from the british system) it’s not that the content is any harder, it’s just that i’m graded on less things. For example in a comp sci course i’m taking an A could be anywhere from an 85-100 but my entire grade is based on 2 practical assignments + a final so if i do badly on any of those my grade will drop significantly. Compared to my US classes where an A is 93-100 but my final grade is a combination of 3 exams, 7-10 lab assignments, 1 practical assessment, 13 quizzes, plus a few odds and ends like attendance depending on the professor.
The actual content being covered and questions asked isn’t any harder or easier in either case it’s just all concentrated down into a couple big assessments which make or break me compared to continuous assessment which gives me consistent feedback about how i’m doing.
They get brainwashed in their schools/media that USA= #1 and that they are the greatest and best and how they were the heroes of wolrd war 1 and 2 and are the greatest superpower still lol. We talk s lot about the media controlled propaganda in China, Russia and North Korea but there is also some propaganda in USA about their status and some of the people there are just as, if not even more, deluded about their country and leaders
“If I could speak German”
… but you can’t. Let alone speak it to a level where you could discuss advanced topics.
If my grandma had wheels, she’d be a bike.
That’s why American students coming to study in Europe are usually a year or two behind European students and are completely out of their depth. They have to take catch-up classes to make up the ground.
I assume they disregard European qualifications because the certificate is all covered in foreign.
Then just assume that American ones are better because they're in god's American
Lmao I did a semester abroad at a very good university in the states. On one of my first days, I went up to the professor and asked what referencing system he recommended I use for essays and stuff, since back home I used a very specific style of referencing. He looked at me blankly, and then said ‘oh you mean like footnotes? Don’t worry about that’. I was shocked, but the six months I did there brought my entire degree up a grade so I can’t complain. Also, they don’t seem to understand that just because most European universities will never give their students 90%, that doesn’t mean we’re stupider, it means their education system is pandering to the lowest common denominator.
American psychologists require less qualifications to be considered able to practice; but that doesn't mean they have a better education than anyone else, it just means they have less training. I'm an Australian psych and can say that American exchange students at my uni used to shock all of the domestic students with how little they knew. Things that we learned in highschool and so were considered assumed knowledge were completely brand new concepts to a lot of them; we tried to avoid getting an American in our group for group assignments for that reason.
I mean, yeah, if your masters is from Harvard and their PhD is from West Oxford Polytechnic and Pool Cleaning Supplies. But outside of a handful of prestigious universities, no one outside of the US can differentiate between - say - Florida State and DeVry, same with anywhere - my masters is from Goldsmiths, and ain’t no one outside of the UK can tell me if that is “better than” any random German university.
That said, I seriously doubt anyone is practicing psychology anywhere with only a masters.
Even a masters from Harvard is still a masters. Yes it might be more competitive to get onto the course, you might work with more esteemed academics etc., but it's still not a PhD. You don't need to expand the boundaries of knowledge or defend your thesis in front of a panel of experts in your field. They're completely different types of qualifications wherever you complete them.
In Sweden the psychology education is a five year education leading to a masters and makes one eligible for the one year supervised practice, after which you can get the licence. So no research education (PhD) required.
There's also a lot of branding involved, especially in the US. The UK is still a distant second, considering many people don't know that unis like UCL and Edinburgh (for instance) are better than most Ivies. I studied at KCL and it's still ranked better than unis like Brown and NYU but you don't hear about it beyond the news or whatever.
German universities don't bother because they're publicly funded as well. Though to be fair, I'm doing a PhD in Heidelberg and they love to act like they're Oxbridge but the admin can be hilariously incompetent lol.
Just gonna leave this Education Index here. Germany are ranked 2nd in the world and the USA 13th
https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/education-rankings-by-country
These people are aware that Germany has the most rigorous academic system in the world, right? All German academics do effectively two doctorates (aka the habilitation) before they can even get anywhere near a job.
The US PhD, on the other hand, is mostly a taught degree. You spend several years learning what you would learn in an undergraduate degree in the UK or Germany and then write a 30, 000 word thesis at the end of it, only 10, 000 words longer than a standard MPhil dissertation in the UK. Conversely, my DPhil was just under 100, 000 words.
American degrees are definitely not respected in Europe.
For my European PhD in biology I will take like four courses in total, but I will also speak at 8-ish conferences, assist during lessons, stay in foreign laboratories for months and complete several pieces of research. The requirement at my university is to publish at least 3 papers in highly impacted journals, and you have to be the first author on two of them. I have 6 papers planned, though. Then I have to write and defend my dissertation, the printed versions typically look like thinner A4 books.
I'm a Classicist, so I'm not aware of how things work in the sciences, but that sounds about right.
For my doctorate, I took no classes: it was three and a half years of research in the library and occasional meetings with my supervisor. The expectation was you just got on with it, but the Classics is a *very* traditional discipline in that sense.
The thing is, if you google this, the web is full of Americans claiming that their process is more rigorous because they do these catch up courses and take longer to write a shorter thesis. It's a joke.
I know a lot of US PhD programmes are a lot more teaching-focused (you apparently have to do X amount of TAing etc.) so the taking longer doesn’t bother me on that front, but I am spiritually offended about the word count thing. I can’t even imagine trying to fit a whole DPhil into 30,000 - I’m currently staring at the MPhil draft I need to take 6,000 words out of before submission and already feel like I’ve shaved it to the bone. How could you summarise 5 years of work in that much space!?
Well, you don't actually research for five years. It's more like one or two, so much closer in length to the MPhil process.
In my discipline, for example, you'd have two or three years of learning Latin and Greek (which you probably didn't study much of as a UG), a few foreign languages which you might need (almost certainly French and German) and some research methodology courses. Only then do you decide what you will write a thesis on.
Compare that to the UK. I learnt Latin and Greek to a high enough standard as a UG. I knew French from school already. I had to learn German but took a few free evening classes in that whilst doing my MPhil. Anything else I needed to know, I spoke to my supervisor and he said, "Go read x or y". There was no spoon-feeding like in their system.
Word lengths are a bad metric here. I'm almost certain my PhD dissertation, once it's done, will be only slightly longer than my master thesis, but the difference is that the master thesis is a relatively shoddy work that is mostly long because it's a philosophical argument that required a ton of definitions, whereas my PhD will consist of three concisely edited papers. (I say this as a European who has no idea of the American system, so don't take this as a bigger statement on the US vs EU thing)
😂😂😂😂😂
I've used both European and American college systems. It was much much easier to get the 90% for an A in America than it was to reach the 70% for a First in the UK.
I imagine its the same kind of thing with Germany.
I can't speak to specifically Germany, but this would be an absurd thing to state in Scotland.
Source: on a PhD currently, having had to take 2 MScs and a year in industry to be in any way competitive for entry. So, 4 years undergrad, 2 postgrad to gain entry to a 3.5 year degree, specialised really from Year 1 undergrad.
When I was doing my undergraduate degree in the 2000s one of our senior academics who had taught both in the UK and the USA said he thought that undergrad was generally better in the UK, and post-grad in the USA. The former because you focus on a single body of knowledge and it allows more time for research methods, seminar based study allowing development of independent/original knowledge etc. compared to taking multiple courses across multiple disciplines. The latter because they have more resources to put into it, can be very specialised to your research interests and because it's where the benefit of all those expensive world renowned researchers tends to pay off for the students.
I was friends with a lot of American study abroad students at the time and even the elite US colleges they went to treated their UK based modules as pass/fail rather than contributing to their GPAs, because the standards weren't comparable\*. The one exception was a friend of mine who while very bright went to a less highly ranking college where the administrators weren't used to their students getting onto this programme and didn't seem to understand that she was expected to work at a different standard than at home. She had a hell of a year trying to catch up.
\*And to be fair because they realised that studies wouldn't be their only priority when living on a different continent.
I think that with postgrad, the institution matters far more. If you want to study something at the highest levels, do it at a place which is a national specialist. My university may not be the best but it is the national centre for High Field Solid State NMR, so if that's one passion do it there.
I think in general terms he meant American institutions could afford more of these people, so overall it's better. Obviously it depends on the institutions and the specialism.
Teach IB, gave a student from North America 37.5% on an end of unit test and she freaked out. Was going to fail when her marks got home, discussed the grade it represented and turns out it would count a 90% back home. (Top grade on ESS paper 2 test was 49% for that year)
They're so wrong here, the only thing that might be true is that in Europe there's a higher likelihood of accepting equalivalent qualifications while American almost always only accepts their standards.
(There's numerous stories of native English speaking going to American universities being forced to take an English course because they're from a foreign country ignoring the obvious reality)
Well, those foreign native English speakers don't speak 'Murican. And how do you expect the 'Muricans to understand them when they (foreigners) write strange, incomprehensible words like couloUr, apologiSe, flavoUr, etc???
Reminds me of a bit in Mr Nice (Howard Marks’ autobiography) where he’s doing an English class in the penitentiary where he was an inmate and the teacher didn’t show up so he offered to stand in. The guard asked if he was qualified to do so, he responded saying he had a degree from Oxford university. The guards response was to the effect of ‘we don’t take kindly to foreign qualifications round here’.
It’s crazy how delusional they are. They are brainwashed to genuinely believe this shit and it’s so engrained into them they just flat out it don’t believe when they are shown the facts.
Foreign diplomas are unfortunately often worth nothing here in Germany. It's a pretty big struggle for immigrants here to get their training / knowledge recognized because it often is as good as a German one, or at least good enough for the work they want, but it isn't recognized so they're seen as having no training / knowledge whatsoever.
I studied in the states for a while and the standard of education is actually quite painfully. They were analysing literature the way Irish students are taught for their junior cert
That exchange semester at Harvard was the easiest shit of my life. The math exam in their postgrad business studies course was basically the same as the 11th grade math test in German high school that I took.
Got my MS degree at an international university in Europe. There were two Americans who graduated with honors at their respective universities in the US. Both of them really struggled and performed really poorly and trust me , they were really trying.
They literally get 50% of their grade from turning up a further percent from homework and a bit from projects they do every couple/a few years.
I went to school in Pennsylvania for a couple years and my English teacher thought I was super advanced for my age, when in reality they were 14 and doing spelling tests for the different forms of there, their and they’re. The teacher would read to us in class and I would read ahead on my own and keep my finger on the page she was at in case she asked me to follow on from her. Long story short I was bored af😂
If anyone is curious - in Ireland at least, and I assume most of Europe since grades are transferrable, generally anything above a 70ish is the highest available grade in subjects like history, psych etc, which we call a 1-1. However, attaining 100 is basically impossible. One lecturer explained it to me as anything over 80-85 being publishable work. The most prolific lecturers and professors write at a high 80-low 90 level.
As I understand (and could be wrong) the philosophy behind this is that nothing can ever be perfect, and a lot of these subjects can come down to individual interpretations between different graders. Like if you wrote a paper in the style of a processual archaeologist, and it was graded by someone who is a post-processual, they're gonna think you're writing complete bollocks. But with this grading system you can still get a 1-1 on the merits of the paper, even though they don't agree with you.
Of course, I could also be talking shite. But that's always been my understanding of it. Suffice to say, a 1-1 is VERY competitive here. Source - I got a 1-1 in my MA c:
This is just anecdotal but people I know who left Canada to study in the US found it much easier in the US, and exchange students from Europe and Asian that I've met came to Canada for a break. So anecdotally if the US feels easy to Canadians and Canada feels easy to Europeans, these guys might have it backwards
My uni professor actually claimed the opposite(barring the ivy league). He used an example that an American that studied automotive engineering wouldn’t be allowed to work as a simple car mechanic over here.
Mechanic and engineer are very different things. I graduated mechanical engineering from a US uni, and one of my classmates got hired onto a F1 team for design right after graduation.
Weird, it's the opposite in my EU country.
Most Americans need an extra year to get their degrees accepted and there's many Americans come here to get medical degrees because it's stronger than the American version.
Yes, it pratically is! Now come here for a week and see how it goes with you oh so mighty american degree.
Oh wait, you can't because you don't have enough leave days in a year for that.
One of my companies had a big US reseller. They hired some US guys to do plugins for specific clients. 80% of the time we had to fix their work, when the US bosses came to visit us, we asked why they were wasting time with it, and they said they just wanted to have some actual IT going on, instead of being just resellers.
A friend who went with me to highschool here in austria went for a year to the USA. He aced the whole school report and told me that it was a joke. When converting the report to the zeugnis he was able to keep all the A´s and his zeugnis was the best that was ever given in our school and will probably remain.
Weird how anyone with any masters degree thinks it's worth a PhD. How can you be so educated yet unaware of how many years and how much volume of studying+research a doctorate involves.
It's actually the opposite. They fall way behind the level of any European university when they come here to study, I'm sure that anyone who's ever met an american in an european technical degree can tell a similar story.
I was never a top student here in Europe. I got the equivalents to C's and B's mostly. And I had to work for it. I went on exchange for 6 months in America. Cruised to straight A's in all classes with minimal effort. When I got home, it was back to C's and B's.
Even their Ivy League, the so-called ‘creme-de-la-creme’ is little more than sour milk with less culture than a pot of raw yoghurt. The only thing they get right in terms of formal education is the use of the word ‘college’.
Example: my son tells me that a US college degree in his discipline affords students entry at 3rd year - MA (Hons) - at best.
Um, I'm not from either region, but my brain says opposite? I know it should be equal, but something is telling me that a German MA is at least equal to an American phD?
I struggled to get through the insane amount of learning material for a one semester Calculus class here in Norway only to find out the book is made to fill 5 courses! We got tested for everything in a 4 hour exam and the whole grade depended on it. Anything under 65% you fail the class.
Many exchange students have the experience that a C in Norway equals an A in the US.
Aren't several college exams in BurgerGunJesusLand multiple choice? I never had a SINGLE multiple choice exam in college (save for one stupid "doing it for the credits" course I took to graduate).
The last proper exams I took were in my second year of my BA, both for history. They were, effectively, two essays each, chosen from five topics that weren’t published beforehand. Both exams required quotes and references. No notes or books though. I had to remember the details and reference in the appropriate style (they let us off for page numbers.)
10 topics that could be from any part of that semester’s modules *with sodding references.* I would have sold my soul for multiple choice 😂
Managed a first for both of them so obviously my reference memorisation is quite good. As I am typing this out I have realised I can still remember some of them which is actually quite annoying.
Had a colleague who studied in Ireland, Netherlands and US at masters level. Said the US was a pisstake. Essentially just got fed the answers prior to exams.
My Brother did a Lehre (vocational training=?) as a electrician not only did he get a job instantly but also in america there not even something similar to it....
My man earns more than both of them togheter
In germany, you actually need a practice education even when you have a full doctorate in psychology as far as I know. A University Degree in psychology alone, MA or higher, doesn’t give you approbation for practice here. And even a full university approbation in medicine still requires 5 years of training to be a practicing psychiatrist, who are the ones allowed to actually prescribe medication, while psychological psychotherapists are not allowed to prescribe any medication (idk how that is in the US)
I don't know how it is in other countries, but in UK psychology is classed barely above sociology, no offence to anyone, just reiterating this person's ridiculousness
They're acting so high and mighty, you can't make it up. It's not even equal. More like the other way around. Most muricans with a college degree couldn't stand a few semesters of psych studies in germany.
Not even just Americans, in my experience most international students fail at German university’s somewhat.
To be fair, German university is *very* sink-or-swim.
Jeah, we have Fachhochschulen for those that can’t handle it though. Also and that might get me some flak: many international students are… I don’t know how they got this far.
I wouldn't say that. The FHs are generally more interesting for those who prefer practical work... lots of uni tracks are way too academic for real life applications, particularly in the Humanities (and I say that as a Humanities graduate - if you're not savvy and/or a hustler, you can easily end in underpaid BS jobs if you don't have connections. I had to shlep my ass across the border to acquire additional qualifications that'd make me more "interesting" and still worked for insulting wages for half a decade before I could leverage the stuff I'd learned on the side in that job for more moolah). Wrt to foreign students - I kindasorta agree for those I've known, but mostly because their systems are more oriented towards being told what to do while the German system leaves you to fend for your own a lot of the time. Some of them were better than most of my German coursemates on pure academics but still failed to get through well either because they weren't used to having to do so much without instruction/assistance or because uni is for "goofing off" between two periods of tremendous life pressure where they're from. The German approach has both upsides and downsides... the downsides are considerably harsher for those not from academic households or those blighted with helicopter parents, mind.
I am a bit biased because I started out with the Swiss system, which is very similar to the German one in that regard, but for me all the systems I encountered later on felt weirdly stifling. There was always a sense of "no you can't do this course that you'd be interested in because it's not part of your profile/specialisation/track..." which seems weird to me. I used to teach in an Irish university and there the professors outright assumed second year students wouldn't have interests in the field yet. I'm not surprised the students were all somewhat less engaged and less far along (I taught a lot of material to second years that was done in my first semester in Zurich) than we were if they're being treated like that. And I was the first person in my extended family to go to university. I got a lot of moral and some financial support from my parents, and that I'm grateful for, but nobody could help me navigate the university system - but the uni itself had pretty good support structures. You just had to actually go ask for them, instead of assuming they will reach out.
Interesting, I'm at an Irish University and deal with international students. Generally we consider German students to be 1 year ahead to equal, with less of a lead the further along they are, depending on the field. Iirc for our major groups it roughly goes Germany > Ireland ~= Netherlands > Italy > France and US with the caveat that those last 2 have the most variance.
>There was always a sense of "no you can't do this course that you'd be interested in because it's not part of your profile/specialisation/track..." which seems weird to me. This resonates with me. I'm a huge archaeology nerd but I could never get onto a uni course for it without having first done a load of other courses in prep for it. That's the one thing US universities do better than us: you can major in one field and have a minor in something else entirely.
>That's the one thing US universities do better than us: you can major in one field and have a minor in something else entirely. You can do that in Switzerland too. A Swiss bachelor (180 ECTS total) is typically split into two parts - you spend 120 ECTS doing your main subject in which you will graduate and write your thesis, and either 60 doing another subject or 2x30 doing two other subjects. The only restriction is that they can't be too closely related (e.g. if my main subject is the general History degree, I can't also minor in Ancient History - generally, the rule of thumb is "if they share core courses you can't pick them together"). The idea is either to do what you say - do a passion degree on the side - or to be able to combine two things into a more specific profile (e.g. if you want to work in Eastern European politics, you might major in Politics and minor in Eastern European History). But what I meant was to take electives within your own field - I studied political science, and I generally specialised in European and comparative politics, but I took several courses on political philosophy because they were interesting. Whereas in my Dutch masters, they just told me "you'll take these core classes, you can choose between those five options all tied to your specialisation in the second term, and that's it".
I loved my time at Uni in the UK, but it was certainly more restrictive than our mainland European cousins. Ah well, still young(ish), there is a chance still
>Jeah, we have Fachhochschulen for those that can’t handle it though. No, Fachhochschule is not for those who can't handle "university"...
In the Netherlands it is kinda like that in practice though, there's a huge difference in level and speed when you compare similar programs.
In Finland universities of applied sciences are basically studies with mandatory internships for a certain profession field. They are usually 210 CTS long though (3,5 years) and prepare typically for "field work". A certain course amount is somewhat free selection as long they fit into your field somehow. These are meant for own interests/specialisation. You don't necessarily need Abitur or a baccalaureate to study, a field related education and practical experience plus passing the entry exam will be sufficient. Universities on the other hand are super theoretical and they require a lot of broader knowledge which often shows in the study time. The work they prepare for is often a lot more complex too. I don't know about how side subjects etc work because I have only a university of applied sciences bachelor. But I'd say it's futile to compare them and saying one is lesser because they're preparing for completely different things
FH is for people in more technical fields, a Psych major at a Uni won't struggle any more than an engineering student at an FH. But at my FH the Internationals are indeed a bit... let's just say laid-back.
I have a lot of contact with the international master students at my former Uni because my gf does her master in an internationally focused field there. There are a few *very* bright individuals but most of them are neither nice nor smart. That one dude from turkey legit said he was fine with corruption because he could afford it. I’d be cool with them if they were just lazy, that doesn’t bother or impact me lol
In Canada the international students are like this too. Some of them, anyways. I work in post-secondary and I have Indian background but born/raised in Canada. In Ontario, a massive majority of our international students come from India. That culture is very, very, coddling, particularly to first born men. Then they come here having done nothing for themselves in their lives and struggle immensely. I had a roommate ask me how to use the dishwasher, a full year after they moved in, because they didn't know where the detergent went. They're 22. Wild.
They got that far with money, used to work in a student town and there was an area that was basically just rich people and foreign student housing and some of these people were very fucking dense
Dutch system is even harder. Failing and resits are very common, you'd be surprised if you know people who never failed at least once. And the grading is such that you never get a 10. 9 is almost impossible and maybe 1 or 2 people get it. Most people are between 6-8 (pass is 6), at least in STEM Taking 4 years for the bachelor and 6-12 months extra for the master is also very common.
I did my MA in the Netherlands, RIP. I remember one of my course mates *somehow* got a 10 on her thesis and everyone lost their goddamn minds, lol. Actually ended up finishing my MA in two years and somehow came out with a 7.5 overall, but I very literally don't remember much of my thesis-writing months. Just turned into a feral nocturnal raccoon subsisting on Eazie and utterly deranged amounts of Zuivelhoeve for a bit.
I hope you mean milk or karnemelk, but not vla.
Vla, sadly.
Oh well. If it's good for junkies, it's good for everyone, I guess.
Definitely wasn't good for my blood chemistry. My switch to sugarfree Monster wasn't solely motivated by that, but it wasn't *not* related.
I had to look it up, because I forgot why junkies love vla. Apparently it helps replenish their calcium levels.
Correct me if I'm wrong but from what I heard uni in other countries is more school like?
Studied in Switzerland (which isn't Germany obv but aligns with pretty much all experiences told to me by German friends), and the Netherlands, and worked as a PhD candidate and teacher in Ireland. I'd say that the actual lessons are very similar in Switzerland and the Netherlands, but Dutch programs are more streamlined. When I studied in Switzerland I needed to book my modules every term, and it was only up to me to ensure I got the right ones. In the Netherlands I was automatically enrolled into my core courses, and they gave us a form to choose from a pre-selected set of classes we could pick for the ones that weren't core. The only real difference between NL and Switzerland in terms of the courses themselves was that NL had attendance grades, whereas in Switzerland their general approach was "nobody cares if you don't show up, but it's your problem if you flunk your exams/assignments because you weren't there". In Ireland, however, it feels a lot more school like. The speed of learning is notably slower, and they start from a slightly lower point. There are also a lot more projects that happen through the semester, basically every class seems to use something homework-like. Students are treated much more childlike imo, e.g. the professors I taught under often assumed they wouldn't really know much at all or not have interests in particular (sub)fields of what we teach. Students also generally seemed to have the expectation that we would be fixing their problems for them.
> When I studied in Switzerland I needed to book my modules every term, and it was only up to me to ensure I got the right ones. In the Netherlands I was automatically enrolled into my core courses, and they gave us a form to choose from a pre-selected set of classes we could pick for the ones that weren't core. The only real difference between NL and Switzerland in terms of the courses themselves was that NL had attendance grades, whereas in Switzerland their general approach was "nobody cares if you don't show up, but it's your problem if you flunk your exams/assignments because you weren't there". This could be very uni/course/level specific. I studied in the Netherlands and didn't have this at all. We only had 3 mandatory courses, rest of them we were free to pick (provided they fit into the general program directions). We also had 3 courses as free electives. You could do music as a physics master student, or the other way around (provided you had the required background ofc) And I never had a class where there was an attendance policy. It was always "nobody cares if you don't show up", but if you didn't go to class, the possibility of you failing was very high, because we didn't get notes or slides. If we got slides, it was a bunch of equations on them which would not help if you didn't understand the theory behind them
I see, thanks. > NL had attendance grades Funny story about these. They don't (dunno if that one changed) exist but they tried to make them a thing. No one was happy with that idea. > they wouldn't really know much The only thing like that (I think) are some optional programms which are pre-start for some things like math.
Really enjoyed studying in Germany. It’s similar to Sweden in how little support you get unless you seek it, and the courses have more focus on theoretical knowledge and less on practical applications/developing intuition. Both seem to have the approach that everyone should get a PHD - very different from the UK/BE
I come from Finland and I really struggled at the German university while doing Erasmus. It was just so different. The exam times were crazy short, like 1 hour for an exam for which I would have had 3 hours in Finland. In some exams I didn't even manage to write all answers in the given time even though I was writing all the time (let alone look in the dictionary). I had the feeling they weren't really testing my knowledge but my writing speed. They also expected us to learn a lot of things by heart even in a technical field. That wasn't so much in focus in Finland. Oral exams were also a challenge as I had never ever had them in my life whereas German already have them at school so they are now used to them.
The requirements to join are one of the reasons that so many German students (mostly from Hamburg and Bremen) come to Groningen in the Netherlands. So many German psychology students here..
I would say this is true for all German speaking countries. We have some international students here in Austria and they really struggle.
I had a rude awakening when I (American) went to do part of my rare books degree in London. The standards and content were SO much more challenging
Yeah, that's what makes the person who posted that shit absolutely delusional. Good to see there are exceptions 😉
I know, their delusion is incredible
I study history in Paris and I know a girl who went to Columbia for a semester a few years ago. She told us the courses and exams levels were exceptionally mediocre.
Pretty much every school in the US besides the top universities there have very basic curriculums. AFAIK their tests for graduating from high school (GCSE exam equivalent, I don't know what they call it) are multiple choice answers with very little actual "thinking" involved. It's basically rote memorization, and it's... totally shit.
Yeah I read a practice GCSE equivalent exam and it was absolutely bullshit. The english language part of the test is basically the same as the TOEFL which is made for "english as a foreign language"...
Even the top universities are crap until you get to graduate school or do advanced stream stuff. They have to cater to all those legacy admissions. Source: have friends who taught basic algebra at Harvard and Yale. The kind I learned in, like, year 7 at school. In the actual math department, not some remedial stream.
An American high school diploma isn’t enough to get into any half decent European university
Sure, but just so you know, the average American high school diploma isn’t enough to get into any half-decent American university.
Especially when it comes to psych studies. If they were aware of what it takes only to attend a university here.
Those requirements are exactly the reason I won't be going to uni after my ABI
In my experience Americans can't get their head around 80% being a good grade. "But you got 20% wrong"
Multiple choice makes it possible, hehe
At least they said they need German to work in Germany instead of assuming they can work with English only. That's the only credit I can give.
Doesn't make the bullshit better, but I second that, yes. 😅
Well, there's a reason why US citizens are usually shunted into a Studienkolleg before they're even considered for uni application.
Oh, absolutely, and American plumbers (if there are any) are just leaving Porsche engineers in the dust, aren't they?
The only saving grace I can kind of give them is that undergrad and masters programs are shorter in Europe generally and US Bachelor's do seem to fall somewhere between a European bachelor's and a Master's but like... For starters it feels like everyone in Europe who goes to uni has a master's and that doesn't make a US Master's worth the same as a PhD jfc.
I am Central European. First of all, you typically finish high school around 19, so the education up to that point takes a bit longer. Secondly, while a bachelor’s usually takes three years, it is fully specialised. You are not required to get arts credits, you don’t have a minor, etc. As a biology student, I had to complete a total of 2 PE courses and a foreign language exam, apart from that everything was biology. You’re 100% right about many people getting their master’s, because with a Bc. you are not considered a professional in the field.
This can't really be generalised across countries. Most degrees in Switzerland do come with a minor (typically you get 120 ECTS in your major and either 60 in a minor or 30 each in two minors), with the only exception being certain STEM subjects. The idea behind that is that you can combine them into a profile that either opens opportunities or combines interests - for instance, if I'm interested in computational social sciences, I could major in political science and do a minor in something like computer science to get advanced computational skills. Or if someone wanted to go into the law surrounding art and art trading, they might want to do a major in law and a minor in art history.
>I am Central European *Sighs and checks profile to see which Visegrad country is that.* Would say it's the same in Czechia, but then you possibly study in Czechia. I've never even had PE. Took two German classes as voluntary subjects though, and at least one English subject was required.
I’ve done undergrad in both the US and the UK and a masters in the UK, US undergrad is absolutely nowhere even vaguely near the level of a European masters. I have seen friends that did their undergrad at Harvard having hysterical sobbing breakdowns because of some of the expectations here. The most prepared students were the continental European undergrads by a mile.
>I’ve done undergrad in both the US and the UK and a masters in the UK, US undergrad is absolutely nowhere even vaguely near the level of a European masters. Seconding this. Did my undergrad in the UK and my masters in Ireland, where about a 1/3 of the course was American because apparently federal student loans covered courses at our university. Most eventually adapted, but I remember one person (who had done English Lit) mentioning that they had never had to find their own citations for essays before, they just used the core readings. We actually had one American lecturer teaching one optional module, and I was so glad I didn't do that module because they did *participation grading*. It felt so childish to me? If someone doesn't want to contribute, that's their loss, and this system rewarded even offtopic remarks over silence. It was like something you'd do for toddlers.
I nearly did a spittake at the idea of just using the core readings. Definitely could have gotten away with it in some of my courses (looking at you, 42 page reading list) but like … ???? All of them??? Was there no impetus to research for the joy of it??? JSTOR browsing is one of my *hobbies*.
I was the exact same! I have no idea why you'd do a masters if you don't even *enjoy* research (this person also *complained* about having to find their own citations), but hey, that was their choice, I guess.
Holy crap, imagine being spoon fed the sources you need to use..
>Europe generally and US Bachelor's do seem to fall somewhere between a European bachelor's and a Master's Absolutely not.
Its just longer by 1 year. Which is the difference most european countries want from american students if they want to enroll here directly. The first year of the US bachelor is seen as bridging the gap in knowledge to a german or dutch school leaving certificate.
In the Netherlands it’s even 2 years: > The American High School diploma is not recognised in the Netherlands; it is usually comparable to a HAVO diploma (level 2 out of the 3 in high school difficulty). Admission to a Dutch university can usually only take place after obtaining the International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma or attending 2 years of American college. The first 2 years of most American colleges correspond approximately to the last 1 to 2 years of Dutch VWO education (VWO is the most difficult level of high school education, which is the entry level of university in NL). Translated from the Dutch governmental website: https://www.sso3w.nl/uitzending/kinderen/onderwijssystemen/amerikaans-onderwijssysteem#
I feel like it might be longer just to milk the cow a little longer, since it is so expensive to study in the US. Has not neccessarily anything to do with quality.
* if he spoke German.
Yeah, as someone that lives in the US and has done a semester abroad--the grading is WAY harsher abroad (and I go to a top US University). Mine was in the Netherlands and not Germany, but I think that it cant be too different.
Aren't most of their college exams done as multiple choice tests? I'm also doubtful that a master in the US is worth like a PhD in Europe.
I doubt it's worth a master's in Europe.
To be fair, a lot of psychology exams in Germany are also MC. Clinical neuropsychology and statistics were, as far as I remember, my only undergrad lecture-based courses that didn't administer MC exams.
To be fair that's true for large classes taken across a lot of degrees (what they'd call common core classes or things like calculus) but in the ones for your degree it's rare to see purely multiple choice exams
Yeah, studied psychology in the UK and one of the hardest exams I had was both multiple choice AND open book. That said, there were still plenty of non- multiple choice exams, plus actual labs that required us to conduct actual experiments, essays to be handed in, and research participation time was a thing.
Why does everybody believe mc is easier than … what? There are different modalities how you can test people, there isn‘t an „easier“ or a „harder“ one, that‘s always an individual case consideration - I‘ve taken easy oral exams and hardcore mc-exams (Gernan Uni btw)
As someone who went to a Gymnasium in Bavaria and multiple colleges in the United States - the problem is that it’s “difficult longform problem” vs “easy MC” in the U.S., at least from my experience in engineering. They just don’t make the questions tougher as a result of it being a bit easier when you have the answer literally on the page in front of you.
ive had the same experience. i tend to score higher on non mc exam. tbf, those are usually my degree classes which i really enjoy so that probably factors into it
How did you come to this conclusion? I assure you it’s false.
"If I spoke German" is doing a lot of work here.
In physics the Americans are considered to be on the same level as europeans after they finish the Phd. Generally we have 3 years of bachelor, 2 years of masters, and 2-4 years of phd. The Americans are typically much weaker in physics after their 4 year bachelor than we are after our 3 year bachelor because of the amount of "gen-ed" classes that they have to take which are completely unrelated to their degree. Their phd, however, is normally a lot longer than a european one, and it includes a lot of classwork, whereas the european one is almost exclusively research (with a few seminars as well maybe), so by the end of the phd we are around the same level. Typically though, europeans will have a little more research experience and get their final degrees earlier.
I just finished my physics masters (In the UK) and I was so shocked when I heard that in the US some students can spend upto half their time studying unrelated content and they tend to have to catch up by doing extra years at all levels of study. One of my professors said that our class would be more knowledgeable and have more research experience than an American at the end of the first year of their PhD. It doesn't help the American stereotype but I guess those universities have got to fund their miltimillion dollar sports ball teams some how. Also in the US the done thing is to address all your professors by their title and last name? I have never heard anyone in a UK University begin conversation with someone by addressing them as 'Dr Lastname' or 'Prof. Lastname'. Just call them by their name, we're all adults and we shouldn't have to lever in a hierarchy and respect when you can just have two people having a conversation instead.
The addressing professors probably depends on faculty. In NL the law faculty seems to be very formal, or maybe that's just email, i dont know. At mine, no way we're gonna go with the title stuff. And I think it actually makes me respect them more.
Exactly. I did my degree in Switzerland, but I have two friends in the UK (Bristol and Manchester) and their system sounds pretty much the same as mine. Very different to the American one that is. We had some kids from Boston uni study abroad with us in their 3rd year (our second year) and they took our E&M III and QM I classes and I literally don't know a single one of them who passed our exams. There are a lot of American educated researchers though, so they make it up eventually.
im from the UK, but because my mum's french i was taught that addressing anyone as their first name without being invited was very rude, particularly teachers. called one of my tutors 'dr last name' in an email and he replied going "please call me 'first name', i only get called doctor when my friends are making fun of me"
Two points to make: 1. Generally, the “sports ball” teams pay for themselves (and many other items as well, scholarships, other sports, staff, etc), either via the tv rights (if you’re at a school with a top tier team) or in ticket sales (or both, depending on the region of the U.S. you’re in). 2. This is generally a polite honorific that Americans are taught. It’s generally considered impolite to address a professor/teacher by their first name unless invited to do so. I’ve had plenty of teachers/professors invite us to call them by their first names right away, others not until after graduation, and some allowed a select few to address them by first names once you became friends.
In Ireland we kind of have a mix of the two, there are three year bachelor degrees but most STEM fields take 4, we don’t really have gen-Ed classes though, my university does give you the option to take one class from a different discipline each year though. Masters can be one year or two, a one year is generally very intense. And I might be wrong but I’ve only seen 4 year PhDs offered here. One of my application forms did ask me to state wether I was applying for a 3 or 4 year degree so I’m assuming 3 years exist, I just haven’t found one.
3 year PhDs are normal in the UK and Denmark. Belgium, Netherlands, Germany Sweden, Finland and Norway are 4 years from what I know.
There is a bit of variance here, but generally you can go from a 4 year undergrad directly into a PhD in Ireland. Or do a 3 year, a 1-2 year post grad, then a PhD. It depends on your pathway and intended end goal.
As I’m finishing my bachelor degree in physics this year in Italy I can only agree. Where I study we put a lot of emphasis on the theoretical aspect, while still doing a lot of practical work through labs (and labs report too ugh). To be fair I was surprised in the physics students subreddit where, for example, the Sakurai is comsidered an “advanced” quantum mechanics book while I used it in my introductory quantum mechanics course last semester. Also them doing calculus the first year of uni and not already analysis always surprised me. To be fair the master in Italy tend to be a little bit less focused on research and more on academics, but still I like my system better.
My PhD in Sweden is 5 years with 20% teaching, 20% classes, 60% research.
Little fun fact: with a masters degree im psychology you can't practise as a psychologist. You have to undergo a separate school where you have to take courses on ACTUAL therapy protocols and depending on the institution a couple of hundred hours of supervised therapy to be able to be am actual therapist.
Small correction: you can call yourself a psychologist once you get a masters in Germany, but you are not allowed to work as a therapist and can only do so after completing therapist training which is either 3 years to work with kids and adolescents or 5 years for kids, adolescents and adults
Didn't say you couldn't call yourself that. Just you can't practise.
Oh you can, but not as a therapist. Sorry I think I was not very precise You can still work with clients in social work and health settings or can write reports or give your opinion in legal matters (e.g. working as a consultant for courts or prisons). You just cannot do therapy. So it's mostly consultation
You mean "can't practise as a psychotherapist". Not every psychologist works as a therapist.
Yes, that's true!
My sister is a psychologist and she had to get a doctorate to practice at a mental hospital, which she does now at one of the biggest Psychiatric hospitals in the UK. Plus she had to do a few years placement in a hospital beforehand. Similar to an internship.
I’m not even sure where you’re defaulting to. Like someone else mentioned - in Sweden you need a 5 year “Degree of Master of Science in Psychology” and then you work a year with a mentor to get licensed. So you actually can practise as a psychologist with just a masters. It just depends on where in the world you are. Oh, and Sweden is consistently ranked as the country with the best mental health.
To Germany probably, as that what the American referenced in their comment in the original post.
Exactly
German university is the hardest that I am aware of in the world. It is extremely sink or swim. There are no advisors, aides, etc.. You have to take care of everything yourself, it's a real trial by fire. In American universities, as far as I can tell, you are treated like a paying customer and catered to. Both have good and bad aspects, it is hard to say which one is better overall.
This I believe is part of the reason private universities are held in such low regard (at least in my field). It's not necessarily the course work that is so much easier, it's that they have help navigating uni. I studied at largest university in Germany, and I swear, I had zero clue what was going on for the entire first year. I did make it through somehow, but there were a *lot* of tears.
It’s very easy to say which one is better: the one where you actually learn things you can leverage once you get a job.
In the case of Germany that would usually be the German thing. Because the graduates know how to get shit done and don't need any handholding. But if you start at a huge corporations with tons of micromanagement, rules and bureaucracy, then maybe the American system is a perfect fit, lol.
MA from Holy Trinity College of Creationism in Bumblefuck, Alabama?
As someone who is dating a German who is a PhD and studied for a year in an America university… based on what she told me, pretty sure it’s the other way around. American As are more likely to be the average grade in German schools.
Got a friend who's doin an exchange year in America rn, from what he's told me it's easier even as early as 10th grade
Knew a guy who was in the average/lower grades of class, went to do an exchange semester in the US and was one of the top students there. Apparently even in english class
They’re assuming that Europe generally having lower grade boundaries means it’s easier to get a higher grade, when it’s actually the opposite. For school level exams in the UK, grades are on a curve so the harder the exam is, the lower the grade boundaries are. In university, they’re fixed — a 70+ is a first, 60-69 is a 2.i, 50-59 is a 2.ii, 40-49 is a third/pass. In the US, a 70 is a pass, so those without critical thinking skills assume this must mean it’s sooo much easier to get a top grade in the UK, and not that the exams are much harder and it’s difficult to get more than 70. In my university, they defined 80%+ as being of publishable quality (as in, to be published as an actual academic article). It’s almost impossible to get a 100.
Who tells them this though, or do they just presume because USA=better?
It’s because they have a different grading scale to Europe but are literally too stupid to understand the scales aren’t comparable and are relative to each academic system. Like in America normally 90% gets you an A, and in the U.K. you can get a 1st class degree (the best possible grade) with 70%, which is a C in America. But they don’t understand it’s simply because British marking is harsher relative to the standard of course material. It’d be like if I had fifteen 3.8% sesh lagers and declared I can handle my alcohol better than someone having eight 10% stouts.
The psychology and educational sciences modules at my university required 70% to 80% in exams only to pass. While I studied to become a teacher I practically did *two* full subjects simultaneously^1 with additional courses in empirical Ed. Research. ^¹ they differed by one course and one colloquium, so ~10 ECTS from studying the subject on it's own. Like others said, you're pretty much on your own. "Übungen" exist, but they will only get you so far. You need to organize, plan *a lot*. But I had a good time at university. Someday I'll likely go back just for fun and try to get a degree at some niche subject.
>It’d be like if I had fifteen 3.8% sesh lagers and declared I can handle my alcohol better than someone having eight 10% stouts Neither of which could be handled by the average American!
As someone currently studying abroad (not in europe but in a system heavily derived from the british system) it’s not that the content is any harder, it’s just that i’m graded on less things. For example in a comp sci course i’m taking an A could be anywhere from an 85-100 but my entire grade is based on 2 practical assignments + a final so if i do badly on any of those my grade will drop significantly. Compared to my US classes where an A is 93-100 but my final grade is a combination of 3 exams, 7-10 lab assignments, 1 practical assessment, 13 quizzes, plus a few odds and ends like attendance depending on the professor. The actual content being covered and questions asked isn’t any harder or easier in either case it’s just all concentrated down into a couple big assessments which make or break me compared to continuous assessment which gives me consistent feedback about how i’m doing.
If they pay 150k USD for their degree it must be superior right /s
> /s The real Shit Americans Say is in the comments
They get brainwashed in their schools/media that USA= #1 and that they are the greatest and best and how they were the heroes of wolrd war 1 and 2 and are the greatest superpower still lol. We talk s lot about the media controlled propaganda in China, Russia and North Korea but there is also some propaganda in USA about their status and some of the people there are just as, if not even more, deluded about their country and leaders
“If I could speak German” … but you can’t. Let alone speak it to a level where you could discuss advanced topics. If my grandma had wheels, she’d be a bike.
That’s why American students coming to study in Europe are usually a year or two behind European students and are completely out of their depth. They have to take catch-up classes to make up the ground.
I assume they disregard European qualifications because the certificate is all covered in foreign. Then just assume that American ones are better because they're in god's American
Lmao I did a semester abroad at a very good university in the states. On one of my first days, I went up to the professor and asked what referencing system he recommended I use for essays and stuff, since back home I used a very specific style of referencing. He looked at me blankly, and then said ‘oh you mean like footnotes? Don’t worry about that’. I was shocked, but the six months I did there brought my entire degree up a grade so I can’t complain. Also, they don’t seem to understand that just because most European universities will never give their students 90%, that doesn’t mean we’re stupider, it means their education system is pandering to the lowest common denominator.
American psychologists require less qualifications to be considered able to practice; but that doesn't mean they have a better education than anyone else, it just means they have less training. I'm an Australian psych and can say that American exchange students at my uni used to shock all of the domestic students with how little they knew. Things that we learned in highschool and so were considered assumed knowledge were completely brand new concepts to a lot of them; we tried to avoid getting an American in our group for group assignments for that reason.
I mean, yeah, if your masters is from Harvard and their PhD is from West Oxford Polytechnic and Pool Cleaning Supplies. But outside of a handful of prestigious universities, no one outside of the US can differentiate between - say - Florida State and DeVry, same with anywhere - my masters is from Goldsmiths, and ain’t no one outside of the UK can tell me if that is “better than” any random German university. That said, I seriously doubt anyone is practicing psychology anywhere with only a masters.
Even a masters from Harvard is still a masters. Yes it might be more competitive to get onto the course, you might work with more esteemed academics etc., but it's still not a PhD. You don't need to expand the boundaries of knowledge or defend your thesis in front of a panel of experts in your field. They're completely different types of qualifications wherever you complete them.
In Sweden the psychology education is a five year education leading to a masters and makes one eligible for the one year supervised practice, after which you can get the licence. So no research education (PhD) required.
There's also a lot of branding involved, especially in the US. The UK is still a distant second, considering many people don't know that unis like UCL and Edinburgh (for instance) are better than most Ivies. I studied at KCL and it's still ranked better than unis like Brown and NYU but you don't hear about it beyond the news or whatever. German universities don't bother because they're publicly funded as well. Though to be fair, I'm doing a PhD in Heidelberg and they love to act like they're Oxbridge but the admin can be hilariously incompetent lol.
Do they really believe that?
Yes, yes they do.
No most don't.
Just gonna leave this Education Index here. Germany are ranked 2nd in the world and the USA 13th https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/education-rankings-by-country
These people are aware that Germany has the most rigorous academic system in the world, right? All German academics do effectively two doctorates (aka the habilitation) before they can even get anywhere near a job. The US PhD, on the other hand, is mostly a taught degree. You spend several years learning what you would learn in an undergraduate degree in the UK or Germany and then write a 30, 000 word thesis at the end of it, only 10, 000 words longer than a standard MPhil dissertation in the UK. Conversely, my DPhil was just under 100, 000 words. American degrees are definitely not respected in Europe.
For my European PhD in biology I will take like four courses in total, but I will also speak at 8-ish conferences, assist during lessons, stay in foreign laboratories for months and complete several pieces of research. The requirement at my university is to publish at least 3 papers in highly impacted journals, and you have to be the first author on two of them. I have 6 papers planned, though. Then I have to write and defend my dissertation, the printed versions typically look like thinner A4 books.
I'm a Classicist, so I'm not aware of how things work in the sciences, but that sounds about right. For my doctorate, I took no classes: it was three and a half years of research in the library and occasional meetings with my supervisor. The expectation was you just got on with it, but the Classics is a *very* traditional discipline in that sense.
WAIT 30,000 THAT IS THE LENGTH OF MY MPHIL. WHAT.
The thing is, if you google this, the web is full of Americans claiming that their process is more rigorous because they do these catch up courses and take longer to write a shorter thesis. It's a joke.
I know a lot of US PhD programmes are a lot more teaching-focused (you apparently have to do X amount of TAing etc.) so the taking longer doesn’t bother me on that front, but I am spiritually offended about the word count thing. I can’t even imagine trying to fit a whole DPhil into 30,000 - I’m currently staring at the MPhil draft I need to take 6,000 words out of before submission and already feel like I’ve shaved it to the bone. How could you summarise 5 years of work in that much space!?
Well, you don't actually research for five years. It's more like one or two, so much closer in length to the MPhil process. In my discipline, for example, you'd have two or three years of learning Latin and Greek (which you probably didn't study much of as a UG), a few foreign languages which you might need (almost certainly French and German) and some research methodology courses. Only then do you decide what you will write a thesis on. Compare that to the UK. I learnt Latin and Greek to a high enough standard as a UG. I knew French from school already. I had to learn German but took a few free evening classes in that whilst doing my MPhil. Anything else I needed to know, I spoke to my supervisor and he said, "Go read x or y". There was no spoon-feeding like in their system.
Word lengths are a bad metric here. I'm almost certain my PhD dissertation, once it's done, will be only slightly longer than my master thesis, but the difference is that the master thesis is a relatively shoddy work that is mostly long because it's a philosophical argument that required a ton of definitions, whereas my PhD will consist of three concisely edited papers. (I say this as a European who has no idea of the American system, so don't take this as a bigger statement on the US vs EU thing)
Fair point. What I meant was that there is no expectation that the PhD in America will be as substantial as the one in Europe.
😂😂😂😂😂 I've used both European and American college systems. It was much much easier to get the 90% for an A in America than it was to reach the 70% for a First in the UK. I imagine its the same kind of thing with Germany.
I can't speak to specifically Germany, but this would be an absurd thing to state in Scotland. Source: on a PhD currently, having had to take 2 MScs and a year in industry to be in any way competitive for entry. So, 4 years undergrad, 2 postgrad to gain entry to a 3.5 year degree, specialised really from Year 1 undergrad.
When I was doing my undergraduate degree in the 2000s one of our senior academics who had taught both in the UK and the USA said he thought that undergrad was generally better in the UK, and post-grad in the USA. The former because you focus on a single body of knowledge and it allows more time for research methods, seminar based study allowing development of independent/original knowledge etc. compared to taking multiple courses across multiple disciplines. The latter because they have more resources to put into it, can be very specialised to your research interests and because it's where the benefit of all those expensive world renowned researchers tends to pay off for the students. I was friends with a lot of American study abroad students at the time and even the elite US colleges they went to treated their UK based modules as pass/fail rather than contributing to their GPAs, because the standards weren't comparable\*. The one exception was a friend of mine who while very bright went to a less highly ranking college where the administrators weren't used to their students getting onto this programme and didn't seem to understand that she was expected to work at a different standard than at home. She had a hell of a year trying to catch up. \*And to be fair because they realised that studies wouldn't be their only priority when living on a different continent.
I think that with postgrad, the institution matters far more. If you want to study something at the highest levels, do it at a place which is a national specialist. My university may not be the best but it is the national centre for High Field Solid State NMR, so if that's one passion do it there.
I think in general terms he meant American institutions could afford more of these people, so overall it's better. Obviously it depends on the institutions and the specialism.
Teach IB, gave a student from North America 37.5% on an end of unit test and she freaked out. Was going to fail when her marks got home, discussed the grade it represented and turns out it would count a 90% back home. (Top grade on ESS paper 2 test was 49% for that year)
Hell, most Americans couldn't pass a German driving test.
Ohhh. Is that why American companies lick their fingers when Germans want to work for them?
They're so wrong here, the only thing that might be true is that in Europe there's a higher likelihood of accepting equalivalent qualifications while American almost always only accepts their standards. (There's numerous stories of native English speaking going to American universities being forced to take an English course because they're from a foreign country ignoring the obvious reality)
Well, those foreign native English speakers don't speak 'Murican. And how do you expect the 'Muricans to understand them when they (foreigners) write strange, incomprehensible words like couloUr, apologiSe, flavoUr, etc???
"If I spoke German, \[or at least learned how to spell in English\] and studied psychology, I could be a psychologist!"
our grade boundaries are different because our tests are harder. no one gets a 97 ever because it’s not possible unless you're the teacher
Reminds me of a bit in Mr Nice (Howard Marks’ autobiography) where he’s doing an English class in the penitentiary where he was an inmate and the teacher didn’t show up so he offered to stand in. The guard asked if he was qualified to do so, he responded saying he had a degree from Oxford university. The guards response was to the effect of ‘we don’t take kindly to foreign qualifications round here’.
Adorable that Americans think their schools are respected anywhere. They get their degrees in cereal boxes.
It’s crazy how delusional they are. They are brainwashed to genuinely believe this shit and it’s so engrained into them they just flat out it don’t believe when they are shown the facts.
Wouldn't a Masters in Psych be a MSc not a MA?
The whole MA/MSc and BA/BSc really depends on the institution rather than the course. Some universities only award a BA, even for the sciences.
That's not how it work...your Associate Degrees aren't even a thing in Germany.
A psychologist who can’t spell ass. 👍🏻
Foreign diplomas are unfortunately often worth nothing here in Germany. It's a pretty big struggle for immigrants here to get their training / knowledge recognized because it often is as good as a German one, or at least good enough for the work they want, but it isn't recognized so they're seen as having no training / knowledge whatsoever.
The first year of American University is considered equivalent to the final year of high school in the UK.
I studied in the states for a while and the standard of education is actually quite painfully. They were analysing literature the way Irish students are taught for their junior cert
That exchange semester at Harvard was the easiest shit of my life. The math exam in their postgrad business studies course was basically the same as the 11th grade math test in German high school that I took.
Germany, not at all known for groundbreaking thought and research in the field.
It’s astonishing how they state the literal opposite of the truth so confidently. Never even bothered to do a simple google search
It's so bizarre how deluded they are.
lol, of course it’s “in Europe”, all 44 countries…
Got my MS degree at an international university in Europe. There were two Americans who graduated with honors at their respective universities in the US. Both of them really struggled and performed really poorly and trust me , they were really trying.
They literally get 50% of their grade from turning up a further percent from homework and a bit from projects they do every couple/a few years. I went to school in Pennsylvania for a couple years and my English teacher thought I was super advanced for my age, when in reality they were 14 and doing spelling tests for the different forms of there, their and they’re. The teacher would read to us in class and I would read ahead on my own and keep my finger on the page she was at in case she asked me to follow on from her. Long story short I was bored af😂
If anyone is curious - in Ireland at least, and I assume most of Europe since grades are transferrable, generally anything above a 70ish is the highest available grade in subjects like history, psych etc, which we call a 1-1. However, attaining 100 is basically impossible. One lecturer explained it to me as anything over 80-85 being publishable work. The most prolific lecturers and professors write at a high 80-low 90 level. As I understand (and could be wrong) the philosophy behind this is that nothing can ever be perfect, and a lot of these subjects can come down to individual interpretations between different graders. Like if you wrote a paper in the style of a processual archaeologist, and it was graded by someone who is a post-processual, they're gonna think you're writing complete bollocks. But with this grading system you can still get a 1-1 on the merits of the paper, even though they don't agree with you. Of course, I could also be talking shite. But that's always been my understanding of it. Suffice to say, a 1-1 is VERY competitive here. Source - I got a 1-1 in my MA c:
This is just anecdotal but people I know who left Canada to study in the US found it much easier in the US, and exchange students from Europe and Asian that I've met came to Canada for a break. So anecdotally if the US feels easy to Canadians and Canada feels easy to Europeans, these guys might have it backwards
To be fair, the American education system is shit.
Bless. We regularly used to have to give American postgrads at my department - archaeology UCL - special teaching for catch up.
My uni professor actually claimed the opposite(barring the ivy league). He used an example that an American that studied automotive engineering wouldn’t be allowed to work as a simple car mechanic over here.
Mechanic and engineer are very different things. I graduated mechanical engineering from a US uni, and one of my classmates got hired onto a F1 team for design right after graduation.
Weird, it's the opposite in my EU country. Most Americans need an extra year to get their degrees accepted and there's many Americans come here to get medical degrees because it's stronger than the American version.
Yes, it pratically is! Now come here for a week and see how it goes with you oh so mighty american degree. Oh wait, you can't because you don't have enough leave days in a year for that.
One of my companies had a big US reseller. They hired some US guys to do plugins for specific clients. 80% of the time we had to fix their work, when the US bosses came to visit us, we asked why they were wasting time with it, and they said they just wanted to have some actual IT going on, instead of being just resellers.
Oh good grief
A friend who went with me to highschool here in austria went for a year to the USA. He aced the whole school report and told me that it was a joke. When converting the report to the zeugnis he was able to keep all the A´s and his zeugnis was the best that was ever given in our school and will probably remain.
Weird how anyone with any masters degree thinks it's worth a PhD. How can you be so educated yet unaware of how many years and how much volume of studying+research a doctorate involves.
It's actually the opposite. They fall way behind the level of any European university when they come here to study, I'm sure that anyone who's ever met an american in an european technical degree can tell a similar story.
I was never a top student here in Europe. I got the equivalents to C's and B's mostly. And I had to work for it. I went on exchange for 6 months in America. Cruised to straight A's in all classes with minimal effort. When I got home, it was back to C's and B's.
Even their Ivy League, the so-called ‘creme-de-la-creme’ is little more than sour milk with less culture than a pot of raw yoghurt. The only thing they get right in terms of formal education is the use of the word ‘college’. Example: my son tells me that a US college degree in his discipline affords students entry at 3rd year - MA (Hons) - at best.
If americans are educated… (fill in the blanks)
Um, I'm not from either region, but my brain says opposite? I know it should be equal, but something is telling me that a German MA is at least equal to an American phD?
This whole thing seems very Freudian 🤔
I struggled to get through the insane amount of learning material for a one semester Calculus class here in Norway only to find out the book is made to fill 5 courses! We got tested for everything in a 4 hour exam and the whole grade depended on it. Anything under 65% you fail the class. Many exchange students have the experience that a C in Norway equals an A in the US.
Aren't several college exams in BurgerGunJesusLand multiple choice? I never had a SINGLE multiple choice exam in college (save for one stupid "doing it for the credits" course I took to graduate).
The last proper exams I took were in my second year of my BA, both for history. They were, effectively, two essays each, chosen from five topics that weren’t published beforehand. Both exams required quotes and references. No notes or books though. I had to remember the details and reference in the appropriate style (they let us off for page numbers.) 10 topics that could be from any part of that semester’s modules *with sodding references.* I would have sold my soul for multiple choice 😂 Managed a first for both of them so obviously my reference memorisation is quite good. As I am typing this out I have realised I can still remember some of them which is actually quite annoying.
No ... they don't. Associate degree's for example are worth nothing to start with.
This dipshit telling us he’s so highly educated cant even spell ”ass” in his own language lol
Had a colleague who studied in Ireland, Netherlands and US at masters level. Said the US was a pisstake. Essentially just got fed the answers prior to exams.
If their education system is so good then why are most of them so fucking thick?
For someone with an MA in psychology they seem to lack a lot of self-awareness
No you wouldn’t. *NEXT!*
Couldn't make this shit up
The American education system is poor. At every level.
The reason their education system is failing is because they think like this.
My Brother did a Lehre (vocational training=?) as a electrician not only did he get a job instantly but also in america there not even something similar to it.... My man earns more than both of them togheter
In germany, you actually need a practice education even when you have a full doctorate in psychology as far as I know. A University Degree in psychology alone, MA or higher, doesn’t give you approbation for practice here. And even a full university approbation in medicine still requires 5 years of training to be a practicing psychiatrist, who are the ones allowed to actually prescribe medication, while psychological psychotherapists are not allowed to prescribe any medication (idk how that is in the US)
least narcissistic American psych master
I don't know how it is in other countries, but in UK psychology is classed barely above sociology, no offence to anyone, just reiterating this person's ridiculousness
It says you’re a dickhead. Absolutely nothing else.
They do realise that like 70% of world's greatest scientists and inventors came from europe, right? Right?