I will say that the experience of a european university (in Sweden) has been completely different.
General points:
I think a difference is in the average level of trust in the institutions, people want to be there and the teachers generally really care about your learning if you care about your own learning (which of course is a big if.)
Institutional trust is a big thing you will notice if you’re american and you come to a nordic country or a place like germany, austria or switzerland. (can’t speak for the rest of the european countries unfortunately)
Our institutions aren’t extractive in the same way since they’re state run, students also literally get paid to go to university.
Experiential report:
In Sweden they’re changing the learning forms to be a lot more inverse classroom style where you learn and solve the problems at home and you go to class to discuss cool shit and answer more in-depth questions. (At least in Math & CS)
(Conditional on courses I’ve taken, ) answering the questions have often required in-depth understanding of the underlying causal models in order to reason about things. This is also often emphasized here, we sometimes have less to learn but we have to be a lot more flexible about being able to apply it.
If other Europeans want to comment it would be cool to hear but I honestly think this might just be an American skill issue in terms of having better institutions. (or maybe my experience of university is non-standard.)
I will say that the experience of a european university (in Sweden) has been completely different.
General points:
I think a difference is in the average level of trust in the institutions, people want to be there and the teachers generally really care about your learning if you care about your own learning (which of course is a big if.)
Institutional trust is a big thing you will notice if you’re american and you come to a nordic country or a place like germany, austria or switzerland. (can’t speak for the rest of the european countries unfortunately)
Our institutions aren’t extractive in the same way since they’re state run, students also literally get paid to go to university.
Experiential report:
In Sweden they’re changing the learning forms to be a lot more inverse classroom style where you learn and solve the problems at home and you go to class to discuss cool shit and answer more in-depth questions. (At least in Math & CS)
(Conditional on courses I’ve taken, ) answering the questions have often required in-depth understanding of the underlying causal models in order to reason about things. This is also often emphasized here, we sometimes have less to learn but we have to be a lot more flexible about being able to apply it.
If other Europeans want to comment it would be cool to hear but I honestly think this might just be an American skill issue in terms of having better institutions. (or maybe my experience of university is non-standard.)