Higher Education in the USA. In the United States of America about 50 per cent of the young people aged 18 enter some institution of higher learning

In the United States of America about 50 per cent of the young people aged 18 enter some institution of higher learning. Some of them attend a so-called junior college, i.e. a college that in two years' training offers either a general course of study or special training for laboratory technicians, dental hygienists or computer programmers. The great majority of young people who go to college, however, enter either a four-year college or a university.

There are over 2,500 colleges and universities in the USA, two thirds of them private and one third state-supported. The proportion of students, however, is one third at private colleges and universities, two-thirds at state institutions.

Colleges and universities. The colleges and universities in the United States offer four-year courses of study, which generally lead to the first degree of Bachelor.

There is the Bachelor of Arts (called the BA) and the Bachelor of Science (the BS) for those majoring in the sciences.

A university is usually a teaching institution consisting of one or more under­graduate colleges, i.e. four-year colleges, and a number of graduate departments and graduate schools.

There are graduate departments for such subjects as history, economics, physics, anthropology or literature and graduate schools such as Law Schools, Medical Schools or Schools of Engineering.

Private Universities and colleges. There are a large number of independent or private colleges and universities in the United States. Some of the oldest and best known of them are the universities of Harvard, Yale and Columbia. All of these are known as 'The Ivy League" (comparable to 'Oxbridge' in England). The name "Ivy League" indicates their age, the possession of a pleasant rural campus and the general social position of their students. They ordinarily receive many times more applications than they have places. Traditionally some of these prestigious colleges deliberately restricted their size and kept their student body under 1,500 or even 1,200 to ensure the personal relationship and informality of a small institution. In the present situation of crisis, however, even these universities and colleges are interested in getting more students than ever before.

The private colleges and universities choose only those students whom they con­sider most desirable on the basis of family or class background, academic record (marks and number of courses), extra-curricular or social activities (choral clubs, athletics, orchestra, journalism, dramatics) and personality. Less important small private colleges do not have such a good reputation, are poorly equipped materially and culturally, and without a distinguished faculty. These will accept any student with a fair high-school record. They may often be denominational colleges, run by various religious groups, or Southern colleges formerly restricted to, and still largely attended by, Negro students.

State universities. Among the universities in the United States there are a large number of state institutions. State undergraduate colleges are free to residents of a particular state. Each of the 50 states has at least one such university with, often, extensions or colleges in several different cities. Like the private colleges and universities, these state universities vary very widely in physical equipment, faculty, student body and reputation. Some, like the University of Michigan at Ann Arbour, have very high standards, particularly in science. Many state universities have one or two graduate schools, which rank especially high.

Although blacks and Puerto Ricans constitute 15 or 20 per cent of the population, they make up only a tiny percentage of the college graduates, in spite of the fact that there was a considerable increase during the 60s.

Graduate training for professional qualification. The BA or BS is not primarily a professional qualification. It is sufficient if a graduate wishes to enter elementary school teaching or one of the many civil service jobs, and it is a requirement in many businesses if you want to be a salesman, factory representative or lower business executive; but in general it qualifies one only to begin professional training.

Students can continue after graduation to earn a Master of Arts (an MA) or a Master of Science (an MS) in any academic study by one or two years of graduate work.

A PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) requires a further two or three years of such graduate work.

Students can similarly earn a law degree, a degree in engineering or a medical degree. Two or three years' practical work of internship at a hospital are required before the owner of a medical degree is licensed to practice medicine independently.

Subjects and courses of study. Since each state can set its own educational requirements and most make only very general regulations for the private colleges they license, there are many variations in the subjects and courses of study, but most undergraduate students will take a major subject and one or two minors. They must attend a certain number of courses in their major subject, a smaller number in their first minor and a still smaller number in the second minor if they have chosen two.

There are certain required courses which all students must take, freshman (i.e. first year) English, American history, usually a minimum amount of mathematics, unless they have completed an unusual number of maths courses in high school, at least a year of science and others.

Other courses - usually an enormous variety - are called electives and compose about a half of the student's program.

If a student is intending to go on to graduate work, he must be guided in his choice of electives by the general preferences and requirements of his graduate field.

Students are required to do a certain amount of written work, to make oral reports in class and, in advanced courses, to write term papers or theses. The physical sciences will usually schedule a two-hour laboratory period for each hour of lectures in a course. A final examination is taken at the conclusion of each subject (it usually lasts for a year, but sometimes only one term) and there is no general diploma exam before graduation except in special honour courses. If a student fails or drops too many courses and has too poor an attendance record he may be expelled at the end of a term or year.

University teachers. The hierarchy of university teachers has at its top full professors, but a chair is very rare, in the USA. Full professors very often do research only and in recent decades there has been criticism that most of the teaching is left to the other members of the staff. After full professors follow associate professors and then assistant professors. Then there are instructors who do a certain amount of lecturing, but mostly combine lectures and class discussion. Seminars (or sections) are usually held by teaching assistants, who are graduated students, e.g. PhD candidates teaching while they are doing graduate work. Professors and associate professors have such students to mark papers or take attendance.

Schools in the USA. In the United States of America each state has its own distinct laws concerning education. Public education is controlled by the local communities. There are, of course, certain features common to all states. Compulsory education is nation-wide. Children start school at the age of six and before that more than 50 per cent have usually spent a year in a kindergarten. Basically there are two types of public education:

· elementary school from first through eighth grade and then four years of high school, or

· elementary school for six years and then three years at a junior high school and another three years at a senior high school.

At the elementary schools the children study the fundamentals of reading, writing, geography, history, science and mathematics and prepare themselves for the secondary schools which throughout the USA are known as high schools. All education is aimed at good practical training and developing skills for future jobs rather than providing knowledge in theoretical subjects which would be more useful for academic careers.

According to American educationalists, elementary education spends too much time on inessential subjects and thus the results are unsatisfactory. At high schools, too, students are mainly prepared for practical jobs and are not so well equipped for college. At the end of the four or six years, when they are eighteen, students receive a high-school diploma, which is the usual prerequisite for entrance to college or university.

High-school students usually have to take a number of required subjects including physical education, some English courses, some civics or history courses, and so-called electives such as typing, shorthand, cooking, foreign languages, singing in a choir, playing in a band or attending a course in drama. In electives credits are awarded toward graduation.

There is no school-leaving examination in the USA. Students get their diplomas on the basis of the accumulative marks they get for each subject as they finish it. Altogether 16-20 credits are required for a high-school diploma.

If we speak on public education in the USA, and especially in large cities like New York, two alarming developments must be mentioned. A comparatively large number of school students, and in particular high-school students, cut classes or play truant, sometimes because parents keep them at home to baby-sit or, what is even worse, because they feel bored and alienated; because society does not guarantee that every school leaver gets a job they develop a growing sense of defeat, knowing that they are likely to be unemployed when they leave school, blacks at a rate twice as high as whites.

So they have no real motivation to learn. A bad atmosphere develops in schools. Violent crime and drug-taking are widespread. Teachers have been robbed, raped and beaten up. In the big cities schools have their own police forces.

Long-term absentees (LTAs), also known as 'ghosts', are no longer counted as absentees after one year of chronic truancy. They are treated as if they did not exist.

Apart from the public schools, there are a large number of private, mostly religious, schools where the discipline generally is slightly better than in the other schools.

Public education in the USA is far from providing equal opportunities for all children. The educational neglect of the poor, mainly the blacks and Spanish speakers, is symptomatic of the social decay in the richest capitalist country of the world.

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