seems a bit odd, you rank western countries on various things you always get, surprise, some kind of ranking and people can moan or boast about it..... in terms of the "points" difference, it's not too big comparatively. Not sure these kinds of indexes really tell the real story.
With any of these rankings (also for things like universities) I always wonder if the authors start out with an idea of the desired output and then work backwards to select and weight the various factors to give the "right" answer.
They tell a story, nevertheless. Unless a form of measurement results in perverse incentives, it's still informative. US cops shoot a lot of people, disproportionately black. US prisons are stuffed, for a private profit or to keep an institutional flywheel spinning. US high schools that are not in rich suburbs could do a lot better, and the ones that are doing well enough are often complacent. US wars burned trillions of dollars our children will pay back with interest. Eventually large drags like these will pull down our overall national status, and failing to address them will drag us lower, for longer. Everybody has problems, but that's no excuse for not addressing our problems. Even less is it an excuse to pull out the dog whistle and say, in effect, "we can't be like Sweden because... um... we have too many differently pigmented people."
So what would tell the "real" story then? Admitting there is a problem is the first step to finding a solution. Sticking your head in the sand doesn't solve anything.
the point is, I don't think this shows a problem, and I'm not sure, that even if you do admit a problem that the solution is any closer, potentially it's going to get worse. When we look at the big issues of the day, people see lots of problems and are trying to solve them with bad information often with lots of sound bite statistics. A lot of people here on HN would know the problems of simplified statistics don't really tell the story that it seems to be telling. A far better analysis is needed. But even with the best science, evidence, and analysis, we can still be a long long way from people even starting on working on a solution.
"America leads the world when it comes to access to higher education"
Is this really true? From what I hear, higher education is only available in America if you can afford it.. This is not the case in many other countries, and I'm not sure if American universities are of higher quality than for example Swedish ones (which are free for citizens).
If you go to community college, get your two year degree and then use that to get your bachelor's degree it's pretty cheap. In my case it worked out to be about $6500/year (once you factor in scholarships and financial aid I actually made a "profit.") Also you can do this in only four years if you go to school full time...
At least in the US if your PhD program isn't paying for your degree you're doing it wrong. That's at least what some of my grad school friends have said.
we have horrible highschools compared to Europe and Urban China
We do have good higher education but with the following caveats
1. 500% increase in tuition relative to inflation
2. Global competition for entrance rates as people from all countries want access to American universities
I wouldnt elite view American colleges as American institutions of higher education. Just ones that reside in America, but that does not mean that Americans are the ones excelling and going into them, going to grad school, starting wealthy companies and creating jobs in America.
edit* I removed the statement about saying America versus North America.
How do you compare anything with schools across Europe? Even within the UK the range from the top private ("public") schools to the humblest state schools is enormous.
[NB Total cost of going to a top private school in the UK is probably at least $50K a year]
I went to a public urban highschool for the first two years of highschool, then a scholarship for a private highschool where tuition is $40k/yr.
So in that regard, I would say its comparable that America also has a range of top tier private schools, and then both high end and low end public schools, with the high end ones residing in rich suburbias.
Also, I think there is some slight flip of how public and private schools are referred to in the UK vs US, and that might directly conflate the comparisons we are making in our heads? Is it not the reverse in the UK, where a private school is actually the default district school and the public is a school with tuition? I feel like I remember being confused about this previously in my life with a UK person. Maybe that is also the source of confusion.
> United States I presume and not "America" whatever that means
It means pedants like to pretend that the world hasn't been using "America" to refer to the United States for decades, and they act like it isn't well established vernacular.
It is same like healtcare. In the US you can access higher quality education and healthcare if you can afford it. In the EU it is a bit lower quality but available on a much lower price for the general public.
Education: 2,000 EUR/year vs. 20,000 - 30,000 USD/year (this goes up to 60,000 USD/year in case of Stanford, Harvard, etc.)
I cannot find enything that would make an easy comparison possible on healthcare.
Just to add to that: I'm studying in Germany and pay 140 Euros per Semester, so 280 Euros or a bit more than 300$ per year. So another order of magnitude less than your estimate :)
Let me get this straight: most of those European countries perceive Europe to be a separate continent because of a mountain range from that of Asia... but the tiny little isthmus between North and South America is not enough to declare them separate? (no offense intended to Panama)
I don't really care to be honest; I learned that there were 7... but if there were going to be only 6, it should be Asia and Europe that are combined, but my guess is there is more than geology dictating that decision. That Wikipedia link also mentions the 5 continent model, which also would seem to be more correct than a Europe being a separate continent.
Fair point, but the much to the chagrin of other Americans the US of A citizens seem to get a lot of acceptance for their use of the word. And it's pretty clear from context here what's intended.
I understand that naming the US as America can bother some people, specially in countries where it is taught that America is a continent (like here in Brazil and in some places in Europe, from what I've heard), but I can't see how this point brings anything useful to this conversation. Anyway, it is just a naming convention that is taught differently in diferent places, why should it matter?
"America leads the world when it comes to access to higher education."
If you're rich, maybe, otherwise, I doubt this holds true when compared to european countries. I'd like to see the source for this statement.
Oh I know my point was, although US universities may be more expensive maybe that doesn't impact on access if loans (even if they aren't interest free) are easy to get.
Well it kinda does, Sutton Trust (an education charity in the UK) did a study that showed three quarters of graduates will still be repaying their student loans when they're in their 50s.
From a policy perspective that kind of long term debt comes with stress, health problems, productivity problems, social mobility problems.
Peoples ambition (and in some cases sense of entitlement) comes from their upbringing; if you add long term debt to that aswell you end up in a situation where even more careers are decided by childhood circumstance, rather than potential.
On the other hand, my repayments of the UK Student loan are so small that I literally don't care. They are also always based on my income, so if I lose my job - no biggie. No one is going to come and chase me about it, there just won't be anything to pay until I get a job and make more than the current threshold.
I don't see how this could be stressful even if I continue paying some small amount into my 50s - from my point of view it's not debt, it's more like paying a water bill each month.
You as a reasonably well paid technology professional (presumably) don't care. Don't make the mistake of assuming that the rest of the world is in a similar situation to you.
For example; a starter salary of £28k would be only £7k over the threshold and "only" result in repaying 9% of that, or £630 per year. But in Austerity Britain people on that kind of salary (e.g. nurses) are already starting to resort to using food banks.
Weigh up the alternatives, such as an apprenticeship or a job offer and university starts to lose ground to other options; but much more so for people with a lower socio-economic background. This is the problem.
I actually make less than the amounts you quoted and I still absolutely don't care. I'm actually living very comfortably on this salary. But then I'm in the north east, maybe in London you have to use food banks on 27k but over here you absolutely don't.
Sure, it's great to hear that you're doing okay. It's still important not to generalise your own situation to the whole country. As you say, things are different for other people.
Again, I agree with everything in your post - however that has nothing to do with access I don't believe. None of those things are good obviously but the only way they would effect access would be if people considered the long term issues you've mentioned and decided university wasn't worth those costs.
>... however that has nothing to do with access I don't believe.
Some people will look at the associated debt issues and decide it's not worth it (open question as to what percentage). Often this will be in comparison to a job offer or apprenticeship.
There will also be people who don't look at the issues directly, but instead rely on the guidance of older generations, and perhaps contrast things like living costs.
These decisions are made differently based on socio-economic status. That's the access issue.
I don't have objective data but there's plenty of anecdotal evidence around of people from lower-income backgrounds making choices because of their background not because of their ability.
Maybe loans are easy to access, and maybe education is of higher quality, but maybe not.
Assuming equal quality of education, i'd say not being debt-ridden counts as higher accessibility.
That's why i'd like to see some source for their claim.
The universities themselves are paid for in full by the government, on top of that any student receives equivalent to about 300 euros/month to cover costs of living, no strings attached. Now that's not nearly enough to live on in Sweden so most people do get loans offered with very preferable terms to students, although some prefer to get a part-time job to cover costs of living.
The site lists under its USA entry "Years of tertiary schooling - 1.86 (years)". One would presume that's an average across the country, but that seems really high. Haven't found a deeper data source.
For comparison, Denmark lists 0.95 years, UK lists 0.96 years.
Undergraduate degrees in the United States are four years long. I think in most of the rest of the world they're three years long. I wonder if that is a reason for the higher figure.
PhDs and masters are also absolutely monstrously long in the United States - often literally twice or three times as long as in Europe. Fewer people do those of course but maybe that also adds up to a higher average.
In places like the UK you normally go from zero degrees to PhD in six years, while in the United States you could conceivably only just be fishing your masters work at that point.
Slight nitpick: first degree courses in Scotland are 4 years. And knowing maybe a dozen people who did PhDs in the UK I don't think anyone did it in 3 years - even the people who were full time PhD students took at least 3.5 years (most of us were "Research Associates" on salaried contracts and the average among this group was more like 4.5 years).
Mind you this was in an engineering department in the late 80s and early 90s - things have no doubt changed :-)
I believe that the EPSRC now heavily penalises universities if students are not submitted by the four year point, so the universities have responded by literally just failing you and sending you down if you go over four years. I submitted the day before my four year point.
As another extreme, I have a colleague who completed a PhD with very strong research results in Austria in just two years.
AFAIK in most of Europe you have to do a master before the PhD and typical (theoretical) numbers are 3 years bachelor, 2 years master, 3 years PhD.
But that's theory, usually it's more like 4 3 4, but obviously there are also people working on the master's thesis for 5 years ;).
I'm from Austria and we switched to the bachelor master thing just briefly before I started to study. Before we usually had 5 years diploma studies and a doctorate with at least 3 years.
Another interesting difference is probably that our studies tend to be completely specialized. So when I studied CS I did only that. If you're interested in history or whatever you just study that in parallel - no tuition and for long we also had no access restrictions - you basically just went there and said you want to study X. 10 minutes later you were enrolled.
For some context: according to US News, the most expensive college in the United States (among schools it ranks) with respect to tuition (and fees) is Columbia at ~$55k/year. Below that, there are many schools in the $52--53k/year range.
If you consider the total cost of attendance including room, board, books, and other costs, the estimates for the most expensive schools peak either at $68--72k/year at Columbia or ~$70k/year at Harvey Mudd, followed by at least 40 other schools over $65k/year.
The most expensive in-state tuition at a public college is $16--17k/year. The most expensive (in-state) total cost of attendance are a few schools (like NJIT, William&Mary, and some UC campuses) in the $30--34k/year range.
Raw numbers are pretty meaningless in this context, I would say. If that was the cost but there was a zero interest, flexible payback load from the govt available to everyone, I would still count them as having access, for example.
This shouldn't be surprising at all. As someone who lives in a primarily black, urban adjacent neighborhood (midtown Kansas City) for the last two years, I can't help but think that America is a place where our government prefers to help corporations and businesses over people. Here in KC we have public schools that have been de-credited, crumbling water and sewage infrastructure, and the bare minimum of public transportation. I say all this as someone who loves this country and whenever I go abroad I can't wait to get home...but there are times when I am driving through the ghetto that the thought of America as a first world country is laughable. Our government and our culture does a massive disservice to our people.
Edit: While there is much more to the city than the eastside, here is a neat HBO documentary about the drugs & violence in eastside KC in the 90s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wbt16OevZc
Well historically America was more or less built like that. It's just that you need perspective to see it and many Americans simply don't have that. America was founded on the premise that the rich in America no longer to pay taxes to the hereditary rulers. They have always ruled and the corporations are simply their heirs. It's a way to separate their interests from their persons. The labor movements and the World Wars forced them to distribute their wealth. But it seems that we're going in the other direction again... and this time coupled with the fact that it's more difficult than ever for them to exercise their birth right, more profit. So they squeeze out the middle class. It's expected.
and its only going to get worse as we veto visa the best and brightest from all over the world, reverse our status as a melting pot of immigration and believe that padding blue collar american workers with the forever promise of working manual labor in manufactoring jobs because people are entitled to have the same job forever because thats how progress works ^_^
over bringing in the best and brightest while simultaneously making higher education affordable for americans and bolstering our public school system which is one of the worst in the world, the quality of which is entirely dependent on the average income of the neighborhood your parents live in.
The scariest part about having a reduced credit rating and falling into descent while having a sexist American for President is that most of the internal (I'm a United States citizen) banter I hear is the grumbling of Americans blaming our falling status on everyone else.
We have horrible schools
We are lazy on average in comparison to other higher educated European countries when it comes to educating ourselves
We supposedly hate CNN/Fox news but people watch it.
While I would not say the HN population is like this, the majority of suburban America is xenophobic even in the Northeast where people like to brag about being better than the South (I grew up in the deep South, went to college in NY and now live out West)
The north and the south are still deeply divided and it reflects the long standing habit of thought in this country is that we are deeply divided and unwilling to accept blame for our actions.
Our political system is a rock throwing party to see who is still alive and standing at the end.
We are second-tier country. I'll be impressed to see if we are one by the end of my lifetime.
The scapegoating along with the sense of entitlement so many Americans have along with the persistent ignorance and declaration that we are the best country in the world and that is a title that belongs to us forever while by every measurable metric we are not, borders along the narcissistic psychological disease of continual denial and mental evasion of the person who was voted to lead this country.
All I know is we can't let foreigners(non-citizens) buy our Realestate.
I've given up arguing about the best system, but this is just wrong on so many levels, and we will sorely regret it if not stopped.
Who controls the land controls us, and I don't like what I'm seeing out here. Do I want someone, some culture that literally hates Americans, especially second, third generation Americans, owing my apartment building building? Hell no.
And we let it happen daily.
And yes, it's about cultural differences too. (I'll get hammered for this, but it needs to be said. Everything in America should not be for sale.)
The big problem with all these comparisons of countries is that you compare a 320 million people country (USA) with a less than 6 million people country (Denmark). It simply does not make sense, we should compare the USA with the complete EU.
This is precisely the problem. They are comparing apples to watermelons. You can find a lot more social dysfunction in the U.S. with its huge population and marginalized minorities esp. African Americans, than in an ethnically uniform state like Denmark or Sweden.
Interestingly however, the Scandinavian states, especially Sweden, are transforming rapidly because of enormous immigration. Gone are the clean, safe, stable, civilized societies of the 70s-80s. Now women worry about walking alone at night; their sexual assault rates are through the roof, much worse than most spots in the U.S. I wonder how the "Social Progress Imperative" fit this into their calculations.
Quality education and healthcare do not have economies of scale, so countries should be easily comparable.
It's unlikely that as a country grows, the optimal class size increases or that a doctor is somehow able to treat a patient nx times faster than in a smaller country. Doesn't make sense on the most basic level.
Defense does...sort of, but the US DoD is such a unique and unprecedented beast in human history that it's hard to make hard conclusions about it with n=1.
a caveat to healthcare is that medical R&D probably does have economies of scale, but not routine treatments and healthcare.
I think the biggest reason is that the USA is a melting pot from people all over the world. The culture clashes in this country are way bigger than you would see in such a small homogenous country as Denmark, or even Israel (which has socialized healthcare). When there is a uniform culture, it makes it much easier for people to cooperate. However when there are many different cultures, people naturally gravitate to what is familiar to them. That makes cooperation much harder.
Why? Imagine every state in the US functioning as well as Denmark. Then all of the US would function as well as Denmark. Scale has nothing to do with it.
God, reddit is leaking. I don't know if it is my imagination but the quality of the HN comments (irony of this comment fully appreciated) seem to have deteriorated massively over the past few months. The articles are still mostly relevant, and mostly tech, but they seem to be going downhill too. This place is meant to be a refuge from US politics and teenagers on a pedestal.
The list is questionable. UK above Austria, they cannot possibly be serious.
Anybody who would make a trip from Vienna to Graz and, say, Aspang am Wechsel and then would make a similar trip between London, Birmingham and, say, Battle in East Sussex would see very, very, very different levels of social development is just about any regard.
82 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadTo measure the "wellness" of a country's population, they took stuff as health, education, etc.
What would you choose?
I'm in the Netherlands. 1600€/ year for a bachelor's and master's degree in theoretical chemistry, 5 years full time.
Also, semi related, doing a PhD afterwards for 4 years paid me a ~1800€/month salary.
I'm pretty happy with my local circumstances.
we have horrible highschools compared to Europe and Urban China
We do have good higher education but with the following caveats
1. 500% increase in tuition relative to inflation
2. Global competition for entrance rates as people from all countries want access to American universities
I wouldnt elite view American colleges as American institutions of higher education. Just ones that reside in America, but that does not mean that Americans are the ones excelling and going into them, going to grad school, starting wealthy companies and creating jobs in America.
edit* I removed the statement about saying America versus North America.
> American colleges
> American institutions
> reside in America
> Americans
> jobs in America
[NB Total cost of going to a top private school in the UK is probably at least $50K a year]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)
What the rest of the world calls public schools are usually called state schools.
It's just us being quirky. It's not intended as a deliberate attempt to confuse and confound non-natives. Honest guvnor.
I went to a public urban highschool for the first two years of highschool, then a scholarship for a private highschool where tuition is $40k/yr.
So in that regard, I would say its comparable that America also has a range of top tier private schools, and then both high end and low end public schools, with the high end ones residing in rich suburbias.
Also, I think there is some slight flip of how public and private schools are referred to in the UK vs US, and that might directly conflate the comparisons we are making in our heads? Is it not the reverse in the UK, where a private school is actually the default district school and the public is a school with tuition? I feel like I remember being confused about this previously in my life with a UK person. Maybe that is also the source of confusion.
It means pedants like to pretend that the world hasn't been using "America" to refer to the United States for decades, and they act like it isn't well established vernacular.
Education: 2,000 EUR/year vs. 20,000 - 30,000 USD/year (this goes up to 60,000 USD/year in case of Stanford, Harvard, etc.)
I cannot find enything that would make an easy comparison possible on healthcare.
Not really. Basically anybody can (or at least could) get loans to go to university. Much harder to get a loan for a medical procedure
"The six-continent combined-America model is used in France and its former colonies, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Latin America, and Greece." [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent
I don't really care to be honest; I learned that there were 7... but if there were going to be only 6, it should be Asia and Europe that are combined, but my guess is there is more than geology dictating that decision. That Wikipedia link also mentions the 5 continent model, which also would seem to be more correct than a Europe being a separate continent.
Life must have been simpler back in the Pangaea days.
From a policy perspective that kind of long term debt comes with stress, health problems, productivity problems, social mobility problems.
Peoples ambition (and in some cases sense of entitlement) comes from their upbringing; if you add long term debt to that aswell you end up in a situation where even more careers are decided by childhood circumstance, rather than potential.
I don't see how this could be stressful even if I continue paying some small amount into my 50s - from my point of view it's not debt, it's more like paying a water bill each month.
For example; a starter salary of £28k would be only £7k over the threshold and "only" result in repaying 9% of that, or £630 per year. But in Austerity Britain people on that kind of salary (e.g. nurses) are already starting to resort to using food banks.
Weigh up the alternatives, such as an apprenticeship or a job offer and university starts to lose ground to other options; but much more so for people with a lower socio-economic background. This is the problem.
Some people will look at the associated debt issues and decide it's not worth it (open question as to what percentage). Often this will be in comparison to a job offer or apprenticeship.
There will also be people who don't look at the issues directly, but instead rely on the guidance of older generations, and perhaps contrast things like living costs.
These decisions are made differently based on socio-economic status. That's the access issue.
I don't have objective data but there's plenty of anecdotal evidence around of people from lower-income backgrounds making choices because of their background not because of their ability.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/aug/17/teenagers-...
For comparison, Denmark lists 0.95 years, UK lists 0.96 years.
http://www.socialprogressindex.com/?tab=2&code=USA
PhDs and masters are also absolutely monstrously long in the United States - often literally twice or three times as long as in Europe. Fewer people do those of course but maybe that also adds up to a higher average.
In places like the UK you normally go from zero degrees to PhD in six years, while in the United States you could conceivably only just be fishing your masters work at that point.
Mind you this was in an engineering department in the late 80s and early 90s - things have no doubt changed :-)
As another extreme, I have a colleague who completed a PhD with very strong research results in Austria in just two years.
I'm from Austria and we switched to the bachelor master thing just briefly before I started to study. Before we usually had 5 years diploma studies and a doctorate with at least 3 years.
Another interesting difference is probably that our studies tend to be completely specialized. So when I studied CS I did only that. If you're interested in history or whatever you just study that in parallel - no tuition and for long we also had no access restrictions - you basically just went there and said you want to study X. 10 minutes later you were enrolled.
Not sure how one would measure "access" though, does that mean counting people who could have reasonably gone to college but didn't?
If you consider the total cost of attendance including room, board, books, and other costs, the estimates for the most expensive schools peak either at $68--72k/year at Columbia or ~$70k/year at Harvey Mudd, followed by at least 40 other schools over $65k/year.
The most expensive in-state tuition at a public college is $16--17k/year. The most expensive (in-state) total cost of attendance are a few schools (like NJIT, William&Mary, and some UC campuses) in the $30--34k/year range.
Edit: While there is much more to the city than the eastside, here is a neat HBO documentary about the drugs & violence in eastside KC in the 90s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wbt16OevZc
over bringing in the best and brightest while simultaneously making higher education affordable for americans and bolstering our public school system which is one of the worst in the world, the quality of which is entirely dependent on the average income of the neighborhood your parents live in.
The scariest part about having a reduced credit rating and falling into descent while having a sexist American for President is that most of the internal (I'm a United States citizen) banter I hear is the grumbling of Americans blaming our falling status on everyone else.
We have horrible schools
We are lazy on average in comparison to other higher educated European countries when it comes to educating ourselves
We supposedly hate CNN/Fox news but people watch it.
While I would not say the HN population is like this, the majority of suburban America is xenophobic even in the Northeast where people like to brag about being better than the South (I grew up in the deep South, went to college in NY and now live out West)
The north and the south are still deeply divided and it reflects the long standing habit of thought in this country is that we are deeply divided and unwilling to accept blame for our actions.
Our political system is a rock throwing party to see who is still alive and standing at the end.
We are second-tier country. I'll be impressed to see if we are one by the end of my lifetime.
The scapegoating along with the sense of entitlement so many Americans have along with the persistent ignorance and declaration that we are the best country in the world and that is a title that belongs to us forever while by every measurable metric we are not, borders along the narcissistic psychological disease of continual denial and mental evasion of the person who was voted to lead this country.
I am not denying that fact, but I am not sure how that correlation relates to the non existent correlation to America.
I'm open to more explanation
I've given up arguing about the best system, but this is just wrong on so many levels, and we will sorely regret it if not stopped.
Who controls the land controls us, and I don't like what I'm seeing out here. Do I want someone, some culture that literally hates Americans, especially second, third generation Americans, owing my apartment building building? Hell no.
And we let it happen daily.
And yes, it's about cultural differences too. (I'll get hammered for this, but it needs to be said. Everything in America should not be for sale.)
Interestingly however, the Scandinavian states, especially Sweden, are transforming rapidly because of enormous immigration. Gone are the clean, safe, stable, civilized societies of the 70s-80s. Now women worry about walking alone at night; their sexual assault rates are through the roof, much worse than most spots in the U.S. I wonder how the "Social Progress Imperative" fit this into their calculations.
A strong counter-argument would be economy of scale (in education, healthcare, defense...) for example.
It's unlikely that as a country grows, the optimal class size increases or that a doctor is somehow able to treat a patient nx times faster than in a smaller country. Doesn't make sense on the most basic level.
Defense does...sort of, but the US DoD is such a unique and unprecedented beast in human history that it's hard to make hard conclusions about it with n=1.
a caveat to healthcare is that medical R&D probably does have economies of scale, but not routine treatments and healthcare.
Anybody who would make a trip from Vienna to Graz and, say, Aspang am Wechsel and then would make a similar trip between London, Birmingham and, say, Battle in East Sussex would see very, very, very different levels of social development is just about any regard.
Why being picky? Because referring to, say, Europe as a unity is questionable and definitely is, were you to intend Scandinavia.