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Old 16-07-2011, 12:03 AM
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Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
Most USA universities are crap also. Out of the 4352 colleges only less than 50 are worth the $$$ for Singaporeans to go to.
true. uk probably only have no more than 5-6 that's worth the money. and except for oxbridge, which is not even in the league of harvard, stanford, berkeley, mit and caltec, the remainder 3-4 are way below in the league compared to the 50 or so us universities.

For example, see the following report from the independent:
Britain's best-known universities are falling behind their American counterparts, a leading academic said yesterday, after Oxford University was accused of "mediocrity".


Britain's best-known universities are falling behind their American counterparts, a leading academic said yesterday, after Oxford University was accused of "mediocrity".

Andrew Oswald, professor of economics at Warwick University, said: "A bunch of top universities are falling further and further behind America and the country has to be aware of this. This is because of an astonishingly low level of funding. We do not have the resources to compete."

He was speaking after John Kay, who resigned last year as the head of Oxford's Said Business School, attacked his old university's mediocre standards, outdated traditions and byzantine bureaucracy, and warned that it would soon be outpaced by universities such as Harvard and Stanford. Mr Kay became director of Oxford's business school in 1996.

Mr Kay has not commented on the reasons for his resignation but is understood to have been frustrated by the university's committee system and salary structure. In an article for next month's Prospect magazine, he says Oxford "is sliding gradually into mediocrity".

Professor Oswald refused to comment on the status of Oxford, but he pointed out that it was almost impossible to attract economists with first-class degrees into university teaching because of low pay rates. "We can't put people with second-class degrees in front of students who are brighter than they are. The message to parents is that they get what they pay for - and they don't pay much," he said.

Until recently it was received wisdom in British academic circles that our universities could compete with the best in the world.

However, Professor David Canadine, head of London University's Institute of Historical Studies, who spent 10 years at Columbia University in New York, said last year that our universities were no longer world-class and were producing increasingly poor research "with all the frenzied energy of battery chickens on overtime".

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