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E-PrinceYou’ve probably seen us wandering around campus — speaking in accents straight out of “Romeo and Juliet,” looking terribly confused whenever someone mentions health insurance or distribution requirements, and spelling “color” and “labor” as “colour” and “labour”. The Oxford-Princeton Exchange ...(back to the article)
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I agree - "burgle" is way better.
interesting piece
You slide between discussing Oxford and British higher education in general as if the two things actually had that much in common...
As you know, I'm sure, but most of the readers here probably don't, being able to take one-on-one, or one-on-a-few, tutorials is an experience that's almost wholly confined to Oxford and Cambridge. Most British students are stuck with the same kind of large lecture courses or medium-sized seminars common to most American universities, over which the Princeton precept - in terms of tutor-to-student ratio - is a great improvement. Beyond that, it's not at all uncommon for Oxford undergraduates to be taught by graduate students, or by extremely junior faculty on very, very low pay. Pressures on research time due to the tutorial system can also be pretty unhelpful for even the most brilliant faculty there.
The confinement to a single subject throughout your undergraduate degree is also not universal across the British system. While most, perhaps all, British degrees are more focused than the liberal arts education familiar here, it's not uncommon for students to take combined degrees, or to take courses well outside of their main subject, at several universities in Britain. That may be the best balance of all, since allowing students to do nothing but law or medicine from the age of 18 mostly produces two-dimensional characters guaranteed not to be the life and soul of any party.
Of course most undergraduates here aren't going to be at the top of the game in any given subject they've taken, but having a passing familiarity with Plato if you're an engineer, or some vague knowledge of calculus as a comp lit student, at least makes them more interesting.
Oh, and not all of us sound like we're straight out of Romeo and Juliet. But perhaps it's not surprising that those who do think they're qualified to judge not only one university's, but an entire country's, educational system based on just a couple of months' experience...
Is an amazing word. By virtue of itself, it is not spelled with an 's.' Nor is is spelled with a zed. It's spelled with a "zee."
I want to concentrate my time on my major but am stuck with my distribution requirements. I don't enjoy them and don't see how they can make me a better human being...
Upon becoming a senior, Princeton students work one on one with an advisor. I meet with my seniors for an hour a week, sometimes more (during crunch time). Many departments have similar set ups for juniors. So, Princeton students DO get that sort of individual attention.
Also, I may be mistaken, but it was my impression that Oxford got a fair degree of money from the British government to help subsidize costs. That may account for those budgeting differences.
I disagree about one thing though, Rob, which is the undergraduate law degree. Since lawyers set precedents that can affect so many lives, I think it's important that they have a broader education before they can responsibly use their lawyer skills.
I'll give you burgle if you stop mispronouncing clerk and derby.
@Old Oxonian - Certainly there are features of Oxford which aren't representative of our other universities, but I think the article makes it clear when I'm discussing features specific to Oxford and when I'm not. At any rate, it seems more common for Princeton students to study abroad at Oxford than at other universities.
You are of course correct about combined honours degrees, and I technically do one - I simply felt that mentioning them confused the point without really adding anything interesting. As to teaching by graduates, it's not unheard of at Oxford, but it seems to be much more the norm at Princeton.
I can't agree, however, that a more focused degree system "mostly produces two-dimensional characters" or that knowing calculus magically makes you "more interesting". That's a product of personality, and of life experience, far more than your academic background. I know first-year medical students who row, ride horses, hitchike to Morocco, host religious discussions, play women's soccer and co-ordinate charity fundraising across my Oxford residential college - I could say much the same about law students. Are you sure that my friends are all terribly dull people, just because they didn't take COM205?
The Romeo and Juliet comment was, of course, flippant. Even if it were literal, surely - by virtue of where it's set - that would imply I had an Italian accent...?
@No Nickname - True though that may be, the arrangements for a senior thesis aren't representative of the full Princeton education, whereas the tutorial system is the model followed for almost every course in an Oxford degree.
As to funding - Oxford receive about £7,000 per year per student from the government. Added to my £3200 tuition fees, that's still under $17,000 per year - about half Princeton's fees, and low enough that they still claim to lose money on educating students.
@'11 - I have two things to point out in response to that. Firstly, I'm not sure that education is really the key to making people judge responsibly; I think what's needed is broad life experience (note how your Constitution requires your President to be 35 or older, not to have a college degree), and while some of that comes with education (and a lot of it doesn't), I don't think it's really dependent on what you study. Secondly, lawyers don't set precedents - judges do, and lawyers just argue cases. If you're old and experienced enough to be a judge in either country, I think you'll be able to make responsible rulings, whether you studied chemistry and Plato or French or not.
I think this comparison, while interesting, is a bit misguided, in part because it makes some weird assumptions. I don't think Princeton (or, for that matter, virtually every other American university) has a system of small discussion sections rather than tutorials, because of a lack of funding. Rather, it's a different pedagogical approach. You are precisely right that Princeton (or for that matter, any other American university) could afford to switch to the tutorial system if they wanted to. I suppose you can argue about the merits of one approach vs. the other, but then have that argument; the budgetary comparisons are a red herring.