A tale of two universities

The basic idea of higher education in the two countries is fundamentally different. English bachelor’s degrees are three year commitments, not four, and much more focused — we pick our “major” when we apply to university, it’s difficult and unusual to change it, and we take next to no courses outside that major. Apart from Latin and a course on statistics in history last year, both optional, every course I take at Oxford is a history one — though we do take far fewer courses, an average of four intense ones per year as against four per semester at Princeton. It’s not for everyone — particularly if you aren’t certain what you want to study — and there are obvious reasons for making humanities or Wilson School majors take science courses, but British-style specialization has just as many advantages, like making medicine and law undergraduate degrees. A British student could leave high school, take a three-year law degree, then a year-long further training course, and start working as a junior lawyer after paying less than $30,000 in tuition fees. Similarly, the usual route to becoming a doctor is to take a five-year Bachelor of Medicine straight out of high school, costing only $22,000 of tuition fees, and begin working in a hospital. The fees don’t translate exactly, since some of the costs of a U.K. degree are paid by government subsidy, but for those of you who are facing the high costs of Princeton plus a J.D. or an M.D., any system which cuts the number of years you stay in school could be attractive.

The difference between Princeton’s precepts and Oxford’s tutorials is also rather striking. It’s difficult to believe, for instance, that it’s really necessary to enforce a 15-student precept minimum on cost grounds. Oxford is far poorer than Princeton, with an endowment of $5.9 billion against $12.6 billion, with tuition fees so low that we actually lose money on every student we educate and with a much weaker tradition of alumni support. Only 10 percent of Oxford alumni donate to the university, and rather than rich benefactors like Rockefeller, our residential colleges are named after 13th-century bishops, saints and — in two cases — Jesus. Despite this, every week, almost every student goes to one or two hour-long tutorials with a couple of other students and, usually, a tenured academic rather than a grad student — though this is rarely the same person as the course’s lecturer, making it similar to Woodrow Wilson’s initial vision of the Princeton precept, where preceptors were employed from outside to discuss texts with four or five students as an adjunct to the lectures. Princeton might argue that a larger precept, with more variety of ideas, offers a better education, but if so, why is campus opinion agreed that 15-person precepts are the wrong thing to do? If Oxford, on a much more limited budget, can offer students an hour or two of two-on-one or three-on-one teaching a week with a senior academic, in addition to a full lecture course, and all Princeton’s resources only let you have a 15-on-one precept, something’s drastically wrong.

I don’t want to excessively criticise American education and look like a stereotypical British snob. Despite being the country that invented the verb “to burglarize,” American education at its best is excellent — if you’re undecided as to what you want to do with your life, or want a broader education, the liberal arts system is ideal. The accommodation, food and gym here are better than at Oxford — though perhaps I’m biased by being in New Butler — and eight of the 10 best universities in the world, including Princeton, are American. But that doesn’t mean that it’s efficient to force aspiring lawyers and doctors to do four years of expensive pre-law or pre-med if they don’t want to, and it doesn’t mean that small precepts are unaffordable on Princeton’s sizeable budget. Perhaps it’s time to think about a change.

Rob Day is an exchange student from Oxford, where he majors in ancient history. He can be reached at rkday@princeton.edu.