Sunday Times mag article - US universities

[gramercy]

Anyone read that vomit-tastic article in the Sunday Times magazine?

I couldn't help thinking that it was virtually an advertorial piece.

It was designed to put the wind up people who had already forked out several hundred thousand on their kids' education and make them panic that unless their precious offspring went to an Ivy League college they were doomed to rub shoulders with state school oiks who had been admitted preferentially to Oxbridge.

Bleeuurrgggh. It was an excellent emetic.

Funnily enough an American friend was saying only last night how it made him laugh when Brits talked about going to uni now and ending up x thousand pounds in debt. Try multiplying by five etc.

I have the impression (smart friends - not me!) that a few years ago somewhere like Brown was considered a rather smarter option than a non-Oxbridge UK education, if you couldn't quite manage the gleaming spires, but the recession has somewhat put paid to that

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article7005150.ece

Sorry, I tried to make it past the first paragraph but it was such inane drivel.

I really do not move in the same social circles (I suspect no one does) where mothers boast about Henry going to Yale. A completely made up scenario.

"The best British universities no longer carry enough cachet to impress." Bollocks.

Sheer twaddle.

Um. If the writer had gone to a top University, he might have realised that the University of British Columbia is not noticeably in the US.

It is a really revolting article isn't it?

And the stupid thing is that loads of truly outstanding US Universities carry no cache at all in the UK, because we haven't heard of anything other than Harvard and Yale.

Oh well there's nothing like a teenager to show up parental inanity:

"I speak to another hopeful, a honey-blonde 16-year-old with an Identikit mother. The teen has the sophisticated poise of a beauty queen with ?destined for California? invisibly etched on her forehead.

So, why does she want to study in America? ?It sounds fun?? she says, rolling her oversized eyes at the mother gurning anxiously by her side. ?No, darling, that?s not what the lady asked. Why do you want to go?? The ingénue pauses, a slight indent on her brow. ?Because it sounds great,? she decides. ?The facilities, the parties, the men.? "

I?m sorry but I read that article completely differently from the OP. I think a lot of the piece is poo-poohing the one-upmanship on display. Look at the language the writer chooses to use: ?helicopter parent utopia?, ?Jack Wills-clad exports are guaranteed sightings on any top American university campus?, ?ferociously hip?, etc. The writer is taking the mick out of people going to American universities for the wrong reasons, surely?

She has to pretend to be writing a serious piece in order to get quotes/comments from people, but she?s not on their side?

I agree with mattellie that the author, Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe, uses language that pooh-poohs the parents, but unlike mattellie, I think that Charlotte is secretly on the side of the parents. She is being disingenuous, she is playing to us in the gallery, handing us the tomatoes which we can throw at the parents, in order to make us feel better.

Charlotte herself spent a year studying in New York "When I was at school, American universities weren?t on the radar. My US stint in 1996 was my headmistress?s pioneering attempt to open us up to study abroad. I was plucked from my sixth-form biology class and whisked off to a genetics lab perched on Long Island?s coastline an hour?s drive from New York." But she missed out on a US university education, and wistfully sees that there is now a trend to study in the States.

I think the parents are far-sighted to send their children to study in the States. America is where the real decisions are made, it is where the big fish swim and at the top US universities their children may well rub shoulders with the likes of Bill Gates, Obama and Clinton, rather than Cameron and Blair. The parents want their children to play in the big league and studying in the States is one step towards that goal, in a similar way to how the Grand Tour of Europe was a rite of passage a few hundred years ago.

So I agree with gramercy that it is an advertorial piece, but well camouflaged by use of condescending language.

spot on, claig.

I wasn't as offended as gramercy about the article. I thought it was a bit superficial and didn't mention enough about the cost of American education enough.

Yes, admission is needs-blind, but in most cases the funding is through student loans and many students leave with eyewatering amount of debt. If you decide to go to medical school, that is an additional 4 very costly years on top of the 4 years of undergraduate studies. Many of the people I graduated from medical school left with aproximately $150,000 of student debt. Yes, you read that figure correctly (some had much more). We hope out DSs go to American Universities and are anticipating fees to be about $60,000 a year by the time they are freshman (school fees + boarding + allowance). Ouch.

Oh, and Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard.

I take the point about being in with the movers and shakers, but I always thought American Universities were academically rather light-weight.

I don't see anything wrong with the article. University in the US is a very real alternative, especially as fees rise here. And it's spot on about us thinking globally about everything.

DP applied successfully to Colombia (NY) in the 1970s, but instead decided to go to Bristol as his parents were concerned about him being so far away from home. So I think it's been on the radar for quite a while. But it's growing in popularity now as university here becomes ever more expensive.