US education is peculiar among nations in the proliferation of poor tertiary institutions. For most "colleges", i.e. institutions without a graduate school connected, you would not be far off to say all of the 4 years are spent teaching what should have been learned in high school. I don't think this is true of the undergraduate programs in the universities from which one is likely to get accepted by the medical schools. In Europe and in China, so far as I know, there is no government financing and very little private financing for second rate institutions. Traditions are peculiar. Even Harvard has football admissions, i.e. if you play football well enough you can get in without good grades. Some colleges revolve exclusively around sports.
On top of these strange facts is the peculiar one that the best graduate schools in the US, including medical schools, are the best in the world, For example, MIT, Stanford, Cornell, Princeton, Harvard. In short average is very low, best is the best.
I know this aspect may seem to have no influence on country risk. But I do think it is important(Sorry elmatador). The fact that the average US "college graduate" is mainly expert about football has some forecasting value, IMHO. Over and over I have heard that the US education level is too low to enable them to change over to the metric system, yet the latter facilitates practical science education. |
