education systems

[lfvoy]

It came up in one of the colleges where I teach because someone had actually applied for a position using one of these fake degrees. They also offer fake transcripts -- that's one thing you always have to get sent to a college when they hire you. The person screening the applicant did a little research trying to figure out what the deal was and was stunned at how many fake college names are out there. She circulated the list as a heads up.

When I was in HR part of my job was verifying credentials, and I did not accept transcripts from the employee; rather I had them fill out a form and then requested the verification myself. I never once had a school charge me for it even though many do charge to send sealed transcripts out. (I worked for the NC Community College System for a while so I did sometimes need full transcripts vs. just verification; it depended whether it was faculty or staff, but regardless I never accepted it from the employee.) It was really scary the number of times people blanched and ran when they realized that I meant it about confirming their education.

In the US, there are six (I think) major accrediting agencies for secondary and post-secondary education, roughly divided up by geography. There's also one that is specifically for distance education. All of the agencies publish lists of accredited schools on their web sites. If I hadn't heard of a school, the first thing I would do was check with the accrediting agencies. Some of them even post notices when a non-accredited school is using a very similar name as an accredited one.

Of course, the scammers have responded by creating their own accrediting agencies. But it's not very difficult to tell the difference between a made-up accrediting agency and a legitimate one.



NC, by the way, has a two-tier public post-secondary system. All public two-year schools are part of the NC Community College System; all public four-year-and-up schools are part of the University of North Carolina System. The community colleges do have open admission -- 18 or high school graduation -- but you have to take placement tests to be admitted into most courses (even English 101). You also have to clear your indebtedness each semester, and classes can and often do fill up quickly during registration.

There are two types of associate degrees from these colleges. "Academic" degrees (A.A., A.S.) are intended to be the first two years of a four-year education, and you generally don't declare a major. "Technical" degrees (usually A.A.S., but there are a couple A.A.T. programs) are intended to prepare you for the workforce; nearly all of them have a co-operative education or intern requirement. Technical classes often do not transfer to four-year schools and get a bad rap, but in my experience they were actually tougher than the academic classes.

The universities vary by selection criteria but none of them have open admission; generally though, a medium score on the SAT or ACT will get you into at least one of them. It may not necessarily get you into the one you want, though, and getting into a school doesn't mean you'll get into your desired major program. There are also two high schools run by the university system; the UNC School of the Arts has a high school component (10th-12th grades), and the NC School of Science & Math is a standalone residential high school (11th-12th grades) for the academically gifted.

Private post-secondary schools are pretty much allowed to do whatever they like as long as they comply with federal and state law. Some of them (Duke, Wake Forest, etc.) are very picky; some of them are not. As an adult student, I've found that they're more flexible with respect to course scheduling, online options, and similar.

I got caught in a serious Catch 22 when I finished high school. I finished a year early because of skipping a grade at the elementary level, so I was still a minor when I graduated. That meant I couldn't sign the promissory note on a student loan. But I also went to NCSSM, which does not award extra quality points for academically advanced courses, so my high school GPA was lower than someone with my test scores might ordinarily have...and that cost me scholarship opportunities.

In addition, my father died when I was fifteen so, thanks to Social Security Survivors' Benefits, I had income in my own name. Somehow, the powers that be decided I could save 100% of that toward my college education despite the fact that my mother only made $11,000 per year and needed that money to feed me...I completely disqualified for need-based aid. As a result, while I got admitted to several very good schools, including Yale University, I wasn't able to manage the financing. While I know my situation was unique, it burns me up every time I hear someone talk about how anyone can afford college in the USA. I only wish....

[Kotik]

In addition, my father died when I was fifteen so, thanks to Social Security Survivors' Benefits, I had income in my own name. Somehow, the powers that be decided I could save 100% of that toward my college education despite the fact that my mother only made $11,000 per year and needed that money to feed me...I completely disqualified for need-based aid. As a result, while I got admitted to several very good schools, including Yale University, I wasn't able to manage the financing. While I know my situation was unique, it burns me up every time I hear someone talk about how anyone can afford college in the USA. I only wish....

11.000 a year I've heard some horror stories about 'working poor' in the States, but I always thought they were exaggerated
Even though dumping wages are the current trend over here, too. Such a wage would be declared against public policy and the employer would have to come up with a darn good justification to pay that low, especially to a single parent. In Germany there's a law that makes people eligible for social welfare benefits, if their wages are below a certain amount per year. Although I don't wanna think what it does to those people's self-image. Working full time and still having to rely on welfare to get along - that's just wrong
Having grown up in East Germany, I'm everything but a communist, but after 20 years of united Germany, I can't help but feel like we've gone from bad to worse. Look at me - some fat guy, who happens to know his way around computers. As a result of that, I take home about 8.000 quid a month and that's not even a very high salary in the business. Thinking that some poor windowed single mom has to work almost a YEAR for the same money just shows, how ill our society is. I donate money a lot, to several charities, but that doesn't really do much but thinly cover the fundamental flaws in our society.

[Alelou]

Yes, people whose parents could send them to college (and were willing to) simply have no idea what it's like for everyone else. My parents showed little interest in where we would go to college, chose redecorating the house over helping their children with tuition, and simply refused to fill out the financial aid forms that would have helped us qualify at least for merit scholarships. I suppose I should be grateful my parents were at least willing to co-sign the loans I took out to get through UMass, and they did pitch in a little when the exchange rate meant my junior year in England suddenly got more expensive. I'm not sure what I would have done otherwise. I guess I would have had to emancipate myself by trying to somehow live independently for a year, and then start over.

I can only be very grateful that UMass was such a good deal in those days. It's far more out of reach today. We'll help my son as much as we can (and the least we can do is fill out the goddamn forms), but I'm not sure how much we can do for him. He's not going to qualify for merit scholarships, but some of the private colleges around here seem to be willing to kick in a good chunk of tuition just to get you on the hook. I still think the community college where I teach is probably his best bet until he's got more of an idea what he wants to do. The classes are small, there are no graduate assistants who can barely speak English teaching intro level courses, and there is a lot of academic support available.

Most of our students are moving on to four-year colleges in the SUNY system or local four-year-colleges, but our two year technical programs like radiology and dental hygiene and nursing and so forth are very competitive too, so much so that most students can't get INTO them the first year. So they end up taking more years doing the other requirements just to qualify, and they're out of luck if they can't get all A's and B's. I don't think that's as true of the solar tech and HVAC and so forth side of it, but I could be wrong. Supposedly we're also geared up now to feed workers into the local microchip and nanotech industry, but I haven't had any of those students come crying to me about how they can't afford a C.

[Kotik]

That sounds quite hard to get your children educated. I'm not much of a patriot. Not one to run around waving a flag, shouting that I'm proud to be German. After all, where you're born is not exactly an achievement. But one thing about Germany that I do like is, for all our flaws, everyone who has the brain for it can get to university and won't start out his professional life with an insurmountable debt. In fact most students don't need the student loans longer than a year or two as many intern jobs are available in university cities. Often private research institutes, like the Fraunhofer Institute (they invented the mp3 format) often build their offices near university campuses (or is that campii )
That's how I got through my university years. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I earned about what would now amount to something like 15.000€ a year as a intern. With no tuition fees that was ample supply to get through it without needing a loan or having to ask my parents for help.
If anything, we have a problem of too many students, but the fact that even Brits come over here to study, because they couldn't afford to do so in her majesty's empire, tells me we did at least something right

[Alelou]

Here a lot of internships are unpaid, which means only wealthy kids can afford to take them.

But I can't get into it any further without getting into politics and that way lies a big fight.

[Kotik]

Here a lot of internships are unpaid, which means only wealthy kids can afford to take them.

I thought slavery had been abandoned after the civil war?!? Any employer, letting someone work without paying him would find himself in jail. In fact there are some internships that employers don't have to pay for, but those have to be registered with the Federal Agency for Employment, which then sends long-time unemployed people as a way of re-integrating them into the professional world and pays their wages. Unpaid work is forbidden by law.

But I can't get into it any further without getting into politics and that way lies a big fight.

Maybe that's exactly the wrong approach. If people shy away from saying things, nothing will change. Yes you'll burn your mouth once in a while, but one thing we East Germans learned back in 1989 is, that if you want things to change, you'll have to change them yourself.
Over here the USA are called Das Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten (The land of unlimited opportunities). If I read some of the posts here, maybe that's not quite true any longer and unless Americans start to call for change, nothing will change, because surely your politicians won't do it for you. What are your choices? The republicans have policies that make my skin crawl and the democrats are basically just republicans without the gun fetish as far as one can tell from the other side of the pond.

[putaro]

Rightly or wrongly, the agreement has been to not get into politics here. Trust me, Americans spend more than enough time talking politics.

[Kotik]

Oh, I wasn't aware of any agreement to avoid politics talk. Guess I gotta brush up on the forum rules

[putaro]

I thought slavery had been abandoned after the civil war?!? Any employer, letting someone work without paying him would find himself in jail. In fact there are some internships that employers don't have to pay for, but those have to be registered with the Federal Agency for Employment, which then sends long-time unemployed people as a way of re-integrating them into the professional world and pays their wages. Unpaid work is forbidden by law.

No volunteering?

It varies by industry. Lawyers are famous for paying lawyer interns (not para-legals) extravagant amounts of money for a summer internship. When I worked at Apple, there was a summer internship program that seemed to pay the interns pretty well and covered their travel out to Cupertino and rent, if I remember right. The magazine and publishing industry is apparently notorious for not paying interns and treating them terribly. And so is the government - the White House used to have unpaid summer interns.

[Kotik]

No volunteering?

Volunteering to work for a charity for instance is something else than working for a company that makes money off your work and sends you home without a dime. An even volunteers get a payment of sorts, because you get tax breaks in exchange. So if you're for instance a coach for school football team (over here it is the civilized european variant of course ) in your spare time, you get a tax break for it. And usually the schools also reimburse you for things like travel costs.

It varies by industry. ... the White House used to have unpaid summer interns.

Yeah, but the Clinton regime found a rather funny way of 'payment'. Although id did leave stains on dresses occasionally

[Alelou]

We argue plenty, Kotik, and arguing about Star Trek is fine, but not politics. There's a very broad spectrum of political belief among the members here. Believe me, if you seek back into the archives, you'll find eruptions of partisanship that led to hard feelings, ultimatums, dramatic exits, and nothing terribly relevant to our enjoyment of the show.

(And yes, if you didn't know that, you might want to brush up on the rules.)

[lfvoy]

11.000 a year I've heard some horror stories about 'working poor' in the States, but I always thought they were exaggerated

The sad thing, Kotik, is that she was a teacher. Though, to be fair, part of the reason I disqualified was because she'd used the life insurance money to pay off the house. So the $11k was more than it sounds like and she had "assets." This being said, while she was willing to help me any way she could (and even wrote the appeal to the financial aid people), the one thing she wouldn't do was re-mortgage the house. I don't really blame her for that; I'm not an only child and she needs a roof of her own.

Also, to be fair, this was in the early 1990s. That $11k figure is the equivalent of somewhere in the low $20s now. And yes, that is indeed what teachers make in some areas of our country.

Even though dumping wages are the current trend over here, too. Such a wage would be declared against public policy and the employer would have to come up with a darn good justification to pay that low, especially to a single parent. In Germany there's a law that makes people eligible for social welfare benefits, if their wages are below a certain amount per year. Although I don't wanna think what it does to those people's self-image. Working full time and still having to rely on welfare to get along - that's just wrong.

Most places in the U.S. work that way too. But discussing the frequency at which that occurs is likely to stray a little too close to political talk, particularly given the election over here right now.

The minimum wage in the U.S. is $7.25/hour and with payroll taxes that runs employers about $8 or so. Beyond that, pay rates are strictly market driven. But there's also the purchasing power issue. I live in an area where you can rent a decent two-bedroom apartment for $800/month, which means that two people with full-time minimum wage jobs can just about pull things off without needing assistance. But I'll bet they couldn't in Alelou's neck of the woods. Salary figures are always relative.

Such a wage would be declared against public policy and the employer would have to come up with a darn good justification to pay that low, especially to a single parent.

You know, as an American and an HR type (even if I'm stuck working the other side right now) I find that an interesting statement. Over here, paying someone differently based on their parental status is generally a very bad idea; it's close to, and sometimes crosses the line, into illegal discrimination. But your statement suggests that the German system takes family status into consideration when determining "fair pay." Did I catch that right?

[Weeble]

Fascinating discussion,

I agree that politics should be left out of the discussion, nuff said. I graduated from Georgia Tech in 1982. When I started 1978 it was 650 bucks a quarter. Tech converted to semesters after I graduated. That was out-of-state tuition. Instate was like 280 bucks a quarter. Needless to say that for under $2000 a year you could go there. It was cheaper the Un. of Michigan, by a ton. I am a native and almost lifelong Mi resident. Needless to say I have watched college tuition rise at twice the rate of inflation for better than 30 years, and i do not understand why.

To one of Kotik's points, each engineering school at GaTech handled its graduation requirements differently. There was no grade point inflation back then and most grades were dished out via the bell curve. I was happy to escape with my 2.3 in Mechanical Engineering. The Electrical Engineering school had a different system. You had to get a "B" in two basic classes in three tries total. If you didn't then you could not graduate EE.

The real fun was that GaTech flunked out 33% of its freshman class annually. Half of my roommates flunked out over the years. It was tough, but tossing the bonnet was worth it.

[Kotik]

Also, to be fair, this was in the early 1990s. That $11k figure is the equivalent of somewhere in the low $20s now. And yes, that is indeed what teachers make in some areas of our country.

Since most schools are run by the state, such a low salary would not be possible over here. That of course is helped by the fact that the European Union has a open market, meaning you would have over 20 other states to take up a job in, so we would simply run out of teachers if someone came up with an idea like that

But your statement suggests that the German system takes family status into consideration when determining "fair pay." Did I catch that right?

Well, indirectly. If the state catches you handing out too low wages, you get whacked upside the head something fierce. But if they find that you do that to a single parent, father state's going to administer an darn good anal seeing-to you'll never forget. Unfortunately that's rather academic, because companies on principle discriminate single parents. They simply won't get any job anyway, so that problem will never arise. Theoretically that's against the law, too, but it's very hard to prove, so the state can't do an awful lot against it. To offset that, social welfare benefits for unemployed single parents are rather generous in comparison to a person without children. That pretty much sums up, what's wrong in Germany. Our social welfare system is still one of the best, if not THE best in the world, even though it has been axed massively in the last 20 years, but at the end of the day the tax payers cough up the dough for corporate greed as the big companies exploit it massively.

[lfvoy]

Needless to say I have watched college tuition rise at twice the rate of inflation for better than 30 years, and i do not understand why.

That's the main reason I haven't gone back to finish my bachelor's degree. I don't see the point of going $30k+ into debt to raise my salary a few thousand dollars per year. But I'm not sure if that's an indictment of our education system or of our economy.

One thing I didn't see mentioned in this discussion is non-college credit education. I've almost always seen this called "Continuing Education." These courses are usually very industry-specific and measured in actual clock hours versus credits. They aren't considered education in the traditional sense, but the right CE course can teach you a lot and make you very marketable.

For example, I'm about to get an insurance license. There are no educational requirements, but I do have to take a CE course and pass a written exam, and once I'm licensed I'll be required to complete a certain number of additional CE hours every year. My income potential will theoretically double the minute that license is in my hand (it's theoretical only because I don't plan to switch to sales work). As another example, a local university's CE program for paralegal studies has a better reputation and certification exam pass rate than some of the other local college-credit programs. And some professional training, such as that for paramedics, is almost entirely done via CE.

Trip would excel in this kind of training, by the way, which is why I'm one of the few people who's willing to buy the idea that he didn't go to college. Under the American system, that definitely does not mean he doesn't have an engineering education, and one of the finest engineers I ever knew never earned a single college credit. (He could run rings around Ph.D. math students though.) What he likely would have missed, by not going to college, was a good bit of the theoretical underpinnings. That's both good and bad; while not knowing theory can lead you to not quite understand what's going on, it can also make you more likely to be able to think creatively when presented with a problem.

I'm not sure where this would fit into an equivalency comparison between the US and European systems, though. Kotik, is there something in your system that's not quite vocational training but not quite college credit either?