FYI e-degrees in S. Africa

Very little to distinguish the two countries... you obviously have not lived in the two countries.

As far as superior, I guess that depends on how you define superior.

I think it is a very important debate for at least one very relevant reason. People are always concerned regarding how legitimate or prestigious their DL degree may be. If you earn the degree from Canada, the UK or Australia, this is less of an issue because the quality of all the public schools (which dominate the educational landscape) is high and stacked around the mean. Yes there are better and worse but legitimacy is not a great concern. However under the US system, where the quality varies so greatly, it can be very important to evaluate schools more closely to ensure it is delivering the quality you expect.

 

Lewchuk is of the opinion that small private schools should be dismissed as inferior, but many Americans see these schools as offering superior teaching, particularly at the undergraduate level.

The problem small private schools "can" experience is a lack of options, poor funding, unqualified faculty (due to funding) and pressure to lower standard to get "student flow" (again, to improve funding).


I think that it is a fundamental mistake to look at the American higher education system and judge its quality by how far it deviates from the more generic Canadian university model. American higher education is simply too diverse to adaquately treat that way. We have undergraduate colleges, stand-alone graduate schools, DL-specialist schools, elite research programs, urban universities promoting educational opportunities for underserved populations, law schools, engineering schools, schools emphasizing part-time adult education in a host of vocational or professional subjects and more.

And I probably should point out that the purpose of this group is distance education. It seems to me to be a bit self-defeating to adopt a philosophy that automatically rejects schools that try to specialize in DL, and to insist instead that the DL programs remain hidden behind the generic Canadian-style university front.








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Actually, bad point. The situation is quite the reverse. DL is more accepted within Australia, the UK and, to a less extent, Canada than the US. Is it because these countries have kept standards high and integrated the DL within the traditional systems... is this a step in the evolution?

 

Several of the contributors are arguing about Canadian university education and what Canadians think about universities in general--and I have to wonder and ask if you have ever actually been in such academic environments (i.e., teach, earn a Canadian degree, etc.) to the point where one has enough feedback and information (beyond just hearsay from a few Canadians one may know or some pundits on TV) to really speak with authority on this subject?

EsqPhD

 

Dear Lewchuck,

Greetings!

Definitely, there are areas that need a great deal of improvement here in the United States. To begin with, it is a recognizable fact all over the world that the standards for physical geography are not particularly high in this country. I still wonder how publications such as "Natural Geography" has become successful. Then, I have mentioned the subjects of economic history and business history. Another one is foreign languages, including translation, particularly non-technical translation. Still, within the English language teaching curriculum, I have seen some flaws. You see, variations of English languages are not encouraged to be taught in school (this is known as World Englishes). I remember when one teacher of mine reprimended me for my using of some British English grammar. There are probably other flaws in other areas, too. Before I close, let me tell you that I suppose that other educational systems have their own flaws, so this is not unique to the American educational system.

I hope this helps.

My best regards,


Karlos Alberto Lacaye
[email protected]

 

I have Canadian degrees and some teaching experience in Canada, but I can’t really compare it to the US since I have never attended any university there. The overall impression is that education is equivalent, in the academic environment some US schools have a lot prestige and half of our academics have degrees from the US, for the other hand I have compared PhD programs from very weak school like NCU and some of them couldn’t pass for a Canadian bachelors degree. I think that the US have to be careful in order to maintain its image of having a quality education system.