The wrong education

[Hottentot]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

So what does Finland do better? Simple, their university system is not privatized. The industry does not exist there.

Yet the universities get money based on the number of graduates, which leads to the grading system being pretty lax. The only time I have ever heard someone failing a course (bar some simple exams on certain books that are done just for the credits) was when a person from my seminar group turned in a 10 pages long essay filled with lots of personal feelings and plans on what should be done on the actual seminar thesis, whereas it was supposed to be approximately 40 pages of scientific research and the very last step before the master's thesis.

But otherwise? Sure, these days they say that you have to graduate in 7 years (the goal is 5, the average is somewhere between 5 and 6), but if you won't? Just go cry the powers-that-be a river, and they will give you more time simply because they won't admit having wasted 7 years on you for nothing.

I'm not saying we have it easy. Having quite a lot of experience from working with university students from various other countries, I'd say we are doing pretty well. They have agreed on that as well (and in fact been a lot more ardent about it than I am). But money certainly talks nevertheless.

Students are admitted based on a single test, not an interview, not an essay, not any of the things that allow for a flood of new students.

Not entirely true. You can also, in some cases, be admitted based on your grades in the matriculation exam alone or have those grades help you along with good test score. It depends on school. My history department, at least when I applied, took 20 based on the test and another 20 based on the test and the matriculation exam. I had pretty good grades, above average, but I wasn't even considered to the latter quota.

And for the record, when I applied, there were approximately 450 applicants. I thought that was hard. In fact I had it easy: for some programmes there can be over 2,000 applicants from which 66 are selected.