What's a better university system: the USA or Canada?

Great Debates
1

This is an idle debate that could go in many directions, so let’s see if i can explain what I mean.

The United States has a great many truly elite universities, as discussed in the other thread on that subject. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, MIT, Chicago, Caltech, Princeton, these are world famous institutions. Any ranking of the world’s best universities will be at least half schools in the USA. American schools produce incredible innovation, insight, Nobel laureates, the works. Even the second tier of American universities like U Texas, the lesser Ivy League schools like Brown, and Rice are excellent schools.

The downside is… well, you all heard about Felicity Huffman and all that. It can be ludicrously expensive to go to these places, and apparently, rich people steal spots from ordinary people. Student debt can destroy people unless they go to lower tier schools, and that can legitimately affect your career prospects. Fighting for scholarships is a matter of “life goals attainable” and “derailed at 17 years old” differences.

Conversely, up here in Canada, we have no school equivalent to a place like Harvard or MIT. A few of the best schools like McGill might get into a Top 100 world ranking. I went to Queen’s, considered a very good school by Canadian standards )(and its student body will tell you it’s the most elite school in the galaxy) but it’s absolutely not one of the 150 best schools in the world. Canadian universities do not pump out Nobel laureates all the time.

On the other hand, one of the reasons this is true is Canada doesn’t really have a bunch of elite private schools; all universities, save a religious exception or two, are essentially public. To go to McGill, probably our best school, a Quebec resident will pay just $2400 CDN (about $1800 US) and a Canadian from another province just $7500, quite a reasonable sum to go to a damn good school; you still have to pay for room and board if you’re away from home but there’s usually a pretty good university close to wherever you live. All universities in Canada cost something like this. Canadian universities really aren’t that far apart in quality in terms of undergrad studies, and it is very rare for your alma mater to matter after you graduate. My going to Queen’s has been of interest to not a single person in my career. I’ve honestly never heard the subject of what school someone went to ever raised as an issue that matters here.

(By way of comparison, to use Brown as an example - it’s Ivy League but not Harvard - tuition is over $50,000 USD.)

Which system do you prefer? Which is better? What errors do you see in my description? I don’t have a fixed opinion either way.

2

…and lots of community colleges, regional public universities, unpretentious private colleges, big state universities that try to be lots of different things to lots of different people, small schools that focus on one or two specialties…

Shut Up About Harvard: A focus on elite schools ignores the issues most college students face.

3

Bah. Canada doesn’t even play in the SEC.

4

Having gotten degrees in the U.S. and worked in U.S. higher education for 8 years (but never studied in Canada, so I can only view things from a skewed 1/2 perspective): Much of U.S. higher education is overrated. Bloated, absurdly expensive, and sometimes more focused on agenda than actual learning. For that matter, much of higher education is overrated, period. Canada’s might not necessarily be much better in terms of quality, but if it’s cheaper, then that already is its main benefit.
In the U.S., some people go through 4 years of college with almost no real learning or education to show for it. (“Some.”) It’s like all they went through at college was to have their preconceived notions reinforced and affirmed. Which is rather a waste of a hundred thousand dollars.

5

Edit: For the most part, Canada’s, hands down. (Based off of what the OP has said)

(Although the U.S. does have far more college sports teams and leagues) :smiley:

6

Not to hijack, but this sounds an awful lot like the Canada vs US universal healthcare debate. The US probably has among the best elite medical care in the world, which is why conservatives make the claim of so many foreigners coming here for treatment. But its only good for those people who can afford it.

7

Go Stingers!

8

One win for Canada is that the drinking age is lower. I don’t know how US college kids are supposed to party any more.

In all honesty, even with as much disgust as I have for patriotism, I think the US leads the world. Not to say that if you ranked the top 100 in the world that they’d all be American, but the solid majority would be. There are many fields that if you want to go to the very best to study, you’d have to go to the US.

But as noted, they’re expensive as hell.

9

Undergrad level I’d say it’s clearly Canada. It has excellence, it has accessibility, it has social mobility, so the aggregate societal benefit appears strong in producing an educated and capable populace. The US is more polarised, it has pure distilled excellence in the form of the best research universities in the world, but it also has kids paying 50 grand a year to go to Brown (LOL).

OTOH, the impact on society from discoveries made at the very elite research level is completely disproportionate. There’s a scale multiplier at places like Harvard that enables the biggest of research questions to be tackled in a way that would just not be possible in Canada (or most other places), so you have to give that due weight.

The two countries are obv very different in terms of population, industrial and research base etc, and one doesn’t build a Harvard overnight, or even overcentury. But it’s still an interesting question to consider - Canada clearly could move toward a more marketised, US-style education model, or it could move the other way and emphasise accessibility at the expense of raw higher education funding. The balance seems good from an outside perspective but perhaps it could stand a shift in either direction.

10

The US/Canada results are skewed by the fact that the US has about six times the population of Canada. Adjust for that, and Canada has nearly as many elite universities as the US does - trailing a little, but not by a huge amount.

Times Higher Ed: 24 of top 50 are US, 3 are Canadian (if it was 4, the two systems would be equivalent)

QS rankings - 19 US, 3 Canadian (nearly exactly comparable)

The country with the most elite Universities per unit population is the UK.

11

Actually, it’s 8.8 to 1 (but point taken). Current US population is ~327 million, current Canadian population is ~37 million.

12

I will never forget how cringey my nephew’s HS graduate ceremony was. At my graduation ceremony, the graduates who had been admitted to college were made to stand up and accept a round of applause. That was the only hoopla made over college. But at my nephew’s graduation, they announced the institution where each graduate had elected to attend as they walked across the stage. They did this for all 250 graduates. No one can convince me that this was just harmless pageantry. Against my will, I felt myself negatively judging the kids who were going to low-tier schools. I felt proud of my nephew when he accepted his diploma, but I gotta admit that I was also proud that he was able to wave a “name brand” university. I wanted to go home and take a shower afterwards, because I really don’t want to think of myself as a snob. But I guess I am.

It would be so nice to have a system where the overwhelming majority of schools were considered “good” and the only school snobbery was sports-oriented. I happen to think that most American universities/colleges are at least adequate, but perception is so much more important than reality. The simple fact is that golden halos await graduates of premier schools. As long as people dream of having a golden halo, they will always be demand for elite schools. The quality of education could actually be relatively even across the board, but there will still be demand for a school that says you’re special. Blame it on our legacy of rugged individualism.

13

Affordability is pretty freaking important, I think the Canadian system is probably better. The US college system is a bit broken.

14

This makes me think: Could it be that US society puts more emphasis on social status than Canadian society?

If a major part of the utility of a college degree is status, then you can get a bidding war for the highest status. Since part of the status boost lies in showing you can spend a lot, the more it costs, the more status it brings, like those $200 000 watches and $10 000 boots.

15

Affordability is complicated to gauge in the US. Different institutions charge wildly different tuition rates; and many students don’t pay the “sticker price” due to scholarships, grants, and other financial aid.

16

Sure, but that’s like saying the American healthcare only “looks” exorbitantly expensive and isn’t that expensive after all kinds of insurance and etc. kicks in. At a certain point, the entry-level sticker price is what matters.
Even if Canadian higher ed isn’t as good as American higher ed - which is a big if - the fact that it’s cheaper by that much, makes it much better. It’s better to buy a Toyota Camry with just a couple thousand miles on it for $20,000, than the exact same Toyota Camry brand new off the dealer’s lot for $35,000.

17

One thing to note is even by sticker price, the more elite American schools aren’t more expensive. For example, MIT is about $65k, including room and board. SMU is $76k. BU is $75K. Harvard is about the same.

When it comes to financial aid, the elites are among the most generous, because they have amazing endowments. So the effective cost for many students is even lower. It’s quite, quite possible for it to be cheaper for a poor or middle class kid to go to an expensive private school than to a state college.

So whatever the problem is in the cost of US Education, it’s not really being driven by super-high tuition at the hyper-elites. The $65-75k/year pricetag applies to hundreds of schools, most of which are not world-class.

18

There certainly are expensive options here, but median public school tuition and fees is something like $10 or 11k.

19

Having attended several in Canada and one in the US, my impression is that the the Canadian universities are fairly similar at the undergrad level, both in terms of education and repute. There’s more variations at the undergrad level in the US, both good and bad.

Elite US universities are very good for the grad level. I don’t think I could have got an equivalent in the Canadian grad schools.

20

There is no easy answer to this question.

Education starts a long time before university. Canada pays its teachers well and gets high, top ten scores in all three PISA subjects. The average Canadian school is probably better, more people are well educated and the benefits of private education (contacts, religious teaching, prestige) are less. But the best American schools are probably more innovative and offer more than the best Canadian ones.

The university is a whole community. It teaches undergraduates, does research, fosters innovation, trains professionals, etc. The average Canadian university is good. The costs for most universities are much higher than in Quebec, so using McGill’s tuition is misleading. When I went there, about 30% of students were international, an advantage shared by Toronto. But teaching is not always a priority. American universities attract the best professors and, on the whole, probably do better research with more benefit. Canada does well for its size, but has fewer Nobel and international prizes per capita than the very best US institutions. McGill is an excellent academic school but its facilities are rough around the edges. They say James McGill prided himself on his stoicism. Most Montreal CEGEPs have nicer athletic facilities.

I would say the average Canadian school is good and the prices pretty reasonable - most undergraduates have loans around US $35,000 minus parental contributions. Twenty years ago, I knew American graduate students who owed $200k (probably not typical). Since most jobs don’t pay that, Canada makes more sense. But you could compare a country like Germany where tuition is more heavily subsidized too.

In America, what you get sometimes depends on what you can afford. The recent scandal doesn’t change much in that regard, but for what they spent their kids could have travelled around the world, learned a bunch of languages, got involved with meaningful international charities, had access to any extracurricular activity. The sad truth is many people don’t really value education. If you believe school sucks, work sucks, whatevs… then the problem is bigger than paying a bribe.