Re: [kent-grads] Chemistry

[Brian Meadows <brian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 13:41:18 +0000 (GMT), Huge wrote:

>> 
>> Not totally correct. If you go to your home state university,
>> then at least in a large number of the states (I think it's all,
>> but knowing the USA, there's likely to be one or two oddball
>> exceptions) you will pay a greatly reduced fee. My wife has
>> forgotten what the Delaware fees were, but I have vague memories
>> of something like an 80% reduction in fees for Delaware students
>> at the University of Delaware. 
>
>I'm afraid you're merely reinforcing my point; the universities are
>free to set whatever fees they like. 

The private ones can. Those that are partially state-supported
can't. Well, OK, to be technically correct they can, but only if
they want to lose their state funding. Assuming they don't want
to take that option, then the fees charged in-state students are
usually a matter for agreement between some part of the state
legislature and the university. (That's according to my wife,
anyway, she knows far more about the American education system
than I do). 

>high fees and use that money to cross-subsidise local students. 

The alternative interpretation would be that it's the state grant
that subsidises the local students. 

>That
>isn't possible here because Government says "You may only charge a
>maximum of £3K". Surely even an economic illiterate like Blair can
>see that this isn't going to work?
>

Tim beat me to the answer on this point. Certainly the Univ. of
Delaware got in a fantastic amount of private money, they'd all
kinds of bequests and grant from various members of the Du Pont
family, and that's not a bad family to have on your financial
side. 

>> In any case, while accepting that I'm working on a
>> non-representative sample, I'd say the comparison isn't a valid
>> one. University here seems to start at a far lower level than in
>> the UK 
>
>Aren't most courses 4 years, though? I certainly recall having an
>American exchange student with us in 1973/4 and she *really*
>struggled to keep up.
>

At least four years, according to my wife - the students can keep
their registration going by taking a couple of non-required
courses if they run short of money, which is far from unknown.

But here you've reinforced the point I was trying to make, it's
fairly meaningless to compare the percentage of people going to
university in the USA with the percentage going in the UK,
because you have to have got that much higher up the academic
ladder to get into a UK university. To give a meaningful
comparison, you'd have to come up with some sort of figure for
the UK based on a combination of the number doing 'A' levels (or
whatever the equivalent is these days!) and the number going to
university. Either that, or factor in the number of people who
flunked out of American universities. 


Brian. 

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