Aaah, America…

In the land where “Bigger is better” and “everything’s big”, it’s interesting to see what MSNBC has to say on tuition costs in the US.

Frankly, I was expecting to see a very definate pattern: US Schools are all bloody expensive, therefore Canadian schools are cheaper by comparison.  And indeed, that’s how the article seems to open up - talking about the most expnsive school in the US (George Washington University, at almost $38,000 in tuition alone, if you’re curious) and then getting into how tution has increased massively in almost every school over the past 10 years.

What’s so interesting is what happnes later on in the article; they start talking about the state-sponsored schools.  Some of those schools charge as little as $1000 for a year’s tuition.  This seems oddly reminiscent of another social structure - that of wages and social class.

Canada, in general, has a small upper class, a small lower class, and a big fat middle class.  Additionally, the classes aren’t all that far apart (relatively speaking…) thanks largely to minimum wage laws, social support networks, and fun things like socialized healthcare.   In the US, what’s seen more often is a much larger upper class, and a large lower class, but not many people in the middle.

The same phenomina seems to be present with schools - There’re a lot of private schools charging princely sums, but there’re also quite a number of state-run institutions that charge their in-state residences amounts that are comperable to (or, in a select few cases, signifcantly less than) their Canadian counterparts.

One question that still remains - are their state-run schools any good?  I’ve seen enough US TV with highschool students on the cusp of univeristy - if you don’t get into a good college, the tooth fairy rapes you or something, I donno, I wasn’t really paying attention… but something bad happens to you if you don’t get into a top-level school.

In Canada, you’re hard-pressed to find a bad school - I’d pe pretty happy to go to any institution in Ontario; they all seem to differ much more in their campus life than their academic abilities (fat middle again?).

So, I guess the big question is - Is it a bad thing that Canada doesn’t have any superstar schools?  Should we stratify upper education like in the US - some schools dirt cheap and probably pretty bad, and some schools awesome (assuming you have a kidney or a lung to spare to be able to afford to go there?)

Is mediocrity the best system?