Comments on Profile Post by 607

Assuming that information is actually correct. :P

Any time :P

Universities typically offer a higher level of acedemics and offer more post graduate degrees.

Colleges can be part of universities. My major was through the College of Engineering through the larger University of Nebraska-Lincoln system.

Oh there's a distinction for sure: Community Colleges are significantly cheaper than a University is.

Actually, vocational training is quite common where I'm from! I currently go to a vocational school (I'm taking a criminal justice class) and it has over a thousand students, just in this one area.

My school also has offshoots across the entire state!

Technically if we are talking about the schools in general, the college distinction is usually almost all undergrad programs with a few master's programs available, the university distinction is undergrad and large graduate programs compared to colleges. Basically what farmerguyson said.

However, in regular American speech, college and university are usually used interchangeable, basically meaning higher level education after postsecondary school (high school).

Huh, that's weird. In the Netherlands, there are very clear differences in difficulty level between the approximately 6 different levels at our high schools, and at their approximately 3 respective "after high school educations". It also doesn't make sense to give everyone the same or similar lessons, as there are great differences in the learning capacities between people.

What Tom said. Although I would say there are 3 levels at secondary education in the Netherlands (VMBO, HAVO and VWO). VMBO grants access to vocational training, HAVO to college and VWO to college and university. It might also be possible to get vocational training with a HAVO or VWO certificate; not sure about that.
VMBO takes 4 years, HAVO takes 5, VWO takes 6.

@farmerguyson So according to you, there is in fact a distinction? This is my assumption now, please let me know if it's correct. :)
In the USA:
At college you get more classes than at university. After university you can get a PhD position more easily than after college. You can get into both with the same level of secondary education, because there are no levels in secondary education. Is any of this right??

Yeah, I said 6 levels because there are apparently 4 types of VMBO.
As far as I know, you are always able to go a level "lower" (so MBO and HBO (vocational and college) for VWO, and MBO for HAVO).

@607 I live in Massachusetts and in this state there is only one level of education all the way through high school. Every student is given the same opportunities to learn each course. At the nineth grade, students are given the choice of either finishing the last four years of school in the vocational or the acedemic side.
(Exceded 420 chars..)

@607 I can't speak much about the vocational side but they offer many fields for the students to explore. On the acedemic side the students work towards improving their class rank and their score on standardized tests, both state (MCAS) and country (SAT).
The students with higher class rank and higher test scores have a better chance of getting into more competitive schools after high school.

@607 The compeitive schools are typically Universities. My son just finished high school and had applied to a broad range of schools to continue his education. They were split into three groups, Safety, Target and Dream. The majority of the school in the Safety group were Colleges, the Target group had a mix and all of the Reach schools were Universities.

They all offer great levels of education and will all get you excellent jobs but PhD positions are known to be easier to obtain from the Universities.

I hope I added new information to answer your questions 607. The formatting required to get me point across in 420 character chunks made me stumble so it might seem disjointed.

Yes, thanks! If I had expected such a response I would have created a thread for it. :)
One more question: if you do not fancy going to university or anything like that, is secondary education shorter for you, like it is in the Netherlands, or is it still the same length?

Same length. Although if you knew for certain your career path you could drop out of high school. I do not know "legally" when this can be done but I remember my son saying something about it in 10th grade. The government sets a grade level that must be reached before the student or parents stop attending.

Wow, 420 chars is not enough. I guess you got lucky because I deleted a lot of rambling. 🙂

Dear lord I was not expecting to wake up to 14 alerts from this conversation

Same...

I find it peculiar that it seems that in high school everyone has to do somewhat the same level of lessons. Here there is quite a clear difference between what people had to do, and I'm fairly sure that if you were to try everyone to do our highest level, most people wouldn't manage it.

Indeed, it is peculiar. :thinking: Maybe the level of secondary education is just lower? Or they tailor education towards each student? That would be ideal, but seems infeasible. And sounds very un-American on top of it. :P