Introductory mot

This is the second part of an article about education in Russia and in America, which concentrates on higher education and universities. Most of the previous part of Habranauro liked it, there were even asked a lot of questions that I will try to answer here. I also want to note that I do not set my goal to say what is better and what is worse, I only describe the current situation "here" and "there." In the last article, several interesting discussions were started, which were partially erased, partially mixed due to the Habr glitch, so that, if there is a desire, they can be continued here. It so happened that I wrote again very much and answered a maximum of half the questions (because some wanted to learn about everyday things that I had not planned to describe before), so that soon there will be a third part, which was not originally intended. I do not want to make people read a lot of letters. So, go to the main part.

The situation in Russia

In Russia, higher education is now undoubtedly important, especially for young guys. The reasons are different: someone does not want to go into the army, someone considers higher education prestigious, and someone is really interested in gaining knowledge and applying it in the future. Touching only IT, I think that I’m not mistaken if I say that only a few universities in the country provide fundamental education for engineers, which can then be used in the work of a physicist, economist, programmer and others. These are universities of such rank as Fiztekh, MSU, MEPI and Baumanka. According to my deep conviction, which has been formed recently, I believe that it is impossible to be an adequate programmer if you do not have a very powerful theoretical foundation in the exact sciences, which forms a special mindset and approach to solving problems. Of course, I do not claim that in universities that specifically specialize in programming (however, in Russia I have not heard of such), this mindset does not form, but the likelihood that it will be formed in the “fundamental” university is much higher.

Briefly about admission

When entering a university, exams are taken, which, based on my experience, depend directly on the level of education at the university. If we abstract from the USE, about which I will mention below, then we can say that these exams are a great way to sift through the monstrous flow of applicants who wish to enter good universities. They are either handed over to the gifted, or to the “nerds”, who simply pick up a few hundred examples on various topics and they have a skill. In both cases, the school benefits from admitting such students. The second known way to get a place is to pay anyone. This practice is very common, especially in the institutes of the middle arms, which provide knowledge, but do not follow the atmosphere of students in a good sense of the word, when students gather, solve problems, ask questions to teachers, in short, when people are really interested in what they do. . Speaking about the “positive atmosphere”, American universities are very similar to Russian ones, which is not surprising. I will unite the third and fourth methods because they are connected with the American university system, which I will begin to talk about in the next paragraph. The remaining methods - is to pass the exam or enroll for a fee. Unfortunately, both methods often lead to nothing good. USE - in general, it is not clear why the test entered in different subjects, which does not show knowledge, but leads only to corruption. Paid training, too, often turns out to be unpleasant - people think that if they pay, then they have to do something and, after realizing it, stop doing it and try to prove that by paying a lot of money, the knowledge in them should just appear by themselves. Now, smoothly, through the education fee, we move on to the American system.
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As it is "on the other side" (about prices, hostels and parties)

In America, usually everyone pays for everything. There are, of course, exceptions, like, for example, high school - almost everything is free there. They pay for parking, pay for submitting documents to state bodies, pay for entry to national parks and, of course, pay for higher education. I believe that paying for everything is very good, because this leads to healthy competition and an understanding of what you really need and what does not. This is a kind of natural factor that sets the standard of living for each individual: if you want to live well and have everything you need, you study hard and work, if not, you spend your gray life at a low level, which, however, It carries nothing terrible, only excluding the benefits that you apparently do not need. But back to education. At first glance, it is very expensive: to get a bachelor of computer science, state residents pay up to twelve thousand dollars a year, those from other states are about twenty thousand, and international students generally have monstrous money up to seventy thousand. And this is all without regard to campus accommodation. If you want to live in a hostel, then you can safely add another ten thousand. The hostels are very pleasant here: the people live two or three people in a room, the entrance is only on magnetic cards, the fights are harshly suppressed. Unfortunately, the order in the room usually leaves much to be desired - the students here are not particularly watching him, so when you enter the room, it seems that law enforcement officers just had a shmon here: the linen was mixed with bottles, empty packs of all unhealthy food, laptops and so on. I don’t say that it’s everywhere, it’s just what I’ve seen, but I’ve seen about five different rooms at different ends of the campus. After the first course, people usually do not want to live in a dormitory anymore, because they are already imbued with the spirit of students and through understanding this skillfully removes either a house or an apartment with other students, where everyone has their own room. It is at this stage that the party life begins: people have learned how to do things right, have established relationships with people, so now it's not a sin to drink on Fridays and Saturdays in the evening. I do not know where the myth about the fact that in America they drink little is coming. They drink a lot here: at the beginning of beer and various cocktails, then skillfully switch to stronger drinks like vodka. Vodka is very fond of here. And snacks with chips, which for me at the beginning was a shock. The strongest in spirit smoke dope and try not quite normal mixes of alcoholic beverages, which leads to all sorts of incidents such as pitted sex and sound sleep, with interruptions for every ten hours. Again, I’ll say, for the meticulous, that it’s not all over the place, but from what I’ve seen, I can say that they drink and eat harshly here. Those who do not, for example, like me, lead a healthy lifestyle, go to Japanese restaurants, and drink mineral water at home and eat organic fruit. By the way, organic food here is 20-30 percent more expensive than usual (remember about the living standards bar?). I will not give the percentages of what kind of lifestyle the students lead, for I don’t know, I’ll just say that there is enough of both.

Let us go back to the prices of education. As I said, these prices can be frightening (for a programmer to get a degree almost more than all costs), but there are all sorts of buns like scholarships and discounts. Discounts work on the principle: if you want to get an education and your family earns less than a certain amount, then we will give you such a discount. All of them are considered on the basis of the subsistence minimum, family spending and other factors, which makes them very high for those who are not able to pay for education on the basis of their wages. There are a lot of scholarships here, for example, a scholarship for African-Americans, for athletes, for those who are simply clever, for those who go to church, for chess players ... In short, there are a lot of things to choose from. All of them, however, are based on how the student learns, which is reasonable. For example, in school, one boy won a scholarship from some foundation that covered all his education in a private university for all the years of study. If we sum up about paid education, it turns out that it is always possible to practice, there would be a desire.