COMPARISON BETWEEN AMERICAN AND BRITISH EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS.
Nowadays, the globalisation of most developed countries is leading to a world which tends to have open frontiers, same currency and a flexible educational system. In particular, the U.S. universities seem to have some affinities with the British method of education. However, there are particulars that make the two very different and with lots of advantages/disadvantages when compared to the other.
The main difference between the two educational systems is that in U.S. universities there is a freedom of choice of workload (i.e. credits to be taken per semester) compared to the heavy and long classes that a student must take over a whole academic year in U.K. institutions. For example, being an American academic year divided into two semesters (plus two short summer sessions) that last each four months, it is possible to choose more or less classes depending on the student necessities. In my case, I was a full time Engineering Science student, and I decided to take credits that would have led me to the completion of my degree in the expected time. Some of my friends were workers and they had to take fewer credits per semester to be able to work and still concentrate on few academic subjects. On the other hand, British universities do not allow any other activity apart from academic ones. This is due to the structure of the courses that run for a whole year and are assessed my means of an examination all at once at the end of this period.
British universities are worldwide renown for their efficiency yet there are many discrepancies in this matter. It is true that the knowledge and way of teaching of the academic staff is impressive by means of information given but the teaching may be a bit too obsolete to keep up the pace with technology and modernisation. For example, the fact that in the Civil Engineering department at UCL, technical drawings are still made by hands or calculations with a basic scientific calculator, it is a sign of the discouragement of a will to keep up with modern instruments.
