• hperrin@lemmy.ca
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        21 hours ago

        It’s collegiate biology.

        Ah, someone failed biology in college.

        • zarathustrad@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          As someone who has experienced Post graduate biology, at that point explaining some things does reach the level of “trust me bro” when speaking to people that have no baseline biology knowledge.

          Do you want a series of 1 hour lectures and a few thousand pages of reading material? No? Then you just need to trust the experts.

          • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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            20 hours ago

            Most people don’t?

            I mean why would anyone not studying biology (or related fields) have to take biology in college? Or is that a US-American thing?

            • canihasaccount@lemmy.world
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              19 hours ago

              It’s a common general education requirement for college in the US, yeah. Biology, physics, psychology, economics, English/writing, math, etc. are often all required, or at least a selection of most of the discipline-intro-level courses is.

              • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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                18 hours ago

                Huh, that’s weird. Isn’t highschool sufficient for general education?

                Thinking about it, it might not be. I’ve just checked and at least in Germany a US highschool diploma (including passing tests like SAT or ACT flawlessly) doesn’t (generally) qualify you for entering university here. That is, you are literally prohibited by law from enrolling.

                I’m genuinely glad this isn’t part of university education here. I mean, I’m attending lectures because I have interest in a certain subject - not because I want even more general education after finishing secondary education.

                • Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  18 hours ago

                  Well another major wrench in the system is that because education is largely regulated by the states rather than the federal government, they can have very wide degrees of variance between education quality, oversight, and quantity of subjects studied.

                  This can be good (for instance, as a Californian, I was given the opportunity to take a 4 year engineering course series in high school that helped propel me into studying Electrical Engineering right now in college), but can also be bad due to negligence by the state to maintain and audit schools, along with issues of content erasure or censorship (Texas and Florida being the most blatant examples).

                  Additionally, this can lead to the “Name school prestige” problem where employers largely focus on students who graduated from elite colleges or universities with higher barriers of entry (Money) and reputable quality, while neglecting students who may have undergone the same rigorous studies at a school that’s not as well known. (With students only holding a High School diploma left in the dust)

                  • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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                    17 hours ago

                    The issue isn’t that states are responsible for education. Mostly.

                    Germany’s constitution prohibits the federal government from nearly everything relating to education as a defense against a possibly fascist federal government. So much in fact, every time the federal government wants to subsidise anything - even as simple as aiding in school renovations - a constitutional amendment has to be passed.

                    The reason it works (for the most part) is because of the Kultusministerkonferenz - the conference of ministers of education. While there are still somewhat significant differences between the states, they have standardized vast parts of education amongst themselves. This ranges from mandating the teaching of English as a second language to outright changing German orthography in 1996.

                    As a result, basically all universities in Germany have similar prestige. Sure, some of the larger one’s are better known but you have pretty much free choice where you want to study without hampering your future employment. The exceptions are private universities – everyone will believe (for good reason, may I add) that you basically purchased a degree and are incompetent.


                    Though now I wonder: Does the US actually have any voluntary body of states that makes standardized decisions for anything? Like education, justice, police, etc. Or do you states insist to do everything their own way because talking is communist or something?