liaQuestion for the US Americans from a confused German:
Is college really as childish there as it looks from across the pond? It seems quite like a straight-up continuation of school, not like a research institution for adults.
Prompted by me just spotting someone giving a wedgie to someone else in the #TwoPointCampus game trailer. Like back in elementary school?!
Not only that, but the extreme infantilisation of college "kids" in America feels strange for full-grown adults. Dorms where they don't even cook for themselves and where they're confined to the equivalent of a kids' room? Alcohol bans? No need to work real jobs, make your own contracts or rent your own real flats? Ridiculously childish college rivalries, school spirit, songs to sing, mascots, clubs, secret societies? ... Why?
You get homework like a child? You don't get held to any scientific standards? Whenever I see US college assignments, they're, like, high school level over here. Quite easy, evocatively written and very handhold-y. It's not even the actual scientific literature they seemingly work through, but "textbooks". Really?? We stopped getting curated textbooks in 10th grade, and started finding and reading actual journal articles and studies by ourselves.
Even theses I see from the USA are often super childishly written, with unsubstantiated wild claims without citations thrown in everywhere.
Universities over here in Europe are serious research institutions. It's not comparable at all to what I see in media. The atmosphere is kind of like in an office. You're practically a colleague of a professor, not their child. You're working on your own projects from early on, and you're held to a reasonable scientific standard.
Our students rent their own flats and manage their own lives entirely, like the adults they are. It's like an office job, not a school. Even "dorms" are just student-reserved regular housing that's utterly mundane in all other ways.
Is it just media distortion?
HSL
Carsten
Alberto_knu
Ra_Zim
QTE Gamers
Dennis