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Americans Are Scarce in Top Programming Contest
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Only four of the 48 best computer programmers in the world are Americans, at least according to a computer-programming competition run by TopCoder. Poland had 11 of the final 48, and Russia had 8. Wall Street Journal columnist Lee Gomes asks whether this is more evidence of a sad decline in American education and competitiveness: 'Surprisingly, the Eastern Europeans don't seem to think so. Poland's Krzysztof Duleba, 22, explained that in countries like his own, there are so few economic opportunities for students that competitions like these are their one chance to participate in the global economy. Some of the Eastern Europeans even seemed slightly embarrassed by their over-representation, saying it isn't evidence of any superior schooling or talent so much as an indicator of how much they have to prove.'"
One of my professors did an exchange year at an Ivy League university, and when they got there they had to send back to the UK for their A Level (pre-university qualification) notes as the students were not at the level that they expected.
Also, I had a friend who was on the student exchange program at the same University at the same time. She was a pretty average C grade student (I'm sure she won't mind me describing her like that), but in her year in the US she got straight As.
I don't know if the standard of education is going down in the US, but it apparantly was nowhere near the standard that my professor and friend expected.
Bob
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> I think they're just being polite saying "it isn't evidence of any superior schooling"
While it is true that Eastern Europeans are masters of understatement and self-deprecation, I don't think that's the whole story. There is a much stronger culture of high-profile competition in the East than in the West, probably because of a long tradition amongst old communist regimes to foster scientific competition. Kind of like the national spelling bee competition in the US, over there much more emphasis was placed on math competitions. Mind you, pretty much the same kinds of people sneered at them as do over here.
OTOH I really don't think there is that much difference between the science curriculums of the East and the West, with the singular exception of the US. I experienced three high school systems (Eastern Europe, Germany, Australia), and the only significant difference I could see was in the timing--Eastern Europe tends to drop a lot of the heavy science sh!t on unsuspecting students way too early, such as grades 5 and 6 and in general adopts a dog-eat-dog attitude towards the students, while in the West they tend to stage that later on during the senior years and also seem more concerned with not letting students fall off this speeding bus. Australia was the most pronounced in that respect, with the bulk of the advanced science and math being left for the last two years of high school. But at the end of high school I think most Western school systems have imparted about the same amoung of science and math as in the East.
I worked with a high school student who had recently moved from Romania to the US. I found his impressions of the US school system very interesting.
The first thing he said was that school was a lot easier here. But he immediately followed with the fact that he didn't think that his old school taught him anything more, or more advanced. Just that they took a much more adversarial approach with the students.
He said that getting a C was expected, and that you could at any time be expected to stand up in front of the class and explain any part of the subject matter, and be admonished if you could not. Pop tests were a common occurance. He said that you studied like mad just to avoid looking like an idiot.
Whereas, in his American school, you had to slack off to get bad grades, and you never had a test without a week's notice. But although easier, the same material was covered in the same detail.
Just thought it was interesting. In the US, you really aren't forced to learn any discipline, it's up to you to decide to care about it, whereas that doesn't seem to be a real option in eastern countries.