Academic Life in London

As an American, I have always had a romanticised version of what academic life in the UK would be like. As someone else once said while discussing the education system in the UK, 'just listen to their accents, they must be intelligent!' More seriously though, most of what is taught throughout high school science is all people who came up with brilliant ideas in Europe, and mostly in the UK. However, I honestly believe that like the empire itself, their days of dominance are well behind them.

I started pursuing my Masters in the Physics department of Imperial college last Fall with the hope of pursuing a challenging course considering the Masters is awarded in just one year. However, I must admit that I am quite disappointed in the academic demands of the program. Nevertheless, I won't write here about specific issues with my program, rather I will try to stay general about the issues in the education system.

The biggest problem I see is the lack of continuous evaluation in the courses. All of the grade that holds any consequence is decided by an exam at the end of the term, or in some cases the year. There are multiple issues with this system, the obvious one is that there is no incentive to do work until a few days before the exam, thus increasing pressure at the time and also leading the lethargy during the term. The next problem with it is that there is no form of feedback on your progress through the term, that your exam's results will tell you whether or not you understood what was going on. Finally, it rewards test taking ability far more than understanding the material. At the end of the day it becomes a game of seeing who is best at handling the pressure of one exam determining the grade and how well you navigate the paper.

A second problem with studying in the UK is that the people who are studying a particular subject are typically students who enjoyed the subject in high school and decided that they want to pursue it, and then the system makes them stick to it. The inability to change the course once you start the program is a significant problem when it comes class morale and interest. I spoke with a lecturer at a prominent London University a while ago who is also from the US and he expressed this exact sentiment. In essence, what he had observed is that by the time students reach their third year, most either realize the subject was not for them or they have done so badly in exams that they no longer bother with their classes. This breeds a cohort of students who simply don't care. This is of course opposed to a system where you are free to choose your major, so people who end up staying in the subject do so because they enjoy it!

An issue specific to Masters courses in the UK is the tenure of the program. Offering one year Masters degrees seems like a good deal to students, however in reality the amount one can learn in one year is not significant. Most one year programs are structured such that a student takes 4 classes each term and does research over the summer. To me this sounds like a Bachelor's extension program. There is no 'Mastery' gained by doing this. More intensive Masters programs around the world are two years and the student typically does research for the entire duration of the two years. Thus actually allowing some amount of competency to be gained.

A final thought is on the selectivity of the programs. I know a lot of Americans who come to the UK for a Masters because it is easier to get into, and honestly, it really probably is. A lot of people come here to attend a well known school, like LSE, the Oxbridge system, etc. where getting into an Ivy or equivalent is much harder. I don't understand why programs in the UK aren't more selective, I can only guess its a money issue, Masters programs must make the University money. If the Universities in the UK simply reduced the number of programs, instead of circumstances like LSE's 100s of programs, and made admission more competitive, the class would be stronger and feed off each other's ideas.

I will stop here for the moment with my own opinions on the faults of the British education system. Mostly because it doesn't matter at all what I think about the system, nothing will ever really change it. I know professors who hate it and they can't do anything about it within their own institutes, so my opinion will do absolutely nothing. The only way to get reform to happen is for either a notable brain drain to occur, or for the economy and R&D in the UK to worsen as a consequence of the education. Neither of these are realistic, probably because Americans keep coming to London!