Tuesday, May 16, 2006

French universities

Marginal Revolution notices what I found to be an extremely interesting article about French universities. In a nutshell the story notes that -- with the exception of elite schools -- French students are assigned which universities they attend based on what part of the country they are from. The lack of competition and reliance on government support has -- surprise, surprise -- resulted in a shoddy educational infrastructure.

On a somewhat related note I was talking to a Dutch friend of mine over the weekend and asked him if he had any choice in which public high school he attended. He said yes and noted that he went to a different high school than his two sisters, who went to a Christian high school (basically they had to take a class on religion as part of the curriculum). Imagine his surprise when I told him that that would be illegal here in the U.S. owing to court rulings that it violates the separation of church and state.

Indirect government funding of schools with a religious bent is allowed in aggressively secular Europe but prohibited in the U.S., even as it allegedly moves ever closer to theocracy...

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