Read and translate the following dialog between a Russian student and his American peer.

A: I could just feel how competitive things are at your universities — no sharing of notes, or whispering answers, or letting others copy your test.

M: What? Why would anyone do that? You’d be giving them the edge. A test separates out the students. You can’t afford to lose out in the competition. We have to compete for grades, especially as professors use the bell curve and give only one or two A’s in the whole class. You’re always being rated against the others taking the course.

A: Again, each for himself. Our teachers don’t grade competitively. Incidentally, our grading system is slightly different from yours. You see, it’s in numbers up to 5, while your grades are letters, with A as the highest.

M: Actually, each letter has a number value: A is 4, В — 3, С — 2, D is unsatisfactory and F is fail. You may be given an E for incomplete if you have a good reason for not finishing the course. And in order to graduate from a university you must get a set number of semester units.

A: Can you choose what courses you want to take?

M: There are courses you have to take no matter what your major: English, one year of science, and humanities. Then, in your major, you should complete at least some 100 units in four years. You have an advisor, usually a professor in the department of your major, who recommends courses to you. But you yourself make the final decision.

A: Is that what electives are? I never did quite get that straight.

M: No, electives are outside' your major. Say I’m a math major but I’m very interested in art. I could take a history of art or a painting course. They would be electives.

A: Unlike your system, the program in our universities and institutes is set. We can pick some course we wish later on, but the basic choice is the same for everyone. But then again, it trains us for a certain profession.

M: Well, American universities have a different goal than yours. They not so much train you for a job as develop your mind. Of course, there are some fields such as the sciences that are very relevant in the job market.

A: But aren’t things changing now?

M: This is a problem. There are a lot of complaints from employers that

graduates are hopeless. They don’t have any work skills and have to be trained on the job. And the graduates themselves complain how tough it is for them to land their first job.

A: Gee, we sometimes have the same problem, even though we do have

specialized institutes and colleges.

M: We don’t have many such institutes in America. Some universities are known for one or another field of study. For instance, if you want to major in business administration, your best bet would be UCLA, for law it’s Harvard, and for medicine — some other school. Non-college students get on-the-job training. They often have blue-collar jobs while university graduates with at least a four-year degree like a B.A. get white-collar jobs. That is, physical work versus desk jobs.

A: What’s the advantage to having a higher degree, like an M.A. or a Ph.D.?

M: With an M.A. you can teach at a high school or university or become a

librarian. And a person with an M.A. starts on a government job at a higher level than one with a B.A. A Ph.D. allows you to do research or be a professor.

A: But quite a few college graduates don’t use their education on their jobs, do they?

M: You’re right. You often wonder why you went to college. But in the long run you have a better chance of getting a good job, or so they say.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 998