O Sistema Universitário Americano

A invasão da reitoria da USP mostra que a melhor universidade da selva é povoada por vagabundos profissionais que só querem fumar maconha e sonham em implantar uma ditadura comunista no país. Vamos falar então do melhor sistema universitário do planeta, o americano. No New York Review of Books há um excelente artigo resenhando 8 livros recentes sobre o sistema universitário americano. Vale a pena ler. Encontramos, por exemplo: For most of them, in the end, what the university offers is not skills or knowledge but credentials: a diploma that signals employability and basic work discipline. Those who manage to learn a lot often—though happily not always—come from highly educated families and attend highly selective colleges and universities. They are already members of an economic and cultural elite. Our great, democratic university system has become a pillar of social stability—a broken community many of whose members drift through, learning little, only to return to the economic and social box that they were born into.
In Britain, as Simon Head has shown in these pages, teachers in university departments are subject to mechanical standards of productivity that are much resented.* But for undergraduates an established system of outside examiners keeps programs across the country honest, ensuring that standards are maintained, even if most students are weak, and providing opportunities for the ablest at every level of the system. American higher education has no comparable system of assessment, and the opportunities that it provides at every level depend on the generosity and engagement of individuals.