stand and deliver…part II
Irina asked in her comment to my post:
“I am curious what is your opinion regarding Romanian students compared with the ones in US?â€
In general, the technical skills –Math, Programming, etc. are much higher among the Romanian students. The Romanian school system relies, however, too much on memorization and not on unstructured problem solving. The U.S. students have usually been exposed - first hand - to many more outside ideas, cultures, approaches, etc. and had more practice coming up with creative ways to solve problems. Romanians often take things as certainties when their “reality†might be outdated or have been misrepresented at the inception. The internet is, obviously, helping to provide outside exposure.
What is interesting is that I believe much of the shortcomings of the Romanian universities are alleviated by the intense desire of students to learn elsewhere – namely through job internships or student groups (such as VIP or AIESEC). This reminded me at my own in experience at the University of California, San Diego where we only had the option of taking theoretical Economics instead of practical Business or Management. We compensated by establishing a chapter of Alpha Kappa Psi, a student business organization, and used it to bring in working business professionals to tell us about the real world.
Written by Steve
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