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The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

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Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#111

Post by alvarlagerlof »

bjeds wrote: post #64
alvarlagerlof wrote: post #55

I'm a student in one of the AcadeMedia for-profit schools. They have around 30 schools with the same brand name as mine and they keep on buying others. There's over 600 of them. There are of course other brands that they own but this one is focused on technology. Now let me tell you about my experience. First, this school is very focused on marketing. They keep on doing things that are only for seemingly attracting s…

Thank you for your reply, I didn't expect I'd find a comment from an actual student of these schools here at HN. Your perspective is valuable. If you follow Swedish media you probably know there's a large discussion/controversy right now about high school students (and younger kids) changing their behavior to avoid crime/trouble. For example see this recent article at SVT: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/man-maste…

I'm not one to go to parties drinking or smoking illegal stuff, although this is very common in certain groups. So I can't comment on that. I've actually avoided that on purpose because it would worsen my mental state with my diagnosies. But I guess that criminal stuff would happen in those groups.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#112

Post by alvarlagerlof »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #62
alvarlagerlof wrote: post #55

I'm a student in one of the AcadeMedia for-profit schools. They have around 30 schools with the same brand name as mine and they keep on buying others. There's over 600 of them. There are of course other brands that they own but this one is focused on technology. Now let me tell you about my experience. First, this school is very focused on marketing. They keep on doing things that are only for seemingly attracting s…

Wow, do you at least have as mc donalds nearby so you can get a few of their cheap "child sized" burgers? Hope you can find a better school!

Most of us eat at subway pretty much every day.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#113

Post by alvarlagerlof »

vagrantJin wrote: post #73
SiempreViernes wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, do you at least have as mc donalds nearby so you can get a few of their cheap "child sized" burgers? Hope you can find a better school!

This is amazing. You recommend eating burgers from McD for lunch every day? Not fruits, not home cooked food, not simple sandwiches, not street food --- but MacDonalds burgers in Sweden Holy shit.

We actually have McDonald's and Max on the list and there's a whole bunch of people who eat there very often.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#114

Post by alvarlagerlof »

tartoran wrote: post #93
vagrantJin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is amazing. You recommend eating burgers from McD for lunch every day? Not fruits, not home cooked food, not simple sandwiches, not street food --- but MacDonalds burgers in Sweden Holy shit.

Yes, eating McD on a daily basis is not only boring but downright unhealthy. I remember eating at McD when in college because it was perceivably cheaper and while I was enjoying the food when I was hungry I always felt not so good afterwards. I haven’t touched any MCD in 10 years and won’t do anytime soon unless there’s an emergency

I find it weird that we have fast food restaurants on the list too. Even weirder is that they compensate with "healthier" restaurants that are so far away we don't have time to get there.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#115

Post by LatteLazy »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #62
alvarlagerlof wrote: post #55

I'm a student in one of the AcadeMedia for-profit schools. They have around 30 schools with the same brand name as mine and they keep on buying others. There's over 600 of them. There are of course other brands that they own but this one is focused on technology. Now let me tell you about my experience. First, this school is very focused on marketing. They keep on doing things that are only for seemingly attracting s…

Wow, do you at least have as mc donalds nearby so you can get a few of their cheap "child sized" burgers? Hope you can find a better school!

Fyi, A big mac alone costs 48kr in Sweden.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#116

Post by alvarlagerlof »

bjornsing wrote: post #29

> While schools and colleges are sounding the alarm about declining knowledge results, joy grades are rising, as grades have become a competitive tool on the market. This in my opinion is the main problem. Take this "marketing tool" away from the private schools, and the rest of the problems are fixable (e.g. with diversified pupil compensation). But when you let a private business both grade themselves and sell entr…

Funny you should mention the schools grading themselves. I'm a student at an AcadeMedia school, and they gave us a form to rate our education experience, along with this instruction on how to rate. For non-English speakers, they are basically asking us to rate outside of a linear 1-10 scale an instead follow theirs (which is biased towards higher ratings) presumably to look good on internal reviews. If this is somehow shown to their investors, I think the media should take this up.

https://imgur.com/a/XlyDudM

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#117

Post by atomicson »

When we put so much trust to the government, another type of organization of human being. We give them so much power to manage all things and we loose control of them. They hide something from us for their own benefits. Some of them run on their own personal or group interests. Take them down all over the world. These elites are the real parasites of civilization.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#118

Post by red_admiral »

corty wrote: post #7

While I agree with the article about the problems of profit-driven schools, the whole situation (and the article in parts) points to a imho bigger problem in most education systems: Profit-driven schools cater to the more able, easier to educate and more intelligent pupils. Why can they do that? Because public schools almost everywhere insist on coeducation of the most and least gifted. This is severely holding back…

I think the thesis of Senator Warren's book The Two-Income Trap (2004) is that in the US, where you don't have the problem with profit-driven schools (or at least had it much less back then), you instead have the problem that the middle classes will flee to the suburbs to get their kids into good schools (or, as another poster has put it, "not-bad" schools). The schools may be public, but as long as you need a certain income to live in the district, that serves the same purpose.

Book review by Scott Alexander here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-in...)

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#119

Post by AdrianB1 »

username90 wrote: post #80
vanderZwan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would that explain why my bachelor students were so unbelievable inept at emotionally dealing with and resolving conflicts when I taught at university there?

How could you learn that from teaching a course? Did you create conflict among student and note how everything became chaos? Or do you just mean that a few complained about grades?

If the course is interactive and not just a lecture where students listen silently then you can easily observe what is going on. In college we have something called "seminars" where the teacher or teacher assistant work on problems and projects with small groups of students, that is highly interactive.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#120

Post by catears »

FabHK wrote: post #68
bjornsing wrote: post #29

> While schools and colleges are sounding the alarm about declining knowledge results, joy grades are rising, as grades have become a competitive tool on the market. This in my opinion is the main problem. Take this "marketing tool" away from the private schools, and the rest of the problems are fixable (e.g. with diversified pupil compensation). But when you let a private business both grade themselves and sell entr…

Do you know what is meant by "joy grades"? Does it refer to grade inflation (ie nearly everyone getting very good grades)?

The two main ways to get into university in Sweden is through your grades or through a national test (Högskoleprovet ~ The university test). From your grades you calculate a score and then people are accepted into programmes at uni based on that score.

The grading has seen a lot of debate over the last 10 years or so from when it changed (IG/G/VG/MVG --> A-F scale). The way things were graded in the old system had national guidelines, but I think teachers were supposed to take a holistic view on the students performance. Essentially, teachers gave an overall grade. With the new system there were two things that were rather unintuitive. MVG was the highest grade in the previous system, but this does not translate well to an A. Under the previous systems a few programmes required MVG in every subject to compete with other students. So as far as I know the new system required a grade "above" MVG. So that is one thing that makes it different. But also, the new grading system should grade you high if you scored high in ALL criteria for that subject. You were only supposed to be able get one grade higher than your lowest criteria. Of course, a lot of teachers thought "Well IG should translate to F, G should be E-D, MVG should be A. And then I'll just grade like in the previous system.". I think this line of thinking has created a lot of joy grades and unfortunately locked a lot of hard working kids out of their fair spot at uni while letting less hard-working people in.

I know some people who barely got into uni from their grades but turned out to be some of the best performers among their peers because they got fair grades while others got joy grades.

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