American students look north for cheaper alternative

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#30270792

Wow, really, if you don't have a football team or a basketball team education becomes affordable?

This is funny. When I was at McGill, I probably knew more Americans there than I do now, living in the States! It's always been a relative bargain for them. I never thought of McGill as being that much better (or worse) than any other Canadian university when I was there, and I think that prestige factor as far as universities go seems to be more of an "American thing." When I lived in Toronto, no one cared that I went to McGill. Then I moved down here and I started hearing things like "McGill is the Harvard of Canada, right?" or "McGill is a fantastic school!" Not that I mind. I may not agree with those sentiments, but the fact that a lot of Americans do can only help me down here.

This is just MHO of course, but America is more of a classist society than Canada, so they would have to label even a Canadian University as elite by saying "McGill is the Harvard of Canada" so that any American who has to go to McGill for $$ reasons isn't labled themselves as cheap, or not good enough to get into Harvard.

To a Canuck, it's just another university. And we're not afraid to call a university a university, rather than college. Apparently, despite the classisms here, it is considered pompous to say "university" no matter what type of post-secondary institution you're talking about. They're all just college.

And we're not afraid to call a university a university, rather than college. Apparently, despite the classisms here, it is considered pompous to say "university" no matter what type of post-secondary institution you're talking about. They're all just college.

Yes, I've been mocked a few times for saying "university" when you're supposed to say "college." To me, "college" means community college.

Oh I really hate that, I remember when I lived in the UK and they decided to rename all the polytechnics as "universities" because it made them sound better. Who cares?

I've met plenty of people who've been to Oxford or Cambridge who are complete chumps and plenty of people who've been to say, Broward Community College or the UofC and they seem brighter to me.

Basically indicates to me that having connections and money is more important than brains with a lot of these places.

Think about it, most of the really, really good places to get an education don't have any of these names, do they: CalTech, MIT, Wharton School of Business.