Hey all y'all! This is the opinion piece I wrote for the Armstrong Student Newspaper about the differences between a University Education between the US and NZ. Enjoy!
Within my first week in Savannah, I thought I was under attack. It sounds silly now and I guess it always was, but for a second when I heard three jet fighters thunder across the blue Savannah sky I thought my nine month trip might be over a lot sooner than I had anticipated. Please let me explain myself; I am from the small, peaceful, pretty, but rather insignificant nation of New Zealand. Not only does New Zealand have some of the most interesting flightless birds in the world, it also has a mostly flightless airforce (with only a few passenger aircraft and helicopters). If we hear fighter jets over our heads it means that things are VERY bad. Either the Australians have finally got tired of their giant desert island full of poisonous creatures and decided to claim ours, or some other nation has come to take our...sheep? This episode was just one of the many, many cultural differences I experienced here while on the Georgia Rotary Student Program, a scholarship that sponsors students all around the world to study in a Georgian University and exchange what makes our cultures special.
So what are the differences between Kiwis and Americans? I thought I would be able to answer that question by now but my problem is there is no way I can define the ‘average American.’ America as a country is comprised of such a diverse range of colours, cultures, accents and lifestyles that it’s hard to even start. Now I’m not saying that we New Zealanders are identical robots, nor would we want to be. But because we are huddled together in a few islands down the bottom of the world most of us have a similar low nasal accent, an affinity with the outdoors and a devotion to the state religion: rugby football. However it is difficult to even sum up the culture of Savannah- let alone Georgia or America.
So instead why don’t we narrow it a bit and look at the difference between Armstrong Atlantic and a typical New Zealand University experience. Close your eyes and imagine you are a young Kiwi. You have just finished high school and are looking to go to University to study the subject of your dreams. Unfortunately in this parallel dimension New Zealand the ‘HOPE Scholarship’ doesn’t exist- meaning you are taking out a $10,000 dollar loan each year for education, housing and food. The good news is the Bachelor’s degree you are working towards is only going to take you three years to finish, probably because there are no ‘Subject areas’ that you need to complete. You choose the exact courses you want, meaning if you are passionate about doing a degree in English, basically all you do will be writing.
The first thing you will notice is the campus, more specifically how there isn’t one. While the Armstrong campus features housing, recreation and educational buildings, campuses in New Zealand are a lot like SCAD- just not quite as pretty and $45,000 cheaper to attend. Sure you see your fellow students walking around the campus, or in the student bars, but you are spread out over an entire city. What this means is that the people that you get to know and interact with are usually from the same subject area as yourself. While always having someone around to talk to about your lifelong passion of ‘Environmental Physics’ might seem like the best thing in the world, personally I think that New Zealand is missing out by not giving the students a chance to mingle with those in different faculties.
Your first test in Alternate Reality New Zealand could be a surprise. For all the SCANTRON fans in the house I have some bad news, I have never seen those little blue sheets on campus. That doesn’t necessarily mean that your education will be better in New Zealand, but it does mean that by your second year, you should be adept at researching and scribbling out a 2000 word essay on a chosen topic. Also prepare to get loud. In ‘tutorials’, a small group of students meet after the lecture to discuss the ideas presented. If you are that person in your group who loves to argue with anything or anyone (be honest), you might just have found your nirvana here. Not only can you debate the ideas with students, but if you don’t agree with the ideas of the lecturer you are encouraged to tell them. The Southern respect for lecturers that borders on unquestioning reverence is not present here.
Finally let’s do an Inception and have a dream inside a dream. We are jumping ahead 8 months and imagining that in Alternate Reality New Zealand you are not doing well. Unfortunately you have been taking advantage of the ‘Buy Alcohol at 18’ law a little too much and now you are sitting on a 65% grade after your final exam. There is bad new s and good news here. The bad is there is no extra credit to boost the grade. For whatever reason, extra credit in New Zealand never really took off- if you missed the points you missed the points. The good news for your little dream avatar however is that in New Zealand, a 65% is a B+! The New Zealand pass grade mark range stretches from 50% to 100%.
You may say that this gives you much more chance to succeed, and that’s true. Crucially though it also gives a lot more opportunity for students to fail, to make mistakes and try new ways of approaching ideas that may or may not pay off. I think that may be the biggest adjustment I have had to make in the Armstrong Education system- students are often scared of trying new ways of doing things because a single bad grade could push your GPA down and lose you thousands of dollars in scholarship money. Universities in my mind should be teaching people to explore new ideas and think in creative ways- isn’t that how new ideas are formed? Thanks for coming on the New Zealand Alternate Reality University tour, you can now open your eyes!
(NOTE TO SELF: Next time don’t ask readers to close their eyes while reading your column).
