It was about this time last year that the kind lady from the international office called to tell me that I had been offered a place at the University of Illinois. Without hesitation, I accepted the offer – it was the only available school in North America and I had been committed to studying abroad for too long to remember. But I accepted the offer with little knowledge of Illinois and no knowledge whatsoever of the University at Champaign.

A shot in the dark, then? Not really. I was confident in the knowledge that American universities are the global leaders in higher education. Certainly, American institutions dominate the super-league of world universities. The University of Shanghai’s highly-praised method of assessment ranks 35 American institutions in its top 50 – and 17 in its top 20.

America’s success boils down to the principle of competition between the universities. The marketplace that is the American system seems to be wholly reflective of the business mentality here. Universities function almost as entrepreneurial firms, with a shark-like interest in their own welfare. Compared to the universities of Europe – where the state picks up most of the bill – even public universities here exert considerable freedom from state control. Perhaps because of this, facilities are far superior. The University provides the means for students to do practically whatever they want and on the whole, people leap at the opportunity to do their “thing,” whatever it may be.

By comparison, Britain’s universities are woefully under-funded. We cannot afford brilliant art galleries or concert halls and we certainly don’t have stadiums that hold 80,000.

Being subjected to the old ways of Europe certainly brings with it a more traditional undergraduate experience – but perhaps that isn’t a bad thing. Indeed, it wasn’t the grandeur of Memorial Stadium or the waterslide at CRCE, but the bookstores of Champaign that awakened me to the most important difference in the undergraduate experience between here and back home. Picking out the books that I had been asked to buy in week one, semester one, it dawned on me that everybody was required to read the same thing. At Notes & Quotes too, instructors had reproduced the same excerpts for the whole class to read. At my home institution, Edinburgh, we are very much left to our own devices when selecting reading material. In a weekly tutorial, it is not uncommon to find that each and every student has read a different perspective on a particular topic.

In my experience at Illinois, I have noticed that the focus of many courses is on exams and their results. This focus very much reflects the American drive for achievement and success. During my two years at Edinburgh, I have yet to submit any piece of work that counts towards my final university grade. There exists a culture of learning for learning’s sake. Maybe with universities that are half a millennia older than Harvard, one gets the sense that in Britain there is a greater prestige around the culture of self-development.

Here, students are busier and weighed down with a heavier workload. The university is more cutthroat. With continuous assessment, four sets of exams a year, many short papers and few, if any, long essays, undergraduates are not given ample time to explore what I am told is the largest library in the Midwest. There are less chances for students to exhibit and develop independent and creative thoughts, which they are certainly able to do. This is a detriment to the academic environment.

The people at Shanghai are no doubt correct in ranking America’s universities as highly as they do when you look at facilities such as the libraries or the engineering quad. But undergraduates should be given more time to engage themselves more deeply in a subject, and given the opportunity to think independently, for that is no doubt a truer education.

Ben Griffiths is a foreign exchange student in LAS. His column appears on a rotating schedule. He can be reached at [email protected].