第584期:Public or Private

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Todd: Hello, I'm here with Frederick. Now frederick, you went to university in Canada?

Fred: That's right, Todd.

Todd: OK, and you have very strong views about universities in Canada. Can you please explain?

Fred: OK, well, let me just give you a general idea of how education works in Canada. We don't have private universities in Canada. They're all public. Now what that means is that the universities are owned by the government, so there is the Ministry of Education that's in charge of creating the curriculum for the universities and so there's not much room for flexibility and since it's a government operated institution, things don't move very fast. If you want something to be done then their workers do not have so much incentive to help you because he's a worker for the government, and so I think it's not very efficient, however there are certain advantages of public universities, such as the fees being free, you don't have to pay for your education and so it's open for everybody and that's also one of Canada's main idea is to provide free education to everybody, but the system is slow. It is inefficient and does not work that well.

Todd: But, yeah, I can see your point but in the United States we have many private universities and I think they're large bureaucracies also and maybe people don't act that much differently because somebody working for a private university, it's the same thing. They get paid for their job. I don't know if they're that much more motivated to help people. Also, we have a problem in the United States that usually only wealthy kids go to the best schools and it's kind of a problem actually.

Fred: I agree with you. I think that it is a problem because you're not giving the same equal access to education to everybody, only a few selected people can go to the best and the others go to the maybe less good universities. I agree with you that it's not easy but having only public universities might not be the best solution. Perhaps providing public university but also private university such as Japan for example where they have a system of private and public universities. Now, in Japan public university are considered to be the best and private universities are considered to be less good that public universities.

Todd: Right. It's the exact opposite in the States

Fred: So, as you see, it's hard to see which one is better.