Isa
Administrator
Posts: 6,995
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Post by Isa on Nov 9, 2006 19:07:52 GMT -5
I think the results of the mid-term elections plainly showed that most people do not think American troops should be in Iraq, and I think a lot of people lose interest in politics when they see that their government is not listening to what they're saying, or when they're not doing what they got elected for. I really hope sending our Canadian troops to Afghanistan will result in the Conservative party not getting re-elected or possibly overturned before the end of their term because it's a minority goverment.
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czarval
Collection of short stories published by an independent editor
Posts: 607
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Post by czarval on Nov 18, 2006 2:09:07 GMT -5
I think the problem with elections is, that all the parties make lots of promises, but once they get into power they just do things the same as the party before.
I want the Conservatives to tossed out too. Though I'm not too sure about the expense. There's so many better things the money can go to.
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Kristie
Novel turned into BBC miniseries
"If a book is well written, I always find it too short."
Posts: 7,214
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Post by Kristie on Dec 1, 2006 17:43:36 GMT -5
one thing i hate about election time is that when i want to research the candidates, i can't seem to find and reliable information. it's either glorifying the person tearing them apart. but i really want to know about bigger issues than some of the ones they mention. like this last election for governor of ohio there was lots of stuff about education programs and stuff like that. i think it's important to know that, but i would still like to know where the candidates stood on issues like gay marriage and euthanasia and such. gay marriage is becoming a state thing, so i was really looking forward to finding out if the governor wannabes were for or against it, but i couldn't find that at all...angers me...
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czarval
Collection of short stories published by an independent editor
Posts: 607
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Post by czarval on Dec 2, 2006 1:18:37 GMT -5
Really? It seems weird that they wouldn't say things like that. They're very important issues.
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Kristie
Novel turned into BBC miniseries
"If a book is well written, I always find it too short."
Posts: 7,214
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Post by Kristie on Dec 2, 2006 12:39:08 GMT -5
yeah, i want to know where they stand on the issues that should be clearly defined by the civil rights act but aren't. i just hate how they steer clear of them...
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Post by bookaddict on Jan 8, 2007 14:02:32 GMT -5
I was really worried that my tesl program wouldn't be covered because it is in a private school. I called my education director today and he said it won't be a problem. I'm so happy, everything is falling into place so well. I already talked to the school and they said that I can start in May and there wouldn't be any problems getting accepted. I graduate university in April.
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Bina
First novel published
Posts: 2,472
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Post by Bina on Jan 8, 2007 14:09:24 GMT -5
That´s really great. I only start my second semester in april but some people here seem to have major problems like should they even bother continuing or do sth else. A friend of mine decided to leave uni in may. It´s quite disconcerting to be surrounded by this because I really like uni and studying.
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Post by bookaddict on Jan 8, 2007 14:17:57 GMT -5
I really love university. I'm happy to be finished soon. I think it is a great experience. I do understand students questioning schooling when they have to worry about paying for it. It must be very stressful.
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Kristie
Novel turned into BBC miniseries
"If a book is well written, I always find it too short."
Posts: 7,214
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Post by Kristie on Jan 8, 2007 17:38:09 GMT -5
My parents made a deal with me for school. I have to pay for half of everything. So they basically pay for the semester and I start paying them back $500 every other month or so that I've accumulated from work. I wish that school wasn't so expensive. Student teaching is going to kill me. But I'll still keep my part time job prolly because if I student teach it's the same workday as just going to school really. Sucks that we don't get paid for student teaching like every other internship.
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bastet
First piece published in the school’s newspaper
Posts: 61
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Post by bastet on Jan 9, 2007 2:54:40 GMT -5
When I started studying here in Austria (12 years ago) there was no such thing as a Bachelor's degree. Curricula have changed only very recently (about 3 years ago?), so it's now also possible to do a BA here. I did my master's in biochemistry and my PhD in bioinformatics and right now I've got a full time postdoc research position at uni and at the same time I study translation (English and French). Studying used to be free in Austria, too, but about 6 years ago they introduced a fee of roughly 400 Euro per semester. People who work for uni (as a tutor or in research) are paid back the fees. At least at my uni in Vienna.
We have problems with being flooded with German students at the moment, since they have resctrictions to get accepted into certain subjects like medicine. People who were declined in Germany come to Austria where we don't have that system (that's about to change now). It's highly unfair since Austria is such a small country and we have then to finance the students Germany declined. We are not allowed to put any restrictions on how many German students we accept since it would be against EU law. It seems like we're getting the same problems Belgium has with French students. In some subjects there is a majority of French students there and they have to finance them.
As dorothyparker85 already mentioned a BA is pretty worthless over here. Austrians are especially.. how can I put it.. old-fashioned where titles are concerned, probably a relict of the monarchy. People are addressed with their academic titles and you can say the more titles the more respect. Sad, I know. Being a scientist I also *had* to do my PhD since you're a nobody in a lab if you don't have a PhD and you can't advance in your career without it, especially if you do research at uni and not with a pharmaceutical company.
I worked in the Los Alamos National Labratory in the US for a few months 3 years ago and I was really surprised at how few "American" scientists there were. 50% of the scientists were foreigners, 30% possibly if you don't count those in that had become American citizens. It seems the vast majority of students in the US study economics, medicine and the law? I was also shocked at how cencored the news on TV were. Whenever I called home my mom told me about all the developments in Iraq and nothing about American losses was to be seen on American TV, not to mention that there were hardly any news about the rest of the world. I have to mention I had like 60 TV channels, so I guess people with cable/satellite TV probably have access to better news broadcasts.
A sad development I see in Austria is that good education used to be completely free for everybody and now fees are introduced left and right because of our short-sighted government. It seems like we're heading towards a system where only the rich (and not even the clever) can afford good education. I used to be proud of our free educational system but I can see it crumbling away.
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Isa
Administrator
Posts: 6,995
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Post by Isa on Jan 9, 2007 8:46:42 GMT -5
Thanks for that Bastet, it's very interesting to read your take on education in your country. 50 or 60 years ago, education in Canada was only available to those who had money. Now it's changed a lot and basically everyone can afford to go, thanks mostly to student loans. So you end up with lots of debts, but they give you enough time to pay them back and the interests you pay are tax deductible, so it's really not that bad. The only problem with keeping registration fees so low (it's about $1000 for a full-time semester) is that the quality of education sometimes suffers - classes are too big, universities hire more T.A.s than professors, and libraries are in a pitiful state. Also, a lot of programs will accept just about any student because they need the money they bring in by registering, so the value of your diploma is affected by all this, even if you're a good student... So there are some really good points about our eduction system, and some not so good ones. Oh and no, we don't use titles much over here. It would so crack me up if someone would call me "master"!!!
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bastet
First piece published in the school’s newspaper
Posts: 61
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Post by bastet on Jan 9, 2007 10:23:06 GMT -5
The equivalent of a master is a "Magister/Magistra" over here. People are used to that title, but now the system has changed and we have BAs the degree of Magister was changed to master. I doubt that anyone would use that title in Austria since it's an English word of course. So probably that's the end of addressing people with titles. Well, maybe the doctor title will live on. They're working on some kind of loan system here, too. We have sort of vocational highschools over here where you get a highschool diploma. Those schools deal with technical education (software engineering, computer technics, civil engineering etc.) or education in economical subjects etc.. They take longer than "normal" highschools but the advantage is that you've got some professional training before other people who do their BAs or masters. I doubt that the loan system will work since people with university education don't earn considerably more money on average (don't count in medical doctors or managers) than people who went to those vocational highschools since they already earn money while others have to go to college/university and by the time people are finished with their studies they already have years of technical experience and get better jobs with better wages. On the whole studying is becoming less an less attractive also due to changes in our tax system and pension system. Those are the "hidden" costs of studying that are not apparent int the registration fees. It seems to me that our government tries to copy the American system, but the starting positions are not the same. Our programs for scholarships are poorly organised. Basically you get scholarships when you're really on the boarder of being poor and then you will still have to get a job to be able to finance yourself and there are no good scholarships for excellent students. Those that provide enough money for a living are only for postgraduate students. The situation is not yet critical but I'm afraid of where we're heading to. It seems to become more and more exclusive.
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Bina
First novel published
Posts: 2,472
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Post by Bina on Jan 9, 2007 12:16:48 GMT -5
People are still getting used to the bachelor degree here,too. But many professors speak German when they inform us about exams and stuff which is pretty stupid since we have foreign students who only understand half of it and we´re supposed to know English well enough! I think many students will fail grammar and translation tests. And the professors have really bad accents. I only have one native speaker for a professor
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bastet
First piece published in the school’s newspaper
Posts: 61
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Post by bastet on Jan 9, 2007 14:49:04 GMT -5
My translation courses are all presented in the respective language and there are a fair share of native speakers as professors, but my science courses used to be and still are mainly in German (except for those given by guest professors). I think that's ok though, I teach bioinformatics for students of molecular biology together with a colleague and we once presented the course in English because we had an exchange student who couldn't speak German. It was much harder for the students to make progress since there was a lot of new information all blocked into a week (6-7 hours per day) and on top of that they had to concentrate because it was all in a foreign language. It was probably my least successful course, it was too much for them. After all, we're a German speaking country and should preserve some of that identity also at university. I agree, it's quite hard for foreign students. One of my colleagues is Spanish, she's doing her PhD here in Austria and she just knows basic German, not enough to follow a scientific lecture. Since PhD programmes encourage international exchange they have to think about changing advanced lectures to English, too. It's all a bit difficult, some people have absolutely no talent for languages, but then you're expected to write scientific papers in English if you want to publish them.
It does make sense to have language courses in the respective language though, especially since you're supposed to have reached a certain level before starting to study. Which German university do you attend?
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Nathalie
Collection of short stories bought by Random House
Posts: 1,309
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Post by Nathalie on Jan 9, 2007 15:06:35 GMT -5
It's also very hard to figure out what american professors are talking about when they're lecturing in German They constantly mix english and german and scientific language in a very interesting way.
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