I think the Australian system is comparable to the British system. I am an American studying at an Australian university which has a very similar funding and fee system to those of the UK: If you are a permanent resident or citizen, uni fees are approximately 5K per year, and if you are a citizen, that fee is deferred until you graduate and are making 35K a year, at which time they garnish your wages. Some programs are more expensive however, like medicine.

Also, like the UK, universities are underfunded, and this is a big problem, however, I haven't seen this manifested in the extreme ways mentioned in this post (security, housing). Security is not a problem at my university, and while there are not as many dorms here as in the US, most of the students are local: there is not a strong culture of going away for university.

There is also the presumption that not all high school students will attend college. In fact, it is more difficult to attend university here - especially for degrees like medicine and law when offered on the undergraduate level. You have to be in the top 5% of your state to have a prayer to get into a bachelors program in medicine, for example. That unfairly selects for students from private and selective public schools, and not surprisingly, more than 30% of Australian students now attend private school at US university fee levels.

A major difference between the Australian system with respect to the US system, is the lack of accessibility of a university education for a student who may not have excelled in high school. Your performance on a statewide exam in year 12 in the state of New South Wales dictates what majors you can pursue in college, so you don't apply to university, you essentially apply to a major (as Americans would in graduate school). In the US, once you get accepted to college, you can pick your major and prove yourself. College is your second chance after high school in the US. In Australia, high school is the great predictor of your professional future. As a consequence, no one cares where you went to university in Australia, they want to know where you went to high school.

Of course, while the US gives more opportunities to average performing high school students, Australia gives more opportunities to poor students with its low fees and fee deferral.

Posted at May 13, 2008 7:15 PM in response to American and British University Systems Compared.

Great post. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

Posted at April 28, 2008 8:41 PM in response to When Does an Intransigent Media Narrative Become a Lie?

gotalife: Get a another life. If you are so against Obama, why not use your time and energy promoting Clinton or McCain's candidacies on the basis of her or his merits, rather than challenging the well-informed Obama supporters on this site who know exactly why they support him?

Or, spend your time reading the many past blog posts on TPM that detail the reasons Obama has the support of some TPM readers. And while you're at it, read the newspaper editorials, superdelegate statements, and Obama's own website which regularly features why individual voters support him.

Your antagonism is getting you nowhere here.

Or do you already know this, and just feel like lashing out?

Posted at April 3, 2008 10:12 PM in response to Obama Running Spanish-Language TV Ad In Philly

Desidero:

I think if you try not to be argumentative, you will find that few would disagree that Democrats should take national security seriously. At issue is whether that should be the defining issue of the campaign and if it is the defining issue, why and who made it so. America has got some seriously depressing domestic problems with respect to the economy, education, health care, executive power, civil liberties, etc. If we ignore these and focus solely on national security, we sacrifice our national security in the end.

Your 9/11 comment I won't take seriously.

No one denies that there are conservative and liberals in this country either, but Obama and many of his supporters do argue that there are more things that unite us than divide us, and that in order to move this country forward, we need to focus more on the former, not the latter. That seems like a no brainer to me.

Finally, no one is saying that to disapprove of Wright is to be xenophobic. I am not a Wright fan, and I have heard him preach and was impressed by much but alarmed by a little. Before Wright, Obama was already being perceived as "foreign". Moreover, the style of Wright was as jarring to people as were his messages. Much has been said about how little people know about "the black church", and its style and culture - all of which color Wright's messages. Many of his criticisms of the US government have come out of the mouths of conservative white pastors too, but these pastors have not become the subject of cable news for weeks on end. My point: Wright makes Obama seem foreign to some people, not just lacking in judgment when it comes to selecting his pastor.

Posted at April 2, 2008 6:22 AM in response to Republicans lead, Democrats follow

They purposely infected African American men with syphilis.

Wright is wrong. The government did not infect anyone with syphilis. They purposefully withheld penicillin to black men even though they knew it was an effective treatment because they wanted to learn about the natural progression of the disease.

White men were given penicillin. The government recruited poor black men who had syphilis already and offered them free medical visits for other problems and meals on the day they were seen, but never told them there was a treatment for their disease.

It was neglect of the grossest, most inhumane kind.

I think Wright's misrepresentation or misunderstanding of this scandal actually highlights his misrepresentation of the government's role with respect to HIV. The government may have been neglectful about addressing the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and Wright may be correct to argue that had AIDS devastated Europe or North America they way it has Africa, the US government would have responded more aggressively.

He takes neglect of a problem in both instances and stretches it to creating that problem.

He is an educated man and should know better, but then everyone else in the educated world is repeating the line that the Tuskegee experiments involved infecting black people with syphilis.

This is thus an excellent example of how an original misunderstanding can morph through the grapevine into a belief in something outrageous but related to an original truth.

We are all victims of this in propagating the altered Tuskegee story.

Posted at March 27, 2008 9:28 PM in response to Wright: Is the HIV Remark Also Misrepresented?

Fantastic post. Thanks.

Posted at March 23, 2008 7:41 PM in response to Dear Pat Buchanan, You Are Right, I Should Be More Grateful.

African Americans are among the most loyal Democrats there are. They are the bloody base.

In a national poll taken by Pew Research in late February, white Democrats said they were more likely to defect to presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona if Obama is the Democratic nominee than if Clinton is.

In the poll, 10 percent of white Democrats said they would cross party lines and support McCain if Clinton is the nominee. But twice as many -- 20 percent -- said they would back McCain if Obama is nominated. White Democrats without a college degree were even more likely to defect if Obama is nominated: 24 percent said so.

African-American Democrats said they were not likely to defect regardless of the nominee. Under either scenario, only 1 percent of black Democrats said they would support McCain.

Article here.

Posted at March 23, 2008 1:43 AM in response to Those African American Voters

AJM

You see Obama through the most cynical lens, like many Obama supporters see Clinton. You are not objective, and you focus on your own interpretation of Obama's character which must be based on conjecture and highly limited information as someone not familiar with Obama personally or affiliated with his campaign and thereby privy to information the rest of us don't have. I am looking for the Democrats - the people who vote on the issues to which Democrats are committed.

If you don't consider Clinton an opportunist as well, then I can't help you.

Posted at March 22, 2008 12:26 AM in response to Where are the bloody Democrats?

Denn:

If Obama had spoken of the "typical black person" I don't think the average black person would have been too upset because it was coming from a black person.

If a white person had spoken of the "typical white person" I don't think the average white person would have been too upset.

Despite the fact that Obama considers himself African-American, because he was raised exclusively by whites and is half-white, he doesn't seem to have the self-consciousness that one race has when speaking about the other.

The word "typical" was a poor choice of words. Perhaps "average" would have sounded better. "Typical" can sometimes have a negative connotation.

At the end of the day, I think we all know that the average white person might react that way. That doesn't make them racist. And that was his point.

Posted at March 21, 2008 9:23 PM in response to Obama should not speak of a "typical white person"

Like I said, where are the bloody Democrats? I am looking for them, not "candidate-supporters". You make no sense.

Posted at March 21, 2008 12:55 AM in response to Where are the bloody Democrats?