on-hold said:
I know, isn't it great! I fit in like a Molson's-drinking, rink-renting lunk from Barrie!
As for you, kingkong1, I don't have a 'Thai' wife, I have a wife that I love! That's the kind of thing that happens when you spend a decade living in Asia, and it makes it hard to restart your career if you come back to North America; it would be pretty stupid of me to want to do it differently, since that would mean I wouldn't have my family, which is more important to me than climbing some idiot corporate ladder. We're doing fine in Edmonton, where I haven't seen a hint of white supremacy, and where my kid blends in just fine with all the immigrants, First Nation citizens, and white folk. It's a nice city, and my wife likes it too. If things don't work out here, we'll go back and live in Thailand where we have a house and family.
And your imbecilic suggestion that the University of Toronto, a top-20 university in the world, was a waste compared to an 'American' school is, frankly, risible to the point that it casts everything you say in doubt . . . Are you seriously suggesting that if I'd gone to the University of Kansas or one of the million other awful institutions I'd be living on easy street now? 'Making connections' is the dumbest thing I have ever heard, you must be a business student -- maybe I didn't 'make connections', I just got a first-rate education that got me into grad school in one of the top three programs in the world, with a full ride for free. In the U.S., incidentally.
I'm just laughing at people who quote some bogus world university rankings to validate the prestige of their alma mater. Typically Canadian! Canadians who suffer from a perennial inferiority complex towards its neighbor are obsessed with all these bogus rankings that put Canada as one of the best places to live in the world.
In recent decades the main focus of major universities in the US moved from undergraduate education to graduate education, which is where money is generated by its research, that is, this is where top universities get money from major corporations. Star professors at major research institutions don't teach undergraduates anymore in the US. In contrast, the main focus of Canada's top universities, Toronto, McGill, and UBC is undergraduate education. Have you ever asked yourself why there's no ranking of Canadian graduate programs, because most talented Canadians go to the US for graduate study.
I, like many other academics with a sound mind, am skeptical about these annual world university rankings. It's more like a publicity stunt showing the world the supremacy of universities in the anglophone world. These rankings are really stupid but they get plenty of attention, especially from Asians who live in a very hierarchical society and also happen to suffer from an inferiority complex towards the West, just like Canadians do towards the US. Wealthy Asians are often obsessed with the prestige and reputation these bogus rankings provide to a foreign university. Just laughable!
It just baffles me how we can evaluate universities across the national and language barriers when universities are so tied to their own national economy. I pay attention to the US News rankings of US universities and get an idea of which ones are top 20 or 40 universities in the US. That's about it.
There's no objective way to measure undergraduate education, and I don't think it's not the right way to evaluate universities nowadays. You say U of Toronto is a top twenty university quoting some bogus ranking from the UK which often tends to rank universities in the commonwealth high over German and French universities probably due to its colonial ties. So it's biased and looks ridiculous at times, but people like you who suffer from some kind of inferiority complex buy into it.
It's interesting to hear you mention University of Kansas. You probably thought that you would be able to get into a university like Kansas in the US but realized you could do much better in Canada, whose top universities are sort of obsessed with recruiting US students who don't really give a sh-t about Canada and its universities. You managed to get into Canada's top university. There are many people like you from the US. I heard some of the people I met at U of Toronto say the students from the US are the worst in terms of talent and student quality but they admit them because Canada's top universities are so eager to recruit US students as they are somewhat embarrassed by a mass exodus of Canadian talents to the US. He added Canada's top universities always end up getting the raw end of the deal.
You see what I am getting at. I'll say this, US students who can get into a university of U of Kansas can get into U of Toronto. And I won't place University of Toronto in the top 40 universities in the US, considering the quality of both undergraduate and graduate education of a university. I think it's better than U of Kansas, but below U of Michigan or U of Wisconsin. It's probably on the same level as public universities like U of Minnesota or U of Illinois. McGill is even worse than that, as it's mostly an undergraduate institution.
After seeing public universities in the US like these Big 10 or Big 12 ones, you come to see these top Canadian universities, and you just can tell they don't have the money to compete with even US public schools. Many of the Canadian universities have the size of a community college in the US, but they call it a university here. LOL. I mistook some of them as a high school campus. All these show the overall poverty of Canadian institutions.
