Comment by TitaRusell
13 hours ago
As I understand it Americans pay tens of thousands of dollars for university.
In my country if you can't hack it you just transfer to something else. Much less pressure. And let's face it if you can't even pass the exams maybe it is not your career? Don't live in a lie and go do something you'll enjoy.
> And let's face it if you can't even pass the exams maybe it is not your career
Most target career paths in the US (eg. Investment Banking, VC, Tech, Consulting, Entrepreneurship) now require a STEM or Engineering background, so a large subset of students do have an incentive to study a major they have no interest in.
As you are Dutch, think about it the same way certain numerus fixus programs at TU Delft, UvA, or UL open career paths unavailable to most other Dutch graduates (eg. Optiver, MBB, DeepMind, EU think tanks).
This is basically Princeton's equivalent of setting up a numerus fixus because of the deluge of students enrolling in target degree programs without the interest or background.
In all honesty cheating is common in all universities - the incentive structures for students are the same as a large portion of students do want to end up in a high prestige career.
The American higher ed system is similar to the French, British, and Italian system with regards to prestige and target programs.
> As I understand it Americans pay tens of thousands of dollars for university
Not at Ivies and Ivy-tier programs. Plenty of us got really competitive scholarships and I attended back when Obama was still in office.