Your Thoughts on Differences in Academic Standards between the UK and USA?

This is probably a controversial topic, but in my experience, academic standards in the UK seem more stringent than in the US. I have received feedback from my US clients for business and other social science papers reporting excellent grades of 80% and above for similar projects/topics that earned between 60% and 68% for my UK clients, with no noticeable difference in the effort I put in and in the quality of the final products. Besides, I observed that tutors in the UK seem more exacting and finicky than those in US institutions.

I cannot make conclusive claims about any disparity in academic standards between both countries, but it will be interesting to know what other experienced academic writers think about this.

I don't think there's any doubt that UK standards are typically higher than American.

You should remember that the grading scale in the UK is a lot different. If I'm not mistaken, a grade of 70+ in the UK is considered very good. They don't use the same scale as us, so it's not really possible to compare based off just the number.

I was watching PBS' "TED Talks" (pbs.org/show/ted-talks/) on educational reform a couple of nights ago when one speaker really caught my attention because he actually made sense. He explained that the current grading system in the U.S. is designed for failure for the vast majority of students because a passing grade of say, 65% (or anything less than 100% in fact), means that they failed to learn 35% of the coursework. The cumulative effect of this ongoing learning deficit from year to year means that by the time students reach high school and college, they have large gaps in their learning because they failed to grasp the fundamentals of subjects (especially math) to the point where they can't avoid failing. He recommended that all students be required to gain full mastery of subjects before moving on to the next level (or something like that -- I fell asleep on the couch before he finished -- interesting subject, monotone speaker).

If "full mastery" became the base standard for promotion we would need to fundamentally restructure K-12 curriculum to narrow scope and be prepared to have many people in the system their entire lives. It's not feasible, but it would create a lot more work for us.

I think (as I say, I fell asleep) the full mastery issue was focused mainly on mathematics ...

Here's the TED Talks program I was talking about: ted.com/talks/sal_khan_let_s_teach_for_mastery_not_test_scores?language=en. The speaker, Salman "Sal" Khan is described by PBS as "the founder and chief executive officer of Khan Academy, a not-for-profit with a mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere." Khan makes a lot of good points in this presentation.

I think the UK has a better academic standard than US. Because the language pronunciation in UK have a little step standard when compared to the US. And the academic work offered in UK has better quality than US. You can refer the essay writing services which are available as online for this argument .Most of the online essay writing services available are cheap essay writing service (essay guard) , freelance services for the any sort of academic essay paper.

Expectations are clearly situational and subjective:

I believe the UK has somewhat higher standards - at least when it comes to writing essays. The teachers seem to have a well developed marking scheme, even if in the end it's all still very subjective. On the other hand, topics from US students are far more interesting. Just doing two papers on the impact of marijuana after the bill changes :D

I've noticed a lot of British work, particularly in literature courses, has the expectation that the student was involved in the class and can reflect this knowledge in essays meaningfully. This makes it a lot more challenging for an academic writer to step-in and use their own education and experience to produce quality research. It's also probably one of the reasons the prices for British essays from a lot of sites are considerably more than other countries.

This is an important point but the same applies to American (or other countries) coursework as well. It can be especially daunting when you don't know anything about the client (or even the class).

Yeah, I agree.

Or when you're doing work for a company and the client has an obscure book not available online required in the instructions. Unless it's someone you're working with for an extended period of time and have advanced notice, most writers aren't willing to order the book, run out to a university library, or for that matter have any sort of access to these books that the average person doesn't have. I usually avoid those orders, but I'd imagine that a lot of writers are just "creatively" referencing them in the assignment.

Thankfully, I have access to a few online libraries that connect to EBSCO. I am yet to find a book that isn't in that database. Also registered to Questia on PV's advice last year; it has heaps of sources.

Questia is all right, but it never seems to have the books I need. It's more like a way to find supplementary material.

I have a pretty powerful database connection, but I think there's a lot of textbooks that just don't have online versions.

Well, Questia is really about articles, not books. EBSCO is king when it comes to books. But yeah, textbooks are rarely available, but I generally don't even use them. If I do, I normally get them from the client in PDF. Got a nice collection already.

I've done that. Or just ordering them from Amazon. It's definitely one of the benefits of working directly with a client for an extended period.

The "look inside" feature on Amazon has saved my skin more than once.

I would argue that the UK academic system is more based on the application of knowledge, while the US system is based on cramming... The instructors in the UK are more strict and better developed... They push their students to produce quality work. US instructors are lenient and more gracious in awarding grades. I worked for Academic-knowledge before, and boy were the assignments complex or what?! Very rarely did my clients score an 80... it was always between 60 and 75.

P.S Academic-Knowledge is based in the UK... at least they claim to be, lol.

There are also some differences in the percentages of students enrolled in college in the US (about 68.4%) compared to the UK (less than 50%). The US is apparently competing academically on quantity versus quality.

This is true. The UK is less politically correct and do not fear giving the students actual grades. They don't even fear giving the royals failing scores if need be. At least that is what I read of Prince Charles and his educational days. He wasn't very bright and his grades reflected it. That, is a country with an effective educational system. The US system is too politically correct that the teacher would pass the student who cannot read, just because the teacher fears being taken up on charges, losing the job, and coming under threat from various groups. It isn't worth it to be a teacher in the US. It also isn't worth it to get a US education in some states. The grading thing tough, that is a threat across the states. Teachers know to beware for their safety.

I'll take "Would-be experts on the UK/US writing in comically horrible English," please.


"does not fear"
Jesus, Cite, it's a singular subject. This is basic stuff.


"if needs be"
You're trying for British English here, right? Don't answer that!


Awkward. Try "School days" or "education." No one says, "educational days."


"That is a country."
Someone taught you to separate your subjects and verbs with a comma. It was wrong.


"so politically correct that..."
Such... that and so... that: lower-intermediate level stuff.


"a teacher"
First mention, non-specific... articles are basic. You're in charge of QC at your company, right? And you don't know articles.


"a student"
Same error.


"losing their job"
Those articles again! Most native speakers know them forwards and backwards by about age 8, just out of habit.


"The grading thing, though: that is a threat across the states."
Incidentally, where are you reporting this information from?


"beware of their safety"
Prepositions are the same as articles; it's easy to get used to the right ones, even for a dropout, if they're surrounded by the living language as spoken by natives.

That's not you, so... prospective customers should know that, or they're going to get ripped off. I guess the mods don't care.

You're welcome for the lesson.

Both the US and the UK have experienced a significant decline in their academic standards. I believe that is due to the over reliance of the students on AI and internet research. Most of the essays that I have been proof reading lately are mostly composed of cut and paste content, without any reaction or analysis coming from the writer. They just do the bare minimum to get a grade. That is all they want. They are not looking for quality education, they just want to get that credit towards graduation at the end of the academic year. We have to work to remove AI from the classroom at the very least, so that the students can practice their right to choose by actually using their brains to level up the educational system of their respective countries.

I'm not going to share them publicly, but professors have developed a couple of extremely clever ways of catching students using AI; and it has absolutely nothing to do with any kinds of "scanners."