Xref: utzoo comp.edu:967 soc.college:1181
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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!ai.toronto.edu!tjhorton
From: tjhorton@ai.toronto.edu ("Timothy J. Horton")
Subject: Re: Foreign Universities
Message-ID: <1988Mar2.115526.29923@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
References: <296@sirius.megatest.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 2-Mar-88 11:55:26 EST

cmerritt@megatest.UUCP (Cristopher Merritt) writes:
>I would like to combine my desires to return to school and to travel
>by attending a university abroad (with respect to the United States).
>I would be pursuing a master's degree in computer science, supposedly
>in Europe though I'm open to suggestion.
...
>Are there considerations or criteria which I have overlooked?

I'm inclined to qualify this as an exception rather than the rule, but
here's one man's opinion:

A friend of mine with a PhD in Computer Science did research for a company
in Germany for a few months and decided he had to get the heck out.  It seems
that the European attitude to research was somewhat different than the North
American attitude, at least as Computer Science was concerned.
He felt that the graduates of European schools, with some exceptions, hadn't
been taught to do research: especially that they hadn't had to go it alone
without being told what to do (direct themselves, I think he put it).  He
also observed, at least where he was, that companies preferred North American
PhD's over European PhD's.  This may only apply to the area of graphics,
since that was his area, but he made no such qualification.

The moral may be that you should check the modus operandi at the school
of your choice.  When I looked at a couple of schools, I noticed that 
the research requirements were "different" at a number of them.

One graduate research "system" that I know of is downright medieval.  The
applications are thrown into a pile, and the professors pick out "their"
students as they choose.  Each professor is responsible for supporting
"his" students, and so the system decends into something of an apprenticeship
program (depending on the professors level of enlightenment), where students
do the professors bidding much of their time.  I've seen this system in some
of the social sciences departments right here at U of Toronto, and I don't 
think it can be all that rare, especially where money is tight.  When there's
lots of cash, it's easier to convince the profs to throw some into a pool
from which to help support the students that don't get scholarships.


While I'm at it, I might suggest Toronto.  It's foreign, with respect to
the US, and draws a number of American students (good ones, I might add).
It doesn't suffer from the problems mentioned above at all.  There's a
lot more scholarship money (for Canadians) from the federal government
and Computer Science and Electrical Engineering are targetted areas,
so the support level is fairly high.  Since it doesn't cater to defence
programs (where lots of money comes from in the states), the flavor is
much more theoretical than at many American schools.  Give it a look.