this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2026
37 points (95.1% liked)

Ask Lemmy

41362 readers
2109 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world


7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.


8) No Bots.
Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I’m an American who just started my first year of undergraduate studies at the National University of Singapore last month. I chose Singapore over the US because I wanted to live abroad, and Singapore checked pretty much every box for me: it’s in Asia, tropical, safe, developed, and English is the medium of instruction.

Now, even though NUS is a great university by global standards, the reaction I’ve gotten from many of my family members and friends is that choosing to study abroad as an American is inherently a downgrade, regardless of the university or country. That’s where my question comes from.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] nightofmichelinstars@sopuli.xyz 19 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

For context, I'm an American. Your family and friends share the opinion of a lot of Americans, including employers. So they're right in the sense that an US degree would make it easier to get a job in the US after you graduate. That said, there's no reason to think American universities actually provide a superior education or experience. If anything, very much the opposite the way our country is going. Academia is being targeted and defunded. If I were starting college now, I'd be delighted to be doing it outside the US and I'd network like hell to build a career overseas so I never had to come home.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 4 points 7 hours ago

Ivy League schools have degraded into expensive diploma mills. Students feel entitled to As, grade inflation means As are now class averages. I have colleagues at Ivy League schools complaining students don't even show up to lectures but they have huge pressure to give ridiculous marks, because they are customers.

The only thing driving institutional success was research from foreign post docs and now they are all gone.

[–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

To add a counterpoint, the jobs that like to see American universities over foreign ones might be employers that would be prejudiced in other ways, too, and you may be better off dodging that bullet. Some employers do value the experience that comes from studying in a foreign country.

Depending on what job you are applying for, your portfolio, skills, and experience are going to be more important than where you went to college, so long as you got a degree from an accredited university and HR can check that box.