Wereboar
"Some countries, particularly any that have ever been communist, actually do have universities that are like super high schools in that they lack freedom and choice". Actually, no. As someone who studied in former and present communist countries I might say that the opposite is true. European communist countries adopted pre-war standards to high school education and had hard entry exams, so only the best could attend the universities. Generally, even back in the 90's, students were considered adults and were expected to behave accordingly.
Same goes for China and other countries where new order has been introduced. People who were not attending schools for several years were not more childish, but much more mature, because they usually spent this time working and making professional connections in their workplace.
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Yeah this bit is really puzzling.
I live in a post-communist country. It's true that public universities don't give students much freedom as far as choosing courses is concerned, but twentysomething Eastern Europeans and/or Chinese having "the maturity and social skills of high schoolers or even younger children"? That's some insulting orientalising shit.
It's been a while since I've seen it but I recall thinking at the time I first saw it that Buffy (season 4) had some really egregious examples of this. Especially considering Buffy was this sites original focus, someone who knows the show better or at least has seen those episodes more recently than me should add this.
Chaotic Greedy
That's weird, because in France "Engineer school" (College) actually is high school part deux. It's university that drops you in the wild.
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
The Wicked entry says they are 'high school aged,' but in any state with a January cutoff plenty of students are 17 when they begin. This applies to full third of the class, since anyone born Sept-Dec would be 17 at the start.