In Denmark, universities (and possibly high schools too, I don't know for sure) get paid by the government based on the number of students passing exams every semester. I think this is part of what's called "new public management" where you attempt to bring market-like incentives to the public sector.

Interesting, universities in Czech republic went through a simmilar scheme, but they'd get disproportionately more funds per head-count of first-year students (on-boarding, I guess?)

Several universities switched from entrance exams to a system of "Everybody gets in, it is the first semester that will probably kill you" :-)

Same in Poland for more than a decade. It's an open secret here that universities admit many more students than they can handle in order to capture extra funding, and then get rid of the excess after the first year.

On my first year, the amount of students was 2x the actual capacity. The first semester was very math-heavy, and everyone knew we had the toughest and CS-unrelated subjects delivered up front in order to weed out half of the year.

My university did it, but because the entrance exams can't evaluate students well, while a semester is quite a more precise and prolonged test.

Yes, I agree it can work out fairly well :-)

On the other hand, I have seen a prof. literaly say something along the lines "Dear students, my purpose here is not to teach you anything, just weed out 50% of you"

That actually sounds like it might work. I know a lot of people who just scraped through exams but excelled in University as well as a number who aced their exams but struggled and/or dropped out in University (admittedly this was more due to picking easy subjects in High School).

Attempting to force market-like incentives on the public sector often ends up working even worse than a purely public system, it seems to me. Use public or private, but mixing the two leads to odd incentive issues and bad outcomes.

Yes, and actually Soviet/Russian education system has it roots in classic German one where Spießrutenlaufen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_the_gauntlet) was a great educational tool (see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birching#/media/File:Koerperst...).

Rather than straw man the Prussian system you could iron man it.

Corporal punishment was common when the Prussian system was founded (1800s) across the world.

The system provided free education for the lowest rungs of society for the first time in Europe, that's a mighty achievement!

Pedagogically it is a hierarchical system with a strong focus on authority. It doesn't encourage questioning authority outside of the sciences which is a feature for the authoritarian societies deploying this educational model.

Spießrutenlaufen was used by the military and was a severe, often fatal punishment. It was certainly not a great educational tool.

I think, he is confusing the figurative meaning with the real punishment. The former is not un-common in Germany even today. And yes, it has - or had - some relation to a certain concept of pedagogy. Cruel, but at times also positively personality-forming.

Ha!

With my University diploma I've also got a rank of Lieutenant-reserve of РВСН (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Missile_Forces) so the procedure is metaphorically close :D

Combined with the parent comment, I think that makes it a perverse incentive here, depending on who is setting yhe standards.

Depends. It seems to me that in general, post-USSR, school textbooks went through a nosedive in quality. I was educated in the 90s and 2000s in Poland, and experienced the modern, "capitalist" textbooks. At the same time, my grandfather showed me books from 60s-80s period. World of a difference.

What I remember the most was the contrast between the English language textbooks from ~80s vs. the ones I had in school. The modern ones basically exist for both publishers and schools to milk parents. They come in three or four pieces - a book and an exercise book for students, and then an exercise book with answers and some compendium for teachers. That's four books, structured in a way that necessitates attending (and paying for) classes. Meanwhile, the 60s-80s era English books were structured for self-learning. You could work through them with the help of a teacher, or you could do it alone.

(Note that while being self-contained, they've also managed to be smaller. That's because they were free of space fillers. Being set on something one step up from a typewriter limited the amount of bullshit designers could include to zero.)

By the time I was finishing high school in 2007, the regular public school's textbooks for subjects like Polish, math and physics have suffered from the same disease English language books did - they've been split into several pieces, refreshed yearly (ensuring there's almost no second-hand market for them), and structured in such a way you couldn't learn on your own.

I have a few of my grandfather's English books in my basement somewhere; I decided to keep them for my children, so that they have a quality textbook to learn from.

Can say the same for Sweden. Somehow it also had this change at the same time.

I'm in Western Europe. University courses get funding based on how many students are in the class. It links directly so "bums on seats" = €€. This money comes from the state but it has the same effect.