I wish to transfer to a university in Europe, to complete my engineering formation. I thought it might be the opportunity to initiate a discussion on the merits of European technical schools, given how many people here have a STEM background, and have experienced the first-hand.
Which ones do you think are best at teaching? Which provide the best starting point, professionally? Which have the most productive, idealistic mood among the studentship? If you've been to several of schools, how do they compare to each other?
The floor is yours.
I find that aggregate anecdotal experiences give me a better sense of an atmosphere than hard statistic data.
For instance, I've achieved a much firmer grasp of the subjective experience of being a black person from Richard Wright's personal accounts, Franz Fanon's case studies, and the (occasionally inaccurate) Roots.
I am also more interested in the subjective insights of like-minded rationalists than I am in a hypothetical statistical study of how students feel on average (of course, such a thing would be welcome, but I do not know of its existence, and, in fact, hardly expect it to exist).
I'm a general engineer, jack of all trades and master of none. I wish to specialize in trains. My goal is to use that knowledge to help develop ecologically sustainable infrastructures in the Third World; the planet cannot sustain nine billion cars, even if they were electric. This is intended to be my personal contribution to fighting existential risk. Making some money along the way would be nice, too.
I phrased the post vaguely because I would like to know more about the general picture of engineering in Europe in general and Germany in particular. I find it rather more difficult to gather information on engineering than on science. I suspect that the problem of industrial secrecy might be involved somehow.
I didn't know there was such a thing as an open thread. I'll make sure to use it mroe often. However, I posted this in "discussion" because I thought the end result would be a gathering on information that new lesswrongers might find useful in the future, and would like to find easily. That said, do you still think it would be better to do this discussion on the Open Thread?
This doesn't contribute to fighting existential risk in any way that I can see. If "intended to be my personal contribution" means that making a contribution is a motivating factor, rather than a perceived side effect that happened to be a property of the decision taken for other reasons,... (read more)