After that, you can go to university if you think you can handle the beer.

Teehehehehehe..

Actually I've always heard that universities in most countries outside the U.S. are basically a joke... Is this true? Everyone I know who's studied abroad, including in England, has said that the difficulty level in Universities around the world is no comparison to that of any half-decent American university. My friend who studied at Leeds, for instance, spent far more time in pubs than he did doing any sort of work for class. Another friend who studied at Nanzan in Japan said that he could have gone there when he was 12 years old and still passed all of his classes. Any particular reason why secondary education is so much easier abroad?

The converse is that primary education (up through high school) in America is horrible, and in general, anyone who's completed our equivalent of high school (by age 18) knows more on average than an American of the same age. This makes for a pretty big shock for anyone who expects to skate through higher education. And it also makes the first couple years of college for any foreigner much easier since they've had most of the material at an earlier age.