Posted on 06/16/2008 9:12:34 PM PDT by jazusamo
The obsession of many high school students and their parents about getting into a prestige college or university is part of the social scene of our time. So is the experience of parents going deep into hock to finance sending a son or daughter off to Ivy U. or the flagship campus of the state university system.
Sometimes both the student and the parent end up with big debts from financing a degree from some prestige institution. Yet these are the kinds of institutions that many have their hearts set on.
Media hype adds to the pressure to go where the prestige is. A key role is often played by the various annual rankings of colleges and universities, especially the rankings by U.S. News & World Report. These rankings typically measure all sorts of inputs— but not outputs.
The official academic accrediting agencies do the same thing. They measure how much money is spent on this or that, how many professors have tenure and other kinds of inputs. What they don't measure is the output— what kind of education the students end up with.
A new think tank in Washington is trying to shift the emphasis from inputs to outputs. The Center for College Affordability and Productivity is headed by Professor Richard Vedder, who gives the U.S. News rankings a grade of D. Measuring the inputs, he says, is "roughly equivalent to evaluating a chef based on the ingredients he or she uses."
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Most likely not.
-ccm
Many Ivy League schools consist of self congratulatory elitists. I have been close enough to one such school and it’s graduates to know they are disgustingly, arrogantly useless. You could not believe the degree to which they espouse “we’re already great because we’re here (at the school)” and they base their value as human beings on the fact they know each other. I think their attitude represents the worst of America, in my view such elitism is un American.
My brother took the opposite approach with his undergrad degree. He worked as a laborer on a project for my dad's industrial contracting company during the summer, spring and "winter" break, and made the money he needed for tuition, books, gas, etc. He was pretty dead set on not having debt once he got his undergrad that he did nothing but work and go to school for 6 years.
What he's going to do if he ends up going to law school is another matter...
I pushed my kids toward college. My oldest went the first year, and came to me one day to tell me he wanted to join the Air force. He said college was good, but not what HE wanted.
He went to boot camp, small arms training, and then to guard planes in Europe and Britain.
He just passed his Lt exam for his local PD. He always wanted to be a cop... and the AF taught him a lot of what he needed!
I encouraged, not pushed...
I wouldn’t know.
I went “on the cheap.”
Well said, I agree from the little I know about it.
There’s a lot of people that shouldn’t go to college at all. I think most students shold take a year or more between HS and college and travel the world first.
Our daughter went on the cheap and son on an Army college fund, we helped both and both got good educations but far from the Ivy Leagues.
A degree from wherever might get you into the game, but it won’t keep you there.
Bill Gates, Rush Limbaugh, Herschell Walker didn’t have college degrees at all.
How could they make a living?????????????
It's like this - if you could borrow money at 5% and get a 25% return, would you do it? That's the type of bargain you make with law school (and certain other types of professional education). Same thing with starting a business by getting a line of credit at the bank from day one. It just makes sense in ways that credit card debt, auto loan debt, and even mortgage debt does not.
I hope your brother grasps that. Some people take the anti-debt argument to the extreme.
They may never lay eyes on them. They will more likely be taught by student teachers in lecture halls - 800 at a time.
Then they graduate with debilitating debt.
I just had 2 granddaughters graduate college. Instead of the big colleges that are now mostly one long drinking party = they chose small colleges where the curriculum and personal contact/instruction from the professors is still intact.
One went to one of the most respected business colleges in the country, albeit a small school where everyone knows everyone. She got her Bachelors in Arts and Science with a major in Hotel Management and starts employment with Disney, where she did an internship, in the fall.
Her sister chose a community college and just graduated with high honors and her Associate in Culinary Arts and is employed with a multi-million dollar fancy bakery where she did an internship and is their star employee whom they are grooming for management.
They won't be spending decades paying off loans - and they graduated with a marketable skill...not just a piece of paper.
One of my grandsons - who's other grandparents are millionaires and offered him full tution in the college of his choice, instead joined the army - is now with the 173rd Airborne - Sky Soldiers - in a Rapid Response Team, fighting in the most dangerous spot on earth, north eastern Afghanistan on the Paki border. He wants to work for his own accomplishments - and he has already more that paid his dues.
Take a good look at CEOs of the fortune 500 and you will find a far greater % with college and advanced degrees than the general pop.
Then take a closer look at unemployment in this country and notice that it is pretty much zero for those with grad degrees, near zero for those with 4 year degrees, and around 8% for those with just a HS degree.
The truth is you don't need a college degree to succeed, but people who succeed do tend to get college degrees. It's not so much about what you learn at college but that by getting a degree, you prove to the world and to employers and to women (if you are a guy) that you can get your act together enough to get the degree over a 4 year (or more) process, suggesting you will make a good employee/spouse.
My Mom and Dad went to Penn State so there was no doubt where I was going to college. And I am proud of it.
I hope you tell them how proud your are of them.
And the parents too!
My son ditched high school at 16 and tried college, found that he didn’t like the bias and went into the trades.
Now he turned 18 a week ago and is trying to get fit enough for the Marines or the Sea Bees.
I couldn’t be prouder!
Actually, here at UVA you do get taught by the big name professors, though I will agree that some intro classes can be as large as 500 students, and that is a big drawback.
But hey, there is a reason to go to community college in the summer for intro courses.
I graduated from an Ivy League School, but haven’t amounted to very much.
My freshman chem professor was a grad of Western Kentucky State College, and he’s wound up winning every chemistry award short of the Nobel Prize.
Linus Pauling graduated from Oregon Agricultural College, and he wound up winning two Nobel Prizes ( wait, Peace doesn’t really count!).
So Dr. Sowell’s thesis is correct, but since he himslef is a grad of Harvard, Columbia, and U Chicago, he’s a strange messenger to devliver the message.
From what I have heard, the “big name” professors win multi-year grants and other funding opportunities. They conduct research and let the teaching assistants or junior profesors handle the rigors of managing coursework, exams, and often lectures.
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