Posted on 05/27/2022 10:14:33 AM PDT by karpov
The college application season has long been notorious for the anxiety it instills in high school seniors, many of whom are seeking admission to schools they believe will determine their futures. This is why students and parents scrutinize the rankings that are released each year. They naïvely believe that these lists are gospel. What they don’t understand, however, is that the rankings, which first caught the public’s attention in 1983 with their publication in U.S. News & World Report, are based on debatable criteria and provide little value.
The rankings themselves are questionable because of the way they are determined. They are inordinately connected to the marketing efforts conducted by virtually all institutions of higher learning. Putting aside the scandal at Temple’s business school, whose dean received a 14-month sentence in federal court for sending bogus information to U.S. News & World Report, or USC’s withdrawing its education school after determining that it had provided inaccurate data for at least five years, two measures stand out: selectivity and yield. Although the two are closely related, they are not the same.
Selectivity receives the most attention. Schools like to publicize the number of applicants they receive for admission, along with the number they reject. This metric alone makes institutions appear exclusive. The eight Ivies serve as a case in point. They reported record-low acceptance rates for this year. Harvard admitted only 3.2 percent of the 61,220 students who applied, down from 3.4 percent last year. Yale said “yes” to 4.5 percent, and Brown admitted 5 percent. As a group, the Ivies received an unprecedented number of applications, leading many applicants to question if it was worthwhile to apply.
But the metric all colleges prefer to hide is yield
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
Here’s a tip. After a career as an electronics engineer (in avionics) I can reassure you that few companies care where you got your EE degree. Save the money and do the first two years at a community college. Worked for me. You learn most of what you need in the first year anyhow. Ohm’s Law. That pretty much covers it. Lol.
I’ve worked professionally with people from many schools, including the Ivies. Of the three most talented I’ve worked with, two went to the University of Maryland and the third didn’t graduate high school. The primary benefit of the elite schools is the opportunity to network with rich, successful people.
The goal should be to career plan, not college plan. Once you have a career goal in mind, only then pick your college training, if any. And let the people already in that career, especially the people who are liable to one day make the decision to hire you and promote you, be the ones to advise you what training is good for that field. It's best to ask those people those kinds of questions while you're still in high school before you spend lots of time and money hoping the college training you picked at random is worth it.
You may learn that a BS is as good as a master's. Or that a BS from a nearby cheaper college is better in that field than a more expensive college that will have the added expense of apartments/dorm to live near it. The people who make the hiring decisions are the people you'll want to one day impress with your degree, so you might as well ask them ahead of time what kind of training will one day get their attention.
My experience also, is that businesses do not care where you got a degree from. They care that you have a degree, for jobs which require a degree as a credential. But where it was from, just doesn’t matter.
There is an intangible people talk about, about how if you go to Harvard or other prominent private universities, how you meet and socialize with students from prominent families who can help you in your future career. But I’ve never known anyone who has benefited from that.
Almost all of the big nae schools are indoctrination centers that will ruin your kids.
Tip #2
If you get free money for tuition (Scholarship) take it. But, if you have to pay it back, say “No thank you!” Even if it means taking 6 years rather than four
I don’t hire from the Ivy Leagues. Makes my life a whole lot simpler.
I matriculated and it paid off. Can’t see that happening anymore.
I think it was William F Buckley who said in the center of every great catastrophe was a Harvard man.
The advantage of the top 20 or so schools is that if your family income is $125k ish, your kids will be getting googabs of financial aid and will graduate with less than 20k debt if that. That’s the main advantage of these “expensive” prestigious schools.
*125k ish or less
In Florida, the building trades contractor is an economic king.
My neighbor Johnny the roofing contractor typically makes several hundred thousand dollars a year.
If you are not going to get a degree or certificate required by law, you probably should not pay a lot for a college education.
Actually I think it was Thomas Sowell
This guy is a bad writer. He has not really done the research here. And he does not back all his opinions with actual facts. In general I think he is right but his conclusion is not supported. He should say why generic studies is worthless. And why accounting or business is good. I’m not saying he is wrong. I am just saying he does not support his conclusions.
Most college is crap. A STEM degree especially computers or engineering or math are all valuable. So are degrees in medicine, law and accounting. But those degrees are backed up by professional tests. Gender studies have no tests or purpose.
Too funny. I’m similar as I was PMEL with a pretty long technical school. Actually started as a manufacturing engineer while I was finish my degree after I got out back in the telecom heyday. I managed to find PDF’s of the training material I used, versus the stuff being today. The current version is certainly watered down.
But your right, those entering the workforce (versus plans to move into academia) many times just don’t need the most expensive university.
“Actually I think it was Thomas Sowell”
Another great thinker of our time. I miss when he hosted for Rush and would go on about Mrs. Williams and the torment he gave to her. All for comedy to make excellent points. And I remember one time he filled in he was talking about allowing people to sell their organs rather than donate them. And he gave an alegory how he was laying on his death bed and his daughter said “NO DOCTOR, I want my dear father to die intact perfect as he is.”
To which the doctor said, “But we’ll give you $20,000 for his heart.”
“Where do I sign?”
Then later his daughter actually called in to the show and said that is a ridiculous story because you have to have a heart in order to sell it. I was howling with laughter.
Or the time he told the audience he got Mrs. Williams golf cleats for Christmas so she wouldn’t slip while shoveling the snow with the snow shovel he bought her for her birthday.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.