That obviously depends heavily on where you are situated and more specifically how [in]competent your public/government system is.
Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
41–50 of 92 posts
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#42Not a fan of this way of thinking about university, as though it's some power-up in the competition to make the most money. It's all very American. What about learning and being in an environment that inspires you?
Learning and being in an environment that inspires you is great, but has nothing to do with the vast majority of people's college experience. For most people, it's just a job credentialing service.
And don't forget football.
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't assess anything until college is over and you are actually in the real world. Good Grades does not mean you will succeed in real life. It mostly means you are good at following orders.
>It mostly means you are good at following orders. Maybe if you went to a terrible school. In any decent school it means you were able to come up with a solution to a problem presented to you. This is especially true for upper-level classes where the majority of the grade is based on a personal project.
Nah, I sort of agree. I graduated with almost 4.0 for my masters. There's so much more I am learning now - things everyone who didn't do well in school learned - humility, balance of life and work, ability to adapt without explicit rules, implicit socialization and direction, ability to self direct, ability to group direct, ability to lead, ability to learn things not traditionally used as metrics of intelligence. Education gave me a beautiful foundation of knowledge, the concept and form of theory and knowledge, and a strong love for it. It didn't teach me how to live, nor could it teach me how to think outside the bounds it defines.
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#44Similarly in Australia [1]
[1]http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/private-school-no-go...
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#45Everyone talks about the great network-effect from going to a good school. As someone who went to one of these supposedly great "network-effect-ey" schools I say it's bullshit. As a thought experiment, think of your own college experience. Do you really keep in touch with that many people? Of the people you do keep in touch with, can any of them open opportunities for you that are at all relevant to your field? Peopl…
> Ivy league degrees are simply the best door-openers out of all the door openers
Knowing someone is.
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. That's directly opposite what I've seen. My close high school friends nearly all went to Ivy League-quality schools: Yale, Penn, MIT, Caltech, etc. Some of us are happy. Most of us are succeeding. A few of us are excelling. (Personally, I'm struggling. I have this irrepressible notion that liberal arts are a waste of my time, no matter how hard I try to subscribe to the learning-for-learning's-sake theor…
> a "better life"--which is an inherently unquantifiable notion. Spoken like a true liberal arts major. A better life is pretty easily quantified. The part that gets you tied up in knots is deciding what "better" means. You stop a thousand people on the street, I guarantee you that a ridiculously overwhelming majority can give you an easily quantifiable answer to the question, "What is a better life?" The answers won…
Heh, I'm a computer science major to my core. Spoken like a CS major at a liberal arts school, I suppose.
I suspect we agree. If you could universally define "better life," you could quantify it. But you can't. We're also bad--really bad--at analyzing ourselves. Right now, I'd love to be spending 60 hrs/week programming and less time writing papers. But I bet I'll feel differently in a decade.
> And no. College is not optimizing its graduates for a better life. College, since its inception, has assumed that you came in with one.
I'm not sure what you mean. Higher education has become increasingly accessible to the economically disadvantaged, not less.
Also, here's Harvard College's mission statement:
> Harvard College adheres to the purposes for which the Charter of 1650 was granted: “The advancement of all good literature, arts, and sciences; the advancement and education of youth in all manner of good literature, arts, and sciences; and all other necessary provisions that may conduce to the education of the … youth of this country….” In brief: Harvard strives to create knowledge, to open the minds of students to that knowledge, and to enable students to take best advantage of their educational opportunities. To these ends, the College encourages students to respect ideas and their free expression, and to rejoice in discovery and in critical thought; to pursue excellence in a spirit of productive cooperation; and to assume responsibility for the consequences of personal actions. Harvard seeks to identify and to remove restraints on students’ full participation, so that individuals may explore their capabilities and interests and may develop their full intellectual and human potential. Education at Harvard should liberate students to explore, to create, to challenge, and to lead. The support the College provides to students is a foundation upon which self-reliance and habits of lifelong learning are built: Harvard expects that the scholarship and collegiality it fosters in its students will lead them in their later lives to advance knowledge, to promote understanding, and to serve society.
That's pretty damn well summarized as "we empower our students to lead better lives." We can argue over whether college comes close to achieving that goal, but I'm comforted by the fact that the stated mission at least aligns with my personal reasons for attending school.
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#47Not a fan of this way of thinking about university, as though it's some power-up in the competition to make the most money. It's all very American. What about learning and being in an environment that inspires you?
Going to college/university with the primary motivation of getting a job/career in some field seems like the more pragmatic attitude[1]. Going to college/university solely in order to learn and broaden your horizons seems like an upper class mentality. Which is fine, if you actually are upper class or have the equivalent funds. If you don't, it might be less than ideal.
[1] Of course this can be taken to its extreme, i.e. greed and overt status seeking.
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a really shitty statistic and bad journalism. > It asked graduates how they were doing across five different metrics, including financially, physically and socially. Eleven percent of graduates of public universities and private universities said they were "thriving" across all five. Twelve percent of graduates of U.S. News & World Report's top 100 schools were thriving, essentially the same as the rest. It s…
> This is a really shitty statistic and bad journalism. I think part of the explanation can be found at the end: Max Ehrenfreund is a blogger on the Financial desk I'm not really sure what standards the Washington Post applies to "bloggers" as opposed to their more mainstream news articles. But IMO at some other sites (Forbes comes to mind) bloggers aren't held to very high standards at all.
Sure they are. They need to bring in pageviews :-)
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#49So 11% of people who attended public universities are "thriving", and 4% of people who attended private universities are thriving. That means somewhere between 89 and 96 percent of people who attended university are not thriving. This paints a pretty dismal picture of the utility of a university degree for those who want to thrive, white middle class kids or otherwise.
It doesn't tell you anything about whether people who didn't go to college are thriving, though.
It did carefully not discuss the trades.
Re: Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids
#50Not a fan of this way of thinking about university, as though it's some power-up in the competition to make the most money. It's all very American. What about learning and being in an environment that inspires you?
I agree but the cost in the US has gone so crazy that even the biggest believers in its inherent value (myself included) end up having questions about comparative worth.