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<p>That depends on the individual professors each individual institution happens to employ…cc or 4-year university. Having a PhD can add cachet, but does not necessarily indicate its holder is better than a Masters or <em>shudders</em> even a “mere” bachelors holder at being an excellent…or even a passable teacher. </p>
<p>Some cc’s may actually have better faculty than your lower-tiered 4-years depending on each institution’s ability to attract faculty to teach there. </p>
<p>More importantly, teaching is only part of the equation here. Something also needs to be said for the quality of one’s peers not only in terms of scores/GPAs, but also their levels of engagement with academics/learning or the lack thereof. </p>
<p>If the prevailing campus student body has a critical mass of students who are academically disengaged at best and anti-intellectual at worst…even the best Profs with tippy-top PhDs and excellent teaching skills may not be enough to hold out against that onslaught. </p>
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<p>While I’m not 100% on board with Annasdad’s statement about “flaunting it”, I can sympathize with his question about whether it’s worth it to send a low achieving kid to a $21,000/year private uni as opposed to a $5000 cc if the quality of education one receives is comparable or even better at the latter. </p>
<p>That’s not necessarily condemning others for being “rich showoffs”, but can be a legitimate questioning of whether the parents are actually getting their money’s worth in terms of quality of education provided. Personally, if I’m spending $21,000+ for my future kid’s education…I’d like to be sure that it’s worth the risk he/she represents in light of his/her average/below average high school academic performance and there’s value-added to the private college’s academic quality. Especially considering what happened to one older aunt and her S and how the main point of going to college for most people is supposedly for the education…both from classes/Profs and being around a critical mass of classmate peers with similar academic capabilities and same/better work ethic at the very minimum. </p>
<p>I did this very ROI evaluation when I was a 16-17 year old high school senior evaluating my college acceptances. This process factored in my choosing a Midwest LAC over several other universities with arguably better locations/facilities. If the ROI in education quality for tuition money spent after scholarships/FA are accounted for is poor at a given institution, there’s no real point in going there.</p>