Classic CC thread: Child picked MSU over elites. People freak out.

[blue147]

Some more ‘gems’ -

From Leonard Charlap, an MIT alumnus and a retired math professor.

Color me skeptical. There are no, zero, figures here to show these honors colleges are producing leaders, scientists, scholars, architects, etc in comparable numbers to the usual suspects, the Ivies, MIT, Stanford, The 7 Sisters, Caltech, U of Chicago, etc. What percent of their graduates go on to get a doctorate? Go to med or law school? How many winners of the various prizes, Nobel, Fields, Pritzker, etc, have graduated from these honors colleges?

And what of their faculty? Are there great researchers and scholars to inspire their student. I hate anecdotal evidence especially personal evidence, but since the column has only anecdotal evidence, let me tell you of my years, 1956 - 1959 at MIT. Let me tell you about my 2nd semester freshman year, I had, all in small classes, I. M. Singer for freshman calculus, M. A. Kervaire for linear algebra, and Bernard Feld for physics. Later on I had Carvel Collins for American literature and Ernest Levy for Music. Most of my advanced courses were taught by faculty who were extremely respected.

Finally it is difficult for me to understand the belief people have that the elite schools take mostly rich students. Certainly I was lower middle class. None of my friends were rich; none went to private schools. Today at Princeton, admission is need blind, and all admitted students are given grants, not loans, so they can afford to attend. It is difficult to see how this would skew the results. Any bias is due to lower level education.

So if one chooses to attend a non-elite over an elite it’s due to a “lower level education.” I should be generous to the man and interpret this as “not aware of the financial aid packets to an Ivy admit.” Maybe he didn’t mean it that way.

It’s amusing that a professor, very familiar with institutions dedicated to higher education is blissfully ignorant that, yes, medical doctors, lawyers and future professors graduate from state universities. The percent? Of course less, no doubt, since state universities have different goals than privates. It seems he is also unaware that a number of state honor programs are new, and that it’s the university’s attempt to attract students who are academically “elite.” Mr. Charlap has read the article, but its message went over his head. He is aliterate. Of course, this is probably a clue to the man’s bias towards academic elitism.

6500 students is an honors college?

Sounds like an honors mill.

The best undergraduate choices and experience is not this or the Ivies or their national counterparts like Stanford and Duke. It’s quality small liberal arts colleges where students are taught by professors not by graduate students.

Sounds like someone is batting hard for the elite LACs. Plus, like Mr. Charlap, this poster is rather ignorant of the honors college showcased in the article. If he has done his research he’d understand that many of the honors classes are faculty led, with smaller classes than the average normal Alabama course.

If we take a look at the Ivies, even though they were dismissed entirely by the poster who wrote the above quote, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth and Princeton are said to have the best undergraduate experience amongst other Ivies in terms of teaching. Brown has approximately 6, 300 undergraduate students; Yale, approximately 5, 300 undergraduates; Dartmouth, approximately 4, 300; and Princeton approximately 5, 200. If we go by the poster’s reasoning all of these would be considered “honor” mills if we look strictly at its population, just a stand-alone demographic without the added +35, 000 or so other students not in the honors college in a major state university setting.

If you’re familiar with LACs, LACs have extraordinarily small student bodies. The top LAC, if we look at rankings and CC talk, is Williams College. The College hosts about 2, 000 undergraduates. Now it’s true that LACs like Williams put their professors as the primary teacher in the classroom. Having had experience in very small classes - both of the disciplines that I attained degrees where all taught by professors, and the largest class I had in one was 35 - I can attest to the great advantages of having professors be in front of the class instead of a TA. But then again many fine students have survived the dreaded intro/weeding courses that make education at state universities infamous. Besides the warm,superior feeling one gets by saying all their classes were taught by professors (I’m not one of them), I’m not sure if anyone in the real world actually cares.

The movie character Will Hunting noted his “free” education, unless we count book fines, from the public library.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azM6xSTT2I0

Note: I learned more when I was in the university’s library, outside of class doing internships, and talking to my professors during their office hours about class material (and non-class material) than I did in-class.