I have been staying away from that thread, so I hadn’t seen this. I can say that, at my most recent college reunion, two of the absolute stars (in terms of peer regard) were a former football player and elite secret society member from a working class background who now teaches 6th grade and a former environmental lawyer (and slightly less elite secret society member) who teaches 9th grade. They were both popular as undergraduates for being smart, intellectually curious, and fun, and they get tons of respect from their peers for doing a job everyone acknowledges is critical, and for living full, rewarding lives at less expense than most of the rest of us. Both male, by the way.
At least a couple of my classmates at a similarly elite law school wound up teaching high school, too, and no one among their peers thinks less of them for it. One is a BSE/JD, who teaches physics at a public high school to some very lucky students. My own mother dropped out of Harvard Law School and took a job teaching middle school math. She wound up teaching high school courses in literature and philosophy for about 30 years, then got a PhD and finished her career as a college professor. She dreaded going to what would have been her 25th law school reunion (it was my father’s reunion, too, and he wanted to go), but afterwards was walking on air. “All those people who were stultifying and dull 25 years ago have only gotten worse, your father excepted [but not really]. I can’t imagine how horrible it would have been to spend my adult life around people like that all the time!”
Elite colleges provide lots of luxury goodies. Some of them may be things like fancy dorms or amenities, but more important (to me, anyway) are things like lots of famous people coming to campus to give speeches (and serve as visiting faculty), money to send performing groups on international tours, funding for theatrical performances, access to cool internships and fellowships, etc. These are pretty nice to have. Some less elite colleges (especially rich ones) may have a lot of similar goodies, but they are unlikely to have as many in one place as one of the elites.
To illustrate that, Hillary Clinton and Madeline Albright spoke together at a Wellesley forum a few years back when my D was there. She’s not particularly interested in politics, but the chance to meet them, the chance to hear them speak, and most importantly the feeling of sisterhood she felt she had with these extraordinarily accomplished women, was worth a lot (to us as her parents, anyway). It really helped drive home the “you can do anything you set your mind to” mentality.
Lots of colleges have big name speakers and performers, not just elites.
We live near UCSB, and a partial list of shows I’ve seen there in recent years includes Yo Yo Ma, Madeleine Albright, Joshua Bell, Stephen Hawking, Malala Yousafzai, Peter Jackson, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Green, Temple Grandin, Douglas Adams (RIP), Bill Bryson, David McCullough, Steve Martin, David Gergen, Ray Kurzweil, Alan Alda, William Shatner, Jared Diamond. They also bring in lots of well-known drama, music, and dance groups. My stack of tickets for UCSB events this year includes John Cleese, Ken Burns, Fareed Zakaria, George Takei, Capt. Scott Kelly, Gloria Steinem, and more.
I think it’s fairly typical for colleges to have an active lecture series program, though possibly not as well endowed at the one in Santa Barbara.
The speakers all typically make presentations to individual classes, so that students can interact with them in a smaller setting.
Actually, that suggests one of the most important things about the value of an elite education—the student has to be open to and take advantage of all those cultural, educational, and social opportunities.
In her year-and-a-bit of college, D has been to talks by Noam Chomsky, Aasif Mandvi, Ken Burns, and Trevor Noah (among others) and seen innumerable concerts, some by world class musicians at the affiliated music school. S, on the other hand, was perfectly happy playing football and hanging out with his friends. An “elite” education would not have been “worth it” for him from that point of view. Similarly, I’m glad D isn’t at a school where football dominates the fall schedule, because she would rather sit in a dark closet for four hours on a nice autumn afternoon than go to a stadium to watch a football game. That kind of “elite” environment would have been worth it for S, but not for his sister.
The reason i feel sorry for the good students at my institution is that they are marooned in a sea of mediocrity, and it’s hard, if not impossible, for them to find their tribe. They should be in classes with peers who can keep up with and challenge them. My colleagues and I try to do the best we can by these students, but we have to teach to the mean or we confuse or lose a critical mass of the class. I do have one colleague whose attitude is, “I teach to the top 5 students in the class. The rest can go to hell.” I cannot bring myself to do this, but I see his point. He feels like his efforts are wasted on 75% of his students.
@NJSue: I have similar experience. When we teach, we try to tailor the contents and difficulty so that we can really serve as many students as possible. Personally, I think top students at many state research universities (flagship) can be better served if they have an honors college or something like that. But of course the problem for some state research universities, honors colleges are too expensive given their low state funding.
@prof2dad, our flagship (Rutgers NB) has an honors college into which they are pouring a lot of money. It is indeed a wonderful resource. They are trying to model it after Penn State’s Schreyer School (about the only way in which I think they should model themselves after Penn State, LOL–ditch the football worship).
Honors colleges at large state schools do a particularly good job of addressing the intellectual and social needs of superior students in the first and second years. Once you get into your major at a large state school, it’s going to be challenging; the problem is engaging and supporting at that earlier stage.
“Elite colleges provide lots of luxury goodies. Some of them may be things like fancy dorms or amenities, but more important (to me, anyway) are things like lots of famous people coming to campus to give speeches…”
Yes! I was going to mention this. My D just went and saw the Notorious RBG speak at her campus tonight!
@NJSue: Another benefit of having an honors college at a state university is that some tailor-made upper level courses are reserved only for honors college students to maintain its small sizes. For example, at my university, the class size can be 3-5 students, by which we then are able to entice our star faculty members to teach at the undergraduate level. Otherwise, they all pretty much just want to teach at the graduate level.
Wow, 3-5 students is small; more like an independent study than a class. I think the optimal seminar class size is a little larger (10-12?). However, having a low student load is a nice perk. I like to teach graduate classes (for many reasons) but in part because it lowers my student load considerably. Undergraduate classes where I teach have high caps. It’s a problem.
And that is another reason to value elite well-endowed schools; they will run classes with small enrollments, unlike tuition-driven institutions. The low-enrollment seminar is a money-loser but a very important aspect of a decent college education. Many students at average colleges never have that experience.
While job prospects/increased salary prospects are a pull, I think it’s the ingredients relating to that as well that pull students. Schools well-known to produce high caliber students often have really strong relationships with big companies, have lots of funding available for research and study abroad, big alumni networks, facilities in excellent shape, and a decent amount have fun traditions.
Yes, 3-5 is small. Of course, we are losing money on it. But this is the way to get those good students (particularly in-state good students) that we otherwise would not be able to get. There is no free lunch.
Your colleague’s attitude was the effective mantra for the vast majority of my public magnet HS teachers…except that they were willing to set it to the “top 20%”. Everyone else was expected to keep up or sink.
I was in the very bottom portion of that bottom 80% for most of my HS years.
Interesting. Most seminar classes I’ve had at my LAC were no more than 15 at most. In fact, there was often an official cap at 15 for many of them when I attended. IME, they tend to get unwieldy at around 12+ students…especially if a critical mass fail to do enough of the weekly readings.
In practice, most seminar classes I had averaged around 10-12 with several being 5 or less. .
One seminar I took in modern Chinese history was only me and one other student. It also wasn’t held in a classroom…but instead at a bakery owned by his wife and where he occasionally moonlights as a server in the evenings as part of being a good spouse.
All independent study classes I’ve had(took a few) were just meeting a few times in the Prof’s office…rest was all on me…researching, gathering sources, reading, and writing up the final research paper.
Had a bit of an adjustment to make in grad school as one seminar was 21 students which felt quite unwieldy. Another grad class started at at 13, but 7 ended up not coming back the following week. The heavy weekly reading(peaking at 2000 pages spread out over 6 books) was likely one major factor…especially after one student visibly went pale after reading the course syllabus. The latter grad class ran much more smoothly even with the heavy reading load…which I expected as par for the course.
Seminar class size of 10-12 (a nice size) at a typical state research university is still a money losing business. A state research university usually have quite a few professional schools (say business and engineering) at the undergraduate level. The faculty members at these professional schools are more expensive. In our undergraduate business school, the break-even class size is about 35-40.
35-40 is what I call the “sour spot.” It’s too large for meaningful interaction (takes me half the semester just to know who’s there) and too small to be a true lecture session with associated breakout discussion sections headed by TAs. IMHO undergraduate classes should be seminars (enrollment approx. 15 or fewer), discussion/lecture (max enrollment 25), or strictly lecture with breakout sessions (as large as you like, provided that there are TAs for support). Of course I’m not going to get my wish.
Small classes are one of the main advantages of a LAC that may not necessarily be related to job/career/pay after graduation (referencing to the OP). But what a great way to learn. Contrast that with a lecture class of 100 students at a big public school. In NC the cost of tuition for in-state is roughly $1000.00 per course. Consider that some of the 100 are OOS students and you have one course raking in well over 100,000. And the course is taught by an adjunct for $3500. (And some classes may have 200, 300…)
I have one D at a big school like that, still with over 100 in a class, in her major, in her senior year. My two Ds in HS? We are only looking at LACs.
@PetulaClark: You highlighted an important aspect about LAC education. There are many things to like about LACs and I wish that LACs are on average doing well.
I have to say, I have one kid who went to an LAC and one kid who was in the college of arts and sciences in a larger university that also had engineering, journalism, etc. And I don’t see the darn difference between the two.