To bring this thread back to the original question, and to address the implication that I am somehow biased against elite schools:
I am not anti-elite school; I am simply anti-debt.
For kids in income brackets low enough that admission to a highly-endowed, means-full-need school means that they will receive a first-rate education with no debt, I say congratulations! An opportunity like that is often a game-changer for a low-income kid.
And for kids in high enough income brackets that their families can comfortably pay for over $300,000 for undergrad AND also any graduate school so that their kids can graduate completely debt-free, great! If the most expensive school is also the best fit, go for it.
It’s the families in between those extremes, those either taking on high debt loads or sacrificing their own retirement or other savings, for whom the data show that the ROI on highly selective schools is generally not worth the exorbitant price tag.
This is not just my opinion. It is well-studied, from the Dale Kreuger study to Malcolm Gladwell’s “Why you shouldn’t go to Harvard” talk (Google it: it’s a great talk). Gladwell’s analysis showed that for most prospective STEM majors, going to highly selective school not only didn’t help students finish out their intended major, it actually hurt them. Students were more likely to continue onto a career in their chosen STEM career if they were at the top of the class of a less-selective school than if they were even in the middle of the pack at a highly selective school.
My other, unrelated issue with highly selective schools is how much their aggressive and successful marketing and the resultant pressure to “get in” have contributed to the sky-high rates of anxiety and depression among high-performing kids. Several top students in pressure-cooker schools commit suicide every single year. We highly educated, high achieving parents have collectively given these elite schools way too much power and leverage over our kids, and all too often at the expense of their mental health.
“In addition, regarding overcrowding and class sizes, D’s close friend is a freshman at UC Berkeley. She showed me a video of the full lecture hall for her computer science class of 1,550 students.”
Yale has a Psychology class with 1200 students, one year, they move it to a Chapel where 800 saw it, the 400 had to be at another location and see it via streaming. Imagine that, streaming a class at Yale!
“It’s been my experience that many publics have a different model.”
I also thought the public flagships did a similar model with a professor teaching 1 or 2 large lectures and the TAs doing smaller breakout sessions.
The Dale Krueger earnings studies are scientific and peer reviewed with over a 1000 citations and others able to replicate similar results. I agree with the general conclusion of little average earnings benefit for a particular student choosing a more selective college over a less selective college. That is the future earnings primarily depends on student and background characteristics, rather than selectivity of college attended.
However, Gladwell is a different story. He is an author trying to boost book sales, not a researcher. As I recall, Gladwell’s argument was something along the lines of the following. He starts with a false statement and builds on it to make conclusions beyond what is supported by research, then confirms the result with cherry picked anecdotal examples.
A STEM degree is the most important thing a student can have. All students want to be STEM majors.
At both highly selective and less selective colleges, STEM majors tend to have SAT scores higher than non-STEM majors.
Therefore the students who are on the lower end of the SAT score at highly selective colleges all want to be STEM majors, but aren't likely to become one. If they had attended a less selective college where their SAT score was higher than peers, they would likely have been STEM majors.
Guess I thought the OP question was answered many pages back and thus we had moved on (as is common on this site).
US News TA chart is confusing to me. Heading is “Percentage of Graduate TAs Listed as Primary Instructor” (Fall 2015 – for list I found in any event). Presumably its % of classes with TA listed as primary instructor? But that isn’t what it says. Maybe it would have been clearer had a professor written it. LOL
Percentage of classes taught by TAs isn’t necessarily that helpful though. Assuming TAs are teaching smaller classes and professors teach larger lectures, the percentage of students taking classes taught by TAs may well be less than that stated in that chart. And to the extent its the lower level classes taught by TAs, some students will test/pass out of those classes. And if there are multiple options in terms of larger class taught by professor with smaller break out sessions run by TAs and smaller classes taught by TAs (same subject/credit), students would have the option of what best suited them. No idea if that option exists as the flagships with which I am familiar have professors teaching larger lectures with TAs running smaller breakout sessions.
Purdue has a course listing that is over 1,000 pages. Not so sure how easy it is to run through the classes that interest you, looking at various possible electives, possible major changes, possible minors for instructor status and class size and then do that for each institution to which you are applying. Though its all possible (at least to the extent the info is out there and doesn’t change while you are enrolled).
And none of that addresses the concept of whether any given TA is better or worse. Often times they can be better particularly when looking at lower level classes.
@Data10 : no, Gladwell’s analysis was much more rigorous than that. His outcome measure was ‘persistence of STEM major’, i.e., how many kids who had declared STEM majors as freshman actually graduated with that major (and conversely, how many washed out)? He was not assuming that “all smart kids want to be STEM majors”, but was instead going by actual declared major, at least as I recall the talk.
He used math SAT score as a proxy for math aptitude (which is not perfect, but not terrible). He compared kids with the same declines of math SAT scores at a group of highly selective schools vs those with the same math SAT scores at a group of much less selective schools.
The “washout” was even higher than he predicted at the highly selective schools: even the median math SAT kid at Harvard has a really high rate of dropping out of his/her STEM major. If math SAT is indeed a decent proxy for STEM aptitude, then that same kid would have been MUCH more likely to stick with a STEM major and thus career if s/he had been at a less selective school rather than at Harvard. (Watch the talk yourself, and let me know if you see any issues with his analysis. I know that he gets lots of flak for cherry-picking his data, but this one seemed pretty solid to me.)
And although he only measures STEM persistence in this study, he has another similar study in which he measures career success after completing economics PhD programs at highly selective vs. less selective institutions. This study arrives at the same conclusion: namely, you’re much better off as a big fish in a small pond than vice versa.
Granted, the importance of this effect varies by major and intended career path. Want to be an investment banker? My guess is that who you knew in college matters more than your relative rank within your major. But, want to be a MD, lawyer, or attend grad school? Or, planning a career in engineering or CS or any other major with a high level of drop-out just for the undergrad degree? Be the “top dog” at every level of your training.
A direct quote from the book is below (full chapter at http://docplayer.net/11047832-Except-from-chapter-two-david-and-goliath-by-malcolm-gladwell.html ) and requoted below this email. He mentions a science degree is “just about the most valuable asset a young person can have.” More importantly the summary table looks at degree completion rates without appearing to consider initial field of interest, as if the assumption is everyone wants to pursue STEM.
Students interested in science degrees tend to have relatively higher math scores, and students interested in humanities degrees tend to have relatively higher verbal scores. If you look at the degree completion, it is not at all surprising that students with higher math scores are more likely to both pursue and complete STEM degrees. Similarly, I’d expect students who are skewed in terms of verbal scores are more likely to both pursue and complete humanities degrees.
Does Harvard have “a really high rate of dropping out of his/her STEM major.” The Harvard freshman survey for class of 2019 indicates that 21% plan to pursue Engineering and 30% sciences. The class of 2019 senior survey indicates that 18% completed concentrations in Engineering and 26% sciences. While the completed total is slightly lower than the freshman listed interest, it’s not what I’d consider suggestive of “a really high rate of dropping out of his/her STEM major.”
Quote from Gladwell’s Book MODERATOR’S NOTE: Quote deleted to comply with ToS
It depends on the college. Some colleges make it relatively easy to look up class size information, such as Indiana at https://gradedistribution.registrar.indiana.edu/index.php?term%5B%5D=4192&dept=MATH&subject=&crse=&clsnbr=&instrname=&go=i . If you open it as spreadsheet, you can see the class size for all math courses on one page. Calculus I has 5 listed classes of ~65 rather than a single class of 565 = 325. Calculus II has 5 listed classes of ~60 rather than a single class of 560 = 300. Looking up Purdue (I am using the actual course schedule, not the link of all assigned course numbers that saillakeerie listed, which includes all colleges such as veterinary and does not include any information about which classes are offered in a given semester), all intro freshman calc type classes I checked also had grad student instructors, rather than professors. This was also my experience at SUNYA.
These colleges appear to offer a mix of intro course styles rather than just one or the other. They still have many large lectures taught by a professor, but also have some smaller classes taught by grad students.
Mental health challenges and suicide at pressure cooker schools (as well as at schools that are less intense) need to be taken seriously. They are on the rise throughout the country. As I mentioned earlier, there are many HS valedictorians out there who would never make it at a high intensity school. Many of these kids were highly, highly stressed in HS and honestly, it’s time to stop the rat race.
My kid had several “must haves” on her list, and one of them was that she didn’t want to attend a pressure cooker school. She did not want a culture of “effortless perfection,” which is common in some top schools and would have been dangerous for her. One of her personal goals in college was to achieve balance, which she didn’t have in HS. I am happy to say she achieved this goal, even if it meant attending a school that is ranked #30 (gasp) instead of #10. Even if it meant attending a state school, where there might be a larger mix of abilities. Some of her closest friends came from one of her clubs where they had occasional weekend retreats and sat around discussing their fears, anxieties, vulnerabilities, personal problems, etc. This did wonders for her…she recognized that nobody is perfect.
If she had to have a a few break out classes taught by a TA, so be it. It was well worth the trade off, and to be honest…she still managed to be very close friends with several of her professors. She remains in touch with them regularly even though she graduated in May. The other day she started laughing and commented that she can’t believe she is friends with “real scientists.”
There is no perfect school, despite some who think that their child attends one. And this culture of finding perceived perfection is not helping our kids.
My D is in her second year of an engineering major at Purdue. None of her STEM classes were taught by TAs (but she skipped Calc 1). TAs were used for small group recitations to review and reinforce lecture material. As a general rule, she loves the TAs and finds them very helpful.
The only class she had taught by a PhD candidate was her small group communions course. She loved her and said she was amazing.
Lots of published research shows positive student outcomes for courses taught by TAs. I personally don’t think it should be an auto deal breaker.
@twogirls. The mental health and suicides are indeed real. Just this week there were a few. That’s too many.
Really at any school this can happen but I would assume more at more intense college also.
I have stated this many times but just about every year or when I hear something not going well with one of the kids, that college comes with lots of free services
Free music, free art museums (or students day), free tutoring., and free mental health services if they ever need to talk with someone. I honestly don’t know if either kid has gone but the littlest things could make someone turn towards suicide. Talking it out with a professional could make that person sense that the big problem really is manageable and find a solution.
This is another diversion from OP’s original question, and likely a controversial one. On the mental health issue, the college admission race is clearly a (if not the) primary factor contributing to stresses in HS. In a college, admissions of students of widely varying degrees of competency is a (if not the) primary factor contributing to stresses of some students. Even though adcoms claim they’re all “qualified” to attend that college, they aren’t, because a) the bar on academics is set too low, or b) the adcoms are simply unqualified themselves to make that determination, or c) there aren’t sufficient information in applications to make that determination, or d) all of the above.
So, in both HS and colleges, current college admission practices are primarily responsible for the mess.
My child made the decision herself. She chose her state flagship with a full ride over higher ranked schools. She thrived there, did undergraduate research, got published, and is now a PhD student at Stanford. She never took out any loans. I don’t think her choices limited her in any way. If anything, she had greater opportunities at the “lesser” school.
No way to avoid TAs or big classes unless you go to a LAC. Just sayin’. Lol. Of course not everyone prioritizes those things. For the $200/hour we are paying for class (yes, I once divided it out for yucks), we preferred the idea of a full professor teaching the class. At the very least, it means the professor is an experienced teacher and has chosen to teach at a small school that prioritizes undergrads.
I’m sure that some TAs are good teachers but the perception is that TAs are teaching because they have to in order to pay for their graduate degree. Maybe I’m wrong but that leaves me to believe that they are less likely to be enthusiastic about teaching undergrads - they didn’t choose to do it but they must. And, yes, maybe some love it and are good at it.
As for professors at LACs, I’m sure there is a range of how enthusiastic the professors are. S19 has only been through one semester and has been lucky. All four were super interested in making sure the kids understood the material and also tried hard to get the kids to love the subject they teach. His professors ranged from the head of a department to a young visiting professor. We’ll see how it goes this semester.
And, yes, I get that not every student wants to be at a small school so LACs are not for everyone. We had our own version of unpopular decision when S decided to go the LAC route instead of the university route. Lots to explain to the neighbors. I was out walking the dog the other day and one of my neighbors said something like, “well it’s great that your S is learning to read and write at his school but employers want more than that. Still don’t understand why he didn’t apply to X and Y universities.” Sigh. I didn’t bother to tell him that S has had both math and physics classes both semesters this year because it wasn’t worth it. I didn’t feel like explaining it to someone who (1) doesn’t get that the liberal arts includes STEM and (2) that reading and writing is indeed something that makes kids employable.
So, yes, unpopular decision with some of the neighbors. Not the most discussed version on here (elite university vs state school) but still a head scratcher to some here.
What is “too low” by your definition, and what is too “widely varying” by your definition?
Seems like hardly any college will meet your standards, particularly the regional public universities and open admission community colleges that serve local students (of widely varying academic competency) who choose them because they are the only affordable choice or because of other non academic constraints.
@homerdog. Why did you have to do that? ?. $200 /hr. I will just go with that number and it’s crazy… Lol…
At both my daughters Lac and my sons Big Ten school taught by real professors, the professors hours are plentiful. I asked my son if he ever went (not that kid) and to my surprise he has on multiple occasion (guess he is now, that kid). He told me at Michigan you either just walk in or make an appointment. Email /phone works also. He never had a problem getting access to any professor. Ever. Either did my daughter.
What he did tell me is for some classes, he actually likes the way the TA reviewed the material since they had a better clue what information was more pertinent. He said that sometimes the explanations from the TAs were actually better. Just a different perspective from the professors.
Academic standard obviously varies from college to college, so the definition for minimum academic bar should also vary from college to college. Segregating students by academic competency is a virtue, not a defect, and benefits everyone (and the reason why we have honor colleges in public flagships). Diversion in academic competency is not a good thing for students at either end of the distribution, or even students in the middle of the distribution.
I didn’t say current college admission was the only factor. Financial issues and others are also factors. But elite schools that meet full need, college admission practice is a primary factor.