Inside Higher Ed: "What’s the great benefit that elite institutions provide?"

Parents Forum
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<p>Inside Higher Ed “Reality Check” takes a close look at the stereotypes and problems related to elite - public and private- higher ed admissions practices that propose to level the playing field by ensuring access to all qualified and interested students: </p>

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<p><a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/12/12/lombardi[/url]”>http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/12/12/lombardi&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>This article needs to be read side by side with the NYT article (in another thread) showing that colleges wanting to be more attractive to students RAISE their tuitions so that they match those of “elite” institutions. Thus, Ursinus college’s tuition is as high as Harvard’s.</p>

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<p>Marite:
I agree completely and had the very same thought.</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=274635[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=274635&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>The problem I see with articles such as this one is the facile correlation between “elite” and “expensive” especially when measuring the post-college benefits, and more especially so when measuring such benefits in mostly economic terms, as return on investment. The comparison is usually made between “expensive” (read “elite”) institutions and state universities. Granted that the college experience may be quite different, but will a student whose family spends the same amount of money for the student to attend Ursinus or GWU get the same pecuniary benefits as a student attending HYP?</p>

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<p>I have always been a bit of a contrarian here, concluding that there is little correlation between some arbitrary ranking and a quality education based on published research and personal experience. However I do think the author of the OP article goes a bit too far.</p>

<p>I believe in a bracketting concept whereby colleges and universities fall into larger groupings w/r to education quality. It is foolish to think that the local community college and Cal-Berkeley will offer a similar “product” in the classroom. However it is just as unlikely that Cornell will necessarily offer a significantly superior classroom “product” than Ohio State, two universities I attended over the course of a decade. Yes, they are significantly different universities. But academic opportunities and challenges aboud at each IF the students are willing to take advantage of them.</p>

<p>The article which cited the phenomenon of raising tuition to improve a college’s “standing” in the eyes of the consuming family is but one indication of how subjective college comparisons are. </p>

<p>There are rare exceptions as the discussion thread about Harvard College’s Math 55 curriculum illustrates. But that may only create a bracket of one college for an extremely gifted mathematician.</p>

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<p>Originaloog:</p>

<p>Agree, and I would add–my reason for referencing the article on raising tuition–that there is no real correlation between expensive and excellent education.</p>

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<p>Sartre wrote that “hell is other people” but heaven is other people as well. Its probably been mentioned is other threads but one advantage of the elite schools is the other students around you. When my son toured Columbia, the tour guide talked a lot about how great it was to be in a creative writing class with students so talented that it was a joy to read their writing. A very bright kid at a community college is going to feel lonesome.</p>

8

<p>Having taught at both the University of Chicago and the Community College of Philadelphia, I can tell you from experience that this is more truism than truth. My UChicago students were obviously better prepared. They read better, they wrote better, they argued better. Every term at the community college, I had two (sometimes three) students who went on to receive full scholarships at Penn, and one occasionally to another of the Ivies - they wrote as well; but in the main, there is no question that the Chicago students were much better prepared.</p>

<p>HOWEVER, the life experiences that my Chicago students brought into the classroom were much more “impoverished”. They often had no idea how folks actually earned a living, how governments “really” worked, and many felt quite uncomfortable outside of a bookish context. There were conversations and dialogues that took place, not regularly but on occasion, at the community college that went far beyond anything possible at Chicago, even when dealing with classical texts. </p>

<p>My favorite example is that we used to discuss the oligarchic propaganda myth from Plato’s Republic (which I did regularly at both places). My Chicago students rarely understood it as propaganda, and they could only get behind it from reading critiques. It was usually the case that my community college students saw through it immediately for what it was, and it promoted lively (once even angry) conversation. I can’t imagine that justified anger ever rearing its head in the Chicago environment.</p>

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<p>I really appreciate your Post #8, mini.</p>

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<p>Yet another NYTimes article that ought to be read along side the OP piece:</p>

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<p>Some shocking numbers on the rising use of adjuncts at many top schools.</p>

<p>The American Association of University Professors just published a study of the numbers of adjuncts at a number of top schools. The number of adjuncts as a % of tenure-track faculty is shocking. Yale-50%, Columbia-44%, Harvard-57%, MIT 45%, Carnegie Mellon-55%, Johns Hopkins 54%, NYU 72%, Princeton 31%, USC 60%. Stanford was low at only 8.5%. Some major state schools included Indiana 31%, UCB 34%, UCLA 36%, Mich 46%, UNC 32%, Wisconsin 39%, UVa 33%</p>

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<p>What’s interesting to me is the difference between, say, Harvard’s 57% and Stanford’s 8.5%. Certainly makes Stanford look very good.</p>

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<p>The numbers can be extremely misleading. Take, for example - the Washington, DC schools - Georgetown, George Washington, American. They all have reputations for using large numbers of adjuncts. But if you are undergraduate studying American Political Systems, would you prefer to be taught by “adjunct professor” Tom Daschle, or some young assistant professor who has to publish or perish?</p>

<p>The high percentage of adjuncts at Harvard might reflect a high degree of intellectual vitality, with visiting scholars and professionals teaching single courses and wanting to be there, or it could reflect faculty who, when it comes to teaching, couldn’t be bothered. (I suspect the truth is that both are true.) And, at Stanford, it could mean lack of a professionally engaged faculty, or a strong commitment to teaching. You can’t tell either way by looking at the data.</p>

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<p>I’d want to know how these percentages are arrived at. Do they include only Faculty of Arts and Sciences or professional schools as well? If the latter, then the Harvard Medical School has a huge number of adjunct profs who teach maybe one course but are full-time practitioners.</p>

<p>In Faculties of Arts and Sciences–which are of more significance for undergraduate education–language instructors are usually non-ladder (non-tenure-track); again, if a school offers a large number of language classes, it will have more non-tenured instructors. Some time ago, the Crimson published an article according to which 30 undergrads were turned away from Chinese language classes because of a lack of available instructors. To accommodate the increased demand would mean hiring more preceptors who, by definition, are considered adjuncts.</p>

<p>Another consideration is that in order to keep their largely administrative roles, some administrative staff are required to teach at least one course, thus making them adjuncts. Finally, some programs such as Expository Writing or Creative Writing rely heavily on adjuncts (such as Jamaica Kincaid or Lan Samantha Chang who is now Director of the Iowa Writing Workshop). </p>

<p>So I’d like to see more context given to these bare percentages. What exactly do they represent? Not necessarily a cost-cutting measure or inferior teaching.</p>

<p>EDIT: Cross-posted with Mini!</p>

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<p>My master’s degree program in counseling psychology was taught 100% by adjunct profs. They were all active practitioners in the field of psychology and “practiced what they preached” out in the real world. Since I was training to be a practitioner, I thought I was extremely well-served by this program.</p>

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<p>Most of Harvard’s are shown as full-time non tenure track so they are the small army of lecturers and asst profs not on the tenure track. I doubt Med School clinical profs are included but every med school has many of these including Stanford so it would show.</p>

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<p>Thanks, Barrons. It looks like the survey has been mixing apples together with oranges. Non-tenure track assistant profs, preceptors, lecturers and senior lecturers are not the same as adjuncts. </p>

<p>From what I understand, adjuncts are paid by the course. Full-time preceptors and full-time assistant profs are paid a salary on the same principle as tenure track profs. Lecturers (who can become very highly paid Senior lecturers) should also not be considered adjuncts. All assistant profs in the math dept at Harvard (and I believe at a number of peer institutions) are non-tenure track. But they are not adjuncts.</p>

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<p>The point of the study was to highlight the decline in tenure track faculty. That’s why they included both non tenure track and part-time faculty. Yale was about 50-50 for non track and part-time.</p>

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<p>Yes, but that’s not the same as adjuncts. Sorry, but that sounds like sloppy reporting to me.</p>

<p>I also think that the decline in the number tenured faculty (though not of tenure-track faculty) is a good thing. Too many faculties have fully tenured departments with profs who have little incentive to retire even when they reach 70. I once talked with a prof in a social sciences department at a major Canadian University who told me that only one person in his whole department was not tenured. Regardless of the qualifications of the person who was hired to fill that non-tenured slot, the person had no prayer of being promoted to tenure as the department wanted to keep that slot open so as to get “new blood” in.</p>

<p>I do, however, support the increase in tenure-track hiring. I’ve never understood why the math departments at Harvard and some other institutions have this policy of not making tenure-track appointments at the assistant prof level.</p>

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<p>The article did not say only adjuncts. That might have been my error in the decription. Adjunct was a lot quicker to type than non tenure track full-time.</p>

<p>Here’s a snip with the gist</p>

<p>"The index’s cumulative findings confirm the omens that have loomed large to academic-labor activists for years: Since the 1970s, the proportion of tenured and tenure-track faculty members in the American professoriate has dwindled from about 57 percent to about 35 percent, while the proportion of full- and part-timers working off the tenure track has grown from about 43 percent to 65 percent.</p>

<p>Moreover, the proportion of professors in line for tenure has shrunk faster than the proportion of those who already enjoy tenure. The interpretation: “We really don’t have a replacement generation of faculty on the tenure track,” says Mr. Curtis."</p>