Four thousand leaders sounds pretty broad. Any bets that the vast majority aren’t just business CEOs? I mean, how do you define a top politician? Do they mean, every mayor in the country or just some mayors? Every Teamsters shop steward? I’d like to see the data.
In any event, it’s great to see NESCACs in the hunt.
As usual, these lists imply, or explicitly claim, that attending these colleges “make the leaders”. This is simply not true.
First, to a large extent, the “leaders” come from the top socioeconomic classes. Few business, political, etc, leaders grew up in poverty or even mid-income families. The vast majority grew up in families in the top 20% by income or higher. The wealthier the family, the more likely that a scion of this family will become a “leader”, especially if “leaders” = “very wealthy CEO of corporation”.
So colleges which recruit the children of the wealthy are more likely to have future “leaders” among their ranks.
But even more than that, AOs at these colleges are very skilled at choosing kids who most likely to do well, whether they attend Harvard or Iowa State. That is why places like Harvard look for the sort of achievements that result in “leadership” in politics and the finance world.
This ranking is not “these are the best colleges for students who want to become leaders”, or “these are the colleges that are best at creating leaders”.
The ranking is “these are the colleges that are the best at choosing and recruiting applicants who are likely to become leaders, regardless of the college that they attend”.
Or, more correctly “these are the colleges that are the best at choosing and recruiting applicants who are likely to become leaders, regardless of the college that they attend, and making certain to solely focus on these sorts of students”
So any college which cares about education any other type of students will have a far more difficult time making this list.
This list is also problematic in that it doesn’t control for number of students. LACs will be lower because they are producing fewer graduates.
To their credit, the article does mention the old time pipeline from wealthy private universities to the top leadership positions - the “Old Boys” method of the powerful selecting their replacements from the same set of colleges.
This worked across all ways of life, but nowhere was as entrenched as in the business world, and it still is today.
Not sure where to post, but since we were talking about climate a little while back, thought it would be fun to note the Bates Puddle Jump continues - 50th year - and happening today! It’s been cold this past week so the pond is safe for standing/jumping: Bates College Alumni on Instagram: "Happy 50th Anniversary to the Puddle Jump! ❄️ Can you believe it's been 50 years since four brave Batesies took the first plunge into the icy waters of Lake Andrews? This legendary tradition has created countless memories for generations of Bobcats. Celebrate this milestone by supporting today's students with a recurring gift to the Bates Fund. Your monthly recurring gift creates ripples through today's Bates student experience. Click the link in our bio to take the plunge and support Bates with a recurring gift! #BatesFund #PuddleJump50 #BatesTradition"
Already teasing my Bates-bound high school senior daughter about doing that. Oooh that looks cold.
My current Bates student is excited to participate today!
Just as interesting that Smith and Holyoke were named for doing something for which Wellesley, which was not named, is very well known.
It would be fun to do a NESCAC comparison. There’s no point in thinking about schools with undergraduate populations that exceed 30,000.
Borrowing on @Mwfan1921 's post in another thread, sharing this for recent activity at Bowdoin:
Interesting. When my kid was looking at Bowdoin, and we went as far as interviewing and liked the school, I didn’t imagine it to be a big activism place, and maybe it’s not.
Anyone who follows me around knows that I typically push back on Wesleyan’s reputation for activism as both earned and incredibly exaggerated, both of which are true. But this and other events on NESCAC campuses I’ve observed over the years makes me wonder if that rep isn’t now a bit lazy and hackneyed. For example, in connection with Gaza protesting, I am not aware of any group of students at Wes bull-rushing any buildings, blocking anyone from doing anything or defacing campus property - all things the Wes Prez sternly warned wouldn’t be tolerated. Maybe I missed something but I don’t think I did. They had an encampment, but it was pretty quiet.
There have been “not here ever” speaker protests at Amherst, Williams and Midd. There have been dust ups at Tufts. Trinity, Hamilton and Colby seem to be pretty quiet in terms of activism but I’m sure I’ve missed a few. Don’t recall ever hearing about it at Bates or Conn.
So, what’s the deal? Is Wesleyan really the Berkeley of the NESCACs? This comes up quite often, and if I’m being honest it seems to come from people who don’t know much about the school but are nonetheless enthusiastically advising others asking about the school, and it’s usually pretty over-the-top and doesn’t foot with reality IMHO.
There was little to no activism when my D19 attended. In our experience, overall I would call the student body ‘mainstream’.
I mean, there is activism at Wes. No denying that, and if you want to be completely free of it then it’s not the place for you. I myself think it’s a natural part of attending college and I wanted my kids exposed to it. The thing with which I’ve taken issue is this image concocted by some - just do a search here - that you can hardly walk down a path or eat your lunch without someone screaming or doing something offensive.
And just to be clear since it came up: I’m not picking on the Palestinian protests. I would have made this post if the story you posted was about anything else and the students forced their way into a building. It’s just the first example of aggressive protesting I’ve seen come out of Bowdoin. I only take issue with protest that forces anyone to do anything, prevents people from doing anything, or that is racist, homophobic, antisemitic, etc.
Otherwise, protest away.
I have to ask my daughter (Bates ‘28) if she participated! The photos were fantastic
There was a Posse veteran all four years of my D’s time at Wes.
One of them rowed all four years on the men’s crew team, interned in the school’s investment office under Swensen disciple Anne Martin, and is today an investment banker. Seems like a quintessential small college experience. He was married with children btw. It can work because, unlike what we sometimes read on CC and as you well know, LAC is not high school.
Maybe he was an outlier. But for him I’d say things went pretty well.
I spent the day with a class of 2024 Wesleyan Posse Veteran last week and he was so eternally grateful for his time at the school.
Basketball fans may enjoy following the 24-0 Wesleyan men’s team in the NESCAC playoffs and beyond. It looks like their closest call in the regular season was an overtime win in Lewiston.
A little more on the Posse situations:
And this quote from the Argus piece quoted by @circuitrider that I thought was worth the emphasis:
One alum of the University’s Posse cohorts, Jordan Agricula ’21, who now works as a student services assistant in veterans and records at San Diego Mesa College, expressed his hope for this next phase of Wesleyan’s veteran recruitment process.
“When I first heard that Wesleyan was leaving the Posse Program, I was slightly surprised, but I get it,” Agricula wrote in an email to The Argus. “So much of my Posse experience was really a Wesleyan experience. Posse was having difficulty gathering a high number of qualified applicants that were interested in attending schools like Wesleyan or Vassar for various reasons. So I totally get why the administration decided to step away from the program and try on their own.”
The Argus piece also mentions that Wesleyan was the last LAC remaining with Posse after several others, including Vassar, the first Posse school, dropped out. I’m sure it’s all for the same reason.
I can say I’m hardly surprised. Selling the virtues of the kind of education you get at strong LACs involves some nuance and the veteran demographic seems, from a distance, like a challenging group for that message. But it can work and be amazingly transformative if the students jump in with both feet. I’ve seen it.
Again, Vassar was the first partner for Posse Veterans, in 2012. The first Posse partner was Vanderbilt in 1989.
In fact, the entire article was about Posse Veterans, not about “Posse Program”.
Posse Veterans are people who are at least in their mid 20s, and LACs like Wesleyan and Vassar are really not the most comfortable places for 20-something (or older) veterans. I mean, just as starters, both have the requirement for first years to live in dorms. I cannot see a 25 year old veteran being happy in sharing a room and a floor with a bunch of 18 years old kids who have never really lived away from home.
Thanks for the corrections. I was only interested in the veterans side of the story.
Amherst, Wesleyan, and Williams are among the partner schools of the Warrior-Scholar program. https://www.warrior-scholar.org/
I don’t know about Amherst and Wes, but many of the small number of transfer students at Williams are veterans.
Generally these schools provide exemptions from the housing requirement for certain students…those who are 25+, married, have kids, veterans, certain medical conditions, etc.
TBH, I don’t think anyone had ever heard of Posse until the veterans program gained a lot of publicity for it. People still tend to cite “the Posse program” when discussing veterans and undergraduate outreach programs. No need to get super granular about it.
I have yet to meet a Posse veteran who was placed in a traditional dorm their first year. Both Poughkeepsie and Middletown have ample housing stock for older students. The potential is there to make it work.