Top 10 US Universities for Graduate Level

[sakky]

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Perhaps I could, but I have not really studied it, so I will settle for pointing out obvious errors in your reasoning. Or, in this case, drawing you attention to points that others have made yet you have ignored.

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<p>So in other words, you will settle for simply criticizing the ideas of others while offering no alternatives of your own. That’s quite the cop-out. </p>

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So you think that Michigan should make some students ineligible for existing funding and instead deplete its own coffers, simply to improve a questionable criterion that is not actually hurting them or their students?

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<p>Actually, it probably is hurting their own students. Or at least, hurting prospective students. The more students continue to linger for years on end accumulating multiple majors, the fewer other prospective students that UM can admit. What about them? </p>

<p>Or, more importantly, what about the state taxpayers? How would you feel to by the typical state taxpayer - who himself can’t himself be admitted to UM at all (as UM is a highly selective school) - to know that his tax dollars are going to support some students who continue to linger for extra years sucking on the taxpayer teat simply because they want to complete some extra majors? I suspect that the taxpayer would respond that the subsidies for the completion of one major is enough. The same argument could be made regarding Federal taxpayers (hence, all of us) with regards to the Pell Grant program. </p>

<p>Furthermore, such a policy provides the great advantage of flexibility for those double-majoring students. They enjoy the tremendous freedom of being allowed to leave with a degree after 4 years, albeit with only one major completed, which makes them instantly eligible for the multitude of jobs that require some degree. Sadly, numerous employers will demand that you have a degree(or be scheduled to have one by the time you join them) before they will even interview you. They don’t really care what type of degree it is, as long as you have a degree. Those double-majors are simply ineligible for any of those jobs until they complete their entire program. </p>

<p>And besides, how much would it really cost UM - one of the richest schools in the world? I’m not talking about necessarily giving students completely free money beyond the 4th year. Rather, that aid would mostly be in the form of a loan, or perhaps work-study. Hence, in principle, UM would not lose much. </p>

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Relative costs, better advising, the different characteristics of the different student bodies, tighter restrictions on who can do a double major, amount of pressure placed on students to graduate in 4 years… without doing a real study I doubt that the reasons will be apparent based on a cursory survey of convenient statistical parameters.

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<p>And nobody is proposing to simply conduct a statistical analysis alone. Yet a statistical analysis can provide important clues that would warrant further investigation. </p>

<p>But at the end of the day, the bottom line is that the top private schools are able to graduate their students faster, in spite of also offering double-majors. </p>

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Most engineering programs can and are realistically completed in 4 years.

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<p>That’s quite interesting, given that engineering-centric universities have long suffered from relatively lower graduation times compared to their peers. The same is often times true even within the same university - for example, students at the Berkeley College of Engineering tend to take longer to graduate than the students in the College of Letters & Science, despite the fact that the former students tend to be more qualified. </p>

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The 5 year programs that I am thinking of are Architecture and Architectural Engineering. The bachelor’s degree is supposed to represent the basic educational preparation for a given field or profession, with various masters degrees representing a level of education significantly above this minimum. Relabeling degrees based on the time spent instead of the preparation relative to the field helps no one. If Architects feel that 5 years of education is the minimum required, who am I to declare that 4 years is better?

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<p>And like I said, those schools could easily offer an interim 4-year degree. Call it the “Bachelor’s in Architectural Studies” or whatnot. Sure, it wouldn’t be an accredited architectural degree. But at least it would be a 4-year degree. The student could then choose to stay for another year and continue to complete the accredited BArch, or they could leave with the ‘BAS’ in hand. </p>

<p>Outrageous? Well, that’s what Dartmouth does with regards to its engineering program. They offer a 4-year unaccredited BA in engineering. Upon completion, students can stay for another year to complete an accredited BEng. </p>

<p>[Bachelor</a> of Engineering (B.E.) | Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth](<a href=“http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/academics/undergraduate/be/]Bachelor”>Dartmouth Engineering | BE)</p>

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Someone with an MIT BSEE has a basic level of education and is employable - the MEng is extra. This is not the same situation.

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<p>Actually, I think it is. After all, somebody with a single-majored bachelor’s degree is also employable, and any additional majors are extra. After all, let’s face it - double-majors don’t really add much employment value over a single-major. Few if any employers are going to hire you just because you have a double.</p>

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Again, this is overly simplistic as it ignore the cases of students who graduate in 4 years + 1 semester, ignores those who drop out, and completely ignores the incredibly complex nature of Harvard financial aid. It also glosses over the fact that most of these calculations are performed dynamically by students already 4 years in, trying to decide on a course of action.</p>

<p>But it does show that the costs can still favor “non-elite” schools, however poor their 4 year graduation rates may be.

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<p>Absolutely wrong, because in addition to the simplifying reasons that you have already enumerated, you made the even more whopping assumption that the person is going to major in EE, or even in engineering in general. Who says that that is so? Only a minority of students at UM are majoring in engineering at all, let alone majoring in EE. The vast majority of UM students are majoring in one of the liberal arts. </p>

<p>So perhaps you would like to redo your cost/benefit calculations of the typical UM student, aggregated across all majors, not just EE. I am certain that you will find a quite different result. </p>

<p>Now, perhaps your implicit point is that people should not be majoring in the liberal arts, or at least that the taxpayers should not be subsidizing the study of liberal arts beyond more than 4 years at the state schools. But if that is what you are attempting to imply, then you need to make that point explicitly.</p>